Waiowa

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Waiowa (also called Goropu) is a small, recently formed volcano on New Guinea, in Papua New Guinea. It sits about 19 km inland from Collingwood Bay in Oro Province, on a fault along the northeast side of the Owen Stanley metamorphic belt. The volcano is a trachyandesitic cone.

Waiowa began forming in September 1943, making it one of the planet’s newest volcanoes. After about four months of earthquakes, small steam-driven eruptions started on September 18, 1943, as magma broke through very hard rocks. The first major explosion occurred on December 27, 1943, followed by two more big eruptions on February 13, 1944 and July 23, 1944. These eruptions produced pyroclastic flows and lahars, leveling about 80 square kilometers of forest. The activity ended with the final eruption on August 31, 1944.

Today the volcano is capped by a 500-meter-wide, steep-walled crater that is forested and contains a small lake.