Nature 342, 790 - 793 (14 December 1989); doi:10.1038/342790a0

Liquid sulphur lakes at Poás volcano

Clive Oppenheimer & David Stevenson

Department of Earth Sciences, The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK

THE level of the hot, acidic crater lake at Volcán Poás, Costa Rica, dropped progressively over a two-year period up to April 1989, when only scattered boiling mud pools remained^1–3. Here we report the observation of large bodies of molten sulphur occupy-ing part of the former lake bottom, which formed after the last of the lake water had disappeared. To our knowledge, this is the first reported occurrence of terrestrial sulphur lakes. We suggest that their formation resulted from removal of the overlying water, which allowed lake sediment temperatures to rise above the liquidus of the elemental sulphur deposits contained within them. The sulphur ponds bubbled vigorously because of the flux of hot gases from below, which kept them molten at a temperature of 116 °C. The low viscosity of sulphur at this temperature is likely to have been critical in enabling its migration through the lake sediments to collect at fumarole vents. Some aspects of the origin of the sulphur lakes at Poás may be analogous to the putative formation of sulphur bodies on the Jovian moon Io^4,5.

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