Nea Kameni is a small uninhabited

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...

of volcanic origin located in the

Aegean Sea The Aegean Sea ; tr, Ege Denizi (Greek language, Greek: Αιγαίο Πέλαγος: "Egéo Pélagos", Turkish language, Turkish: "Ege Denizi" or "Adalar Denizi") is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It ...

, within the flooded

Santorini caldera Santorini caldera is a large, mostly submerged caldera, located in the southern Aegean Sea, 120 kilometers north of Crete in Greece. Visible above water is the circular Santorini island group, consisting of Santorini (classic Greek Thera), the ma ...

. Nea Kameni and the neighbouring small island Palea Kameni (the new and old burnt islands) have formed over the past two millennia through repeated eruptions of

dacite Dacite () is a volcanic rock formed by rapid solidification of lava that is high in silica and low in alkali metal oxides. It has a fine-grained (aphanitic) to porphyritic texture and is intermediate in composition between andesite and rhyolite. ...

lava and ash. The Roman historian

Cassius Dio Lucius Cassius Dio (), also known as Dio Cassius ( ), was a Roman historian and senator of maternal Greek origin. He published 80 volumes of the history on ancient Rome, beginning with the arrival of Aeneas in Italy. The volumes documented the ...

records in the year 47 CE "This year a small islet, hitherto unknown, made an appearance close to the island of Thera." Cassius' report may refer to

Palaia Kameni Palea Kameni, also known as Palia Kameni, is a volcanic island within the Santorini Caldera. The island was formed by a series of volcanic eruptions that formed large deposits of pumice and dacite. The island's name translates to "Old Burnt Island ...

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic '' ...

reports a new island emerging on July 8, in the year of the consulship of M. Junius Silanus and L. Balbus, thus 19 CE. Major eruptions over the past 300 years took place in 1707–1712, 1866–1870, 1925–1928, and 1939–1941. The last small eruption happened in 1950 and involved

lava dome In volcanology, a lava dome is a circular mound-shaped protrusion resulting from the slow extrusion of viscous lava from a volcano. Dome-building eruptions are common, particularly in convergent plate boundary settings. Around 6% of eruptions on ...

extrusion. Nea Kameni is nearly round, and has a

diameter In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest chord of the circle. Both definitions are also valid for ...

of approximately 2 kilometers and an

area Area is the quantity that expresses the extent of a region on the plane or on a curved surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape A shape or figure is a graphics, graphical representation of an obje ...

of 3.4 km². It is monitored closely by scientists from the Institute for the Study and Monitoring of the Santorini Volcano (ISMOSAV), Institute for the Study and Monitoring of the Santorini Volcano
Retrieved 2009-05-17 and is a protected scientific site. The island has many active

sulfur Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...

vents, as well as a carpet of red grassy

succulents In botany, succulent plants, also known as succulents, are plants with parts that are thickened, fleshy, and engorged, usually to retain water in arid climates or soil conditions. The word ''succulent'' comes from the Latin word ''sucus'', meani ...

on the thin soil in the summertime. The nearly barren island is visited daily by dozens of tourist boats throughout the summer. Visitors climb a gravel path to reach the top of the 130-meter-high volcanic

crater Crater may refer to: Landforms *Impact crater, a depression caused by two celestial bodies impacting each other, such as a meteorite hitting a planet *Explosion crater, a hole formed in the ground produced by an explosion near or below the surfac ...

, where it is possible to complete a full circuit of the rim.

References

External links

Nea Kameni Virtual Tour
Volcano 360 Panorama Virtual Tour in High Resolution *Dead link* {{Aegean Sea Santorini New islands Volcanoes of Greece Volcanoes of the Aegean Uninhabited islands of Greece Landforms of Thira (regional unit) Islands of the South Aegean Islands of Greece