PRED ZAČETKOM:
Prosimo, preberite opis tega geološkega zaklada in si zapišite naloge za vpis še pred odhodom k zakladu!
NALOGA ZA VPIS OBISKA
Poiščite muzejsko sobo v kateri razstava med drugim pripoveduje tudi o lakoti.
1. Poiščite dva predmeta povezana z lakoto 1817. Opišite kaj in kako je predstavljeno?
2. Prepišite oznaki razstavljenih predmetov: KZ ___.
Če osebju muzeja pri blagajni poveste, da ste geolovci in kaj iščete, vam bodo v pomoč za iskanje dali dodatno gradivo.
POMEMBNO!
- PREDEN VPIŠETE OBISK Geološkega zaklada, pošljite odgovore preko GC profila ali neposredno na e-naslov vane.si.geo@gmail.com. Takoj potem lahko vpišete obisk Geološkega zaklada na spletu – ne potrebujete dodatnega dovoljenja. Prosimo, NE PRILAGAJTE fotografij iz iskane muzejske sobe!
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BEFORE THE BEGINNING:
Please, read the description of this EarthCache and write down logging tasks before visiting it!
LOGGING TASK
Locate a museum room where part of exhibition is dedicated to famine.
1. Find two artefacts linked with the famine of 1817. Describe what they represent, and how they are presented.
2. Write down artefacts' labels: KZ ___.
Tell museum personnel at the box office you are a geocacher and what you are looking for. They will offer additional material to help you.
IMPORTANT!
- BEFORE LOGGING send answers through GC profile or directly to e-mail vane.si.geo@gmail.com
After that you can log - you don't need an additional permission to log. Please, DON'T UPLOAD photos from the room with sought artefacts!
- Logs without an previous e-mail with answers will be encrypted and later deleted!
- Logs containing answers will be deleted!
slovensko besedilo / Slovenian text
tocke poti in dnevniki / waypoints and logs
Visit our web-site Geološki zakladi / EarthCaches
for a complete list of our EarthCaches and a lot of additional information.
(ENG) THE YEAR WITHOUT SUMMER
In 1816 a remarkable thing happened—there was no summer weather in much of the Northern Hemisphere. Western Europe and eastern North America experienced sporadic periods of heavy snow and killing frost through June, July, and August. Such cold weather events led to crop failures and starvation in those regions, and the year 1816 became known as the year without summer.
Image 1: 1816 summer temperature anomaly (°C) with respect to 1971-2000 average; wikipedia.
Many livestock died in New England during the winter of 1816–1817. Cool temperatures and heavy rains resulted in failed harvests in Britain and Ireland. Families in Wales travelled long distances as refugees, begging for food. Famine was prevalent in north and southwest Ireland, following the failure of wheat, oat, and potato harvests. The crisis was severe in Germany and other parts of western and central Europe, where food prices rose sharply and demonstrations in front of grain markets and bakeries took place in many European cities, often followed by riots, arson, and looting. It was the worst famine of the 19th century.
Climate anomaly is also blamed for the severity of typhus epidemics in southeast Europe and the eastern Mediterranean between 1816 and 1819. The climate changes disrupted the Indian monsoons, caused three failed harvests and famine - contributing to the spread of a new strain of cholera originating in Bengal in 1816.
FAMINE IN SLOVENIA
Region of what is now Slovenia has not escaped the destiny of other European countries. Crops failed in 1816 and triggered severe shortage of food and enormously high prices in 1817. Ordinary people were starving. They were driven to the extreme, even eating thistle and grass. With poor nutrition came disease and death. To prevent the worst happening, some luckier, wealthier, decided to help by offering free meals to the starving poor. The so called Rumford’s soup was one of most valued dishes. It saved many lives.
Image 2: Rumford's Soup was invented by Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, and designed to provide a high degree of nutrition at a minimal expense.
Cold summer and scarce crops encouraged Baron Žiga Zois to re-popularization of buckwheat which is much more resilient to the bad weather conditions than other grain. He also learned that in Bohemia (nowadays Czech Republic) another type of buckwheat grows, which is even less affected by weather. In 1816 he organized the import of this buckwheat and distribution among farmers. This type of buckwheat (tartar buckwheat, Fagopyrum tataricum) has expanded widely and prevented an even greater number of people dying of hunger. Even today in some parts of Slovenia people call this buckwheat simply “Cojzla” – derived from the pronunciation of Baron Zois family name.
WHO IS TO BLAME?
At that time people didn’t know that the cause for their misery lays two years in the past, and many thousands of kilometres to the east. Only in the second half of 20th century scientists linked causes and consequences and began to understand the processes involved.
Researchers today are careful not to blame every misery of those years on the Tambora eruption, because by 1815 a cooling trend was already under way. But it is widely accepted that Tambora made major contribution to climate anomaly of 1815 - 1819. In much of the Northern Hemisphere there prevailed “rather sudden and often extreme changes in surface weather after the eruption of Tambora, lasting from one to three years”.
TAMBORA ERUPTION 1815
Just before the sunset on April 5, 1815, a massive explosion shook the volcanic island of Sumbawa in the Indonesian archipelago. For two hours, a stream of lava erupted from Mount Tambora, with about 4300 metres the highest peak in the region, sending a plume of ash 28 kilometres into the sky. Soldiers hundreds of kilometres away on Java, thinking they heard cannon fire, went looking for a battle. Over the next several days the explosive eruptions gradually subsided.
Then, on April 10, came the volcano’s terrible finale: Immensely loud explosions could be heard as far as 2600 km away, three columns of flaming lava shot from the mountain, and a plume of smoke and gas reached 44 kilometres into the atmosphere. Fire-generated winds uprooted trees. Pyroclastic flows, or incandescent ash, poured down the slopes at more than 150 kilometres an hour, destroying everything in their paths and boiling and hissing into the sea 40 kilometres away. The eruption destroyed the top 1800 metres of the volcano, blasting it into the air in pieces, leaving behind only a large crater over 6 km in diameter and 900 metres deep, as though the mountain had been struck by a meteor.
Image 3: Tambora crater is beautiful! It is also a huge reminder of the forces that are beyond human control – and almost beyond human comprehension…
Throughout the region, ash rained down for weeks. Huge floating rafts of pumice trapped ships at harbours. Great quantities of sulphurous gas from the volcano (an estimated 60 megatons of sulphur) mixed with water vapour in the air. Propelled by stratospheric winds, a haze of sulphuric acid aerosol, ash and dust circled the earth, partially blocking the sunlight.
SUPER-COLOSSAL
By the time the volcano finally subsided, Tambora had released an estimated 150 cubic kilometres of molten rock as ash and pumice.
Volcanologists classify the explosiveness of volcanic eruptions with the volcanic explosivity index or VEI. Volume of products, eruption cloud height, and qualitative observations (using terms ranging from "gentle" to "mega-colossal") are used to determine the explosivity value. The scale is open-ended with the largest volcanoes in history given magnitude 8. A value of VEI 0 is given for non-explosive eruptions, defined as less than 10,000 m3 of tephra ejected, VEI 7 representing a super-colossal and VEI 8 mega-colossal explosive eruption that can eject more than 1000 km3.
Image 4: VEI scale: Tambora is the only “super-colossal” eruption in the human history which has been observed and described.
Tambora 1815 eruption is defined as VEI 7 event and described as super-colossal. In comparison with some of more known eruptions - Tambora was roughly 5 times more powerful than 1883 Krakatoa eruption (VEI 6), much stronger than Pinatubo (1991, VEI 6), it ejected 100 times more material than Mount St. Helens (1980, VEI 5) and Vesuvius (79, VEI 5), was about 1000 times stronger than Eyjafjallajökull (Iceland, 2010, VEI 4).
IMMEDIATE EFFECTS
Villages in the volcano neighbourhood have been destroyed and many other settlements at Sumbawa Island as well. An estimated 10,000 of the island’s inhabitants died instantly.
Several earthquakes and tsunamis were the least of the problems to hit the wider region. Houses hundreds of kilometres from the mountain collapsed under the debris or ash. Sources of fresh water, always scarce, became contaminated. Crops and forests died. The immediate effects were most profound on Sumbawa and surrounding islands. Some 80,000 people perished from disease and famine, since crops could not grow. The major eruptions ended in mid-July, but Tambora’s ejecta would have profound, enduring consequences.
As ejected ash and sulphuric aerosols mixed with atmospheric gases, they prevented substantial amounts of sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface, eventually reducing the average temperature by as much as 3 °C.
And the following year, for many people there was no summer...
EARTHCACHE
You can’t find direct evidence of Tambora eruption in Slovenia, of course. But consequences of the eruption have been painfully felt in these parts too. Some artefacts in “Gorenjski muzej” (The Gorenjska Museum) are directly linked with the famine of 1817 in Slovenia. Visit the charming Kranj old town centre and try to find links to that part of history in the museum.
The museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 6 pm. Closed: Mondays, 1 January, 1 May, 1 November, 25 December, and Easter Sunday. Entrance fee (2015 prices) to castle Kishelstein (location of the EarthCache) is 2.5 EUR (adults) and 1.7 EUR (children). Family ticket is 5 EUR.
There are some days when entrance to exhibitions is free: every first Sunday in the month, on Slovenian Cultural Holiday (8 February), Museum Summer Night (one night in June - 6 pm to 12 pm), Merry Day of Culture (3 December). Please, inform yourself about free entrance possibilities before actually coming to the museum.
REFERENCES
- Newspaper »Kmetijske in rokodelske novice«, year 1, # 1, 05.07.1843, from collection of National and University Library,
- Article »Blast from the Past«, Robert Evans, Smithsonian Magazine, 2002,
- »Tambora Erupts in 1815 and Changes World History [Excerpt]« - from the book »The Year without Summer«, William K. Klingaman and Nicholas P. Klingaman, Saint Martin's Press, 2013,
- An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore, Rodale Press, Emmaus, Pennsylvania, 2006,
- Buckwheat and Tartar buckwheat, unpublished, prof. Ivan Kreft.
Slovensko besedilo
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za seznam vseh naših Geoloških zakladov in mnogo dodatnih podatkov.
(SI) LETO BREZ POLETJA
Leto 1816 je bilo nekaj posebnega – večji del severne zemeljske poloble ni imel poletnega vremena. Zahodna Evropa in deli Severne Amerike so doživljali nenadna obdobja močnega sneženja in hude pozebe v juniju, juliju in avgustu. Takšna obdobja mraza so pomenila izpad letine in stradanje prebivalcev na teh območjih. Leto 1816 so je zato kmalu poimenovali leto brez poletja.
Slika 1 (glej pri angleškem besedilu): poletna temperaturna anomalija 1816 (°C) v primerjavi s povprečjem iz obdobja 1971-2000; wikipedia.
Mnogo živine je pomrlo v Novi Angliji (Severovzhod Združenih držav Amerike) v zimi 1816-17. Nizke temperature in močno deževje so pomenile izgubo letine v Britaniji in na Irskem. V Walesu je lakota številne družine spremenila v begunce, ki so prepotovale velike razdalje med beračenjem za hrano. Lakota je prevladovala na severu in jugozahodu Irske, ker pšenica, oves in krompir niso obrodili. Kriza je bila zelo huda v Nemčiji in ostalih delih zahodne in srednje Evrope - cene hrane so visoko poskočile, temu pa so sledile demonstracije na živilskih tržnicah in pred pekarnami, sledili so jim pravi nemiri, požiganje in ropanje v mnogih evropskih mestih. Bila je najhujša lahkota 19. stoletja.
Podnebna nihanja krivijo tudi za silovit izbruh epidemije tifusa v jugovzhodni Evropi in vzhodnem Sredozemlju med 1816 in 1819. Spremembe vremena so zmotile običajno obnašanje indijskega monsuna, povzročile izpad treh zaporednih letin in lakoto, ki je prispevala k širitvi novega tipa kolere, izvirajočega v Bengaliji v letu 1816.
LAKOTA V SLOVENIJI
Območje današnje Slovenije ni ušlo usodi ostalih evropskih držav. Letine v letu 1816 ni bilo, to pa je pomenilo hudo pomanjkanje hrane in neprimerljivo visoke cene v letu 1817. Navadni ljudje so stradali. Stiska jih je gnala tako daleč, da so ponekod jedli osat in travo. Z nezadostno prehrano so prišle bolezni in umiranje. Da bi preprečili najhujše, so se nekateri bogatejši, srečnejši, odločili revežem pomagati. Ponudili so jim brezplačne tople obroke, od katerih je bila najbolj cenjena Rumfordova juha, ki je rešila mnogo življenj.
Slika 2: Recept za »Rumfordovo juho« je sestavil Benjamin Thompson, grof Rumford, fizik in izumitelj. Juha je iz cenenih sestavin, a hkrati energetsko bogata.
Hladno poletje in pičli pridelki so barona Žigo Zoisa vzpodbudili k ponovni popularizaciji ajde, ki je na neugodne vremenske razmere mnogo bolj odporna od ostalih žit. Poleg tega je izvedel, da na Češkem uspeva vrsta ajde, ki je še manj občutljiva. V letu 1816 je organiziral uvoz te ajde in širjenje med pridelovalci. Vrsta odporne ajde (tatarska ajda, Fagopyrum tataricum) se je močno razširila in preprečila še večje število žrtev lakote. Še danes je živ spomin na to ajdo, zlasti na Koroškem (okolica Slovenj Gradca), kjer se je še vedno spominjajo pod imenom »cojzla«.
KDO JE KRIV?
Tedaj ljudje niso vedeli, da vzrok njihove bede leži daleč, mnogo tisoč kilometrov proti vzhodu. Šele v drugi polovici 20. stoletja so znanstveniki povezali vzroke in posledice ter pričeli spoznavati kako tesno so med seboj povezani ognjeniki, ozračje in vse življenje na Zemlji.
Danes so raziskovalci previdni, da ne pripisujejo vseh tegob tistih let izbruhu Tambore, ker se je že pred njim pričel proces ohladitve ozračja. Vendar je splošno sprejeto, da je Tambora dodala ključen in daleč največji prispevek k podnebni »nepravilnosti« v letih 1815 – 1819. Na večjem delu severne poloble so prevladovale »precej nenadne in pogosto izjemne spremembe vremena po izbruhu Tambore, v obdobju enega od treh let«.
IZBRUH OGNJENIKA TAMBORA, 1815
Tik pred sončnim zahodom, 5. aprila 1815, so otok Sumbawa v indonezijskem otočju pretresle silovite eksplozije. Tambora, s 4300 metri najvišja gora v regiji, je dve uri bruhala lavo in 28 kilometrov visoko v zrak pošiljala steber pepela. Vojaki na Javi, stotine kilometrov stran, so v prepričanju, da slišijo topovsko streljanje, odhiteli iskat sovražnika. V naslednjih nekaj dneh so se eksplozivni izbruhi postopoma umirjali.
Potem pa je 10. aprila ognjenik pripravil strahovit finale: Nepopisno glasne eksplozije je bilo slišati tudi 2600 kilometrov daleč, trije stebri ognjene lave so brizgali iz gore, plin in pepel pa sta v mogočnem stebru segla 44 kilometrov visoko v atmosfero. Veter, ki ga je povzročila vročina, je razmetal drevesa, piroklastični tokovi (izjemno vroča mešanica plinov in kamnin) so drveli po pobočjih s hitrostjo več kot 150 km/h, uničujoč vse na svoji poti, ki se je s sikajočim vrenjem končala v 40 km oddaljenem morju. Izbruh je vrhnjih 1800 m ognjenika razstrelil v drobne koščke in jih poslal visoko v zrak. Namesto vrha je ostal krater s premerom več kot 6 km in globino 900 m, kot bi v goro treščil meteor.
Slika 3: Krater Tambore je čudovit! A hkrati tudi jasno opozorilo na sile, ki so povsem izven človekovega vpliva in kontrole – skoraj izven človeških predstav…
Pepel iz izbruha je daleč po okoliškem otočju padal nepretrgoma več tednov. Ogromni splavi plovca so ujeli ladje v pristanišča. Velikanske količine žveplenih plinov iz ognjenika (po oceni vsebujoči kar 60 milijonov ton žvepla) se je v zraku pomešalo z vodno paro. S stratosferskimi zračnimi tokovi so žveplene meglice drobcenih kislih kapljic, pepela in prahu počasi ovile zemeljsko oblo in delu sončne svetlobe preprečili prehod skozi atmosfero.
»SUPER IZJEMEN« IZBRUH
Ocenjujejo, da je ognjenik, preden se je dokončno umiril, izbruhal 150 kubičnih kilometrov stopljenih kamnin v obliki pepela in plovca.
Vulkanologi ognjenike po eksplozivnost razvrščajo po tako imenovanem »indeksu ognjeniške eksplozivnosti« (angleško »volcanic explozivity index«), s kratico VEI. Pri razvrščanju se upošteva prostornina izbruhanega materiala, višina oblaka izvrženega pepela in prahu ter opažene značilnosti izbruha (pri čemer uporabljajo izraze od »nežen« do »mega izjemen«). Lestvica navzgor ni omejena in se le načeloma konča s stopnjo 8. Pri tem je VEI 0 dodeljena neeksplozivnim izbruhom, ki izvržejo man kot 10000 m3 materiala, VEI 7 predstavlja »super izjemen«, z več kot 100 km3 izbruha in VEI 8 »mega izjemen« izbruh z več kot 1000 km3 izbruha.
Slika 4: Lestvica VEI: Izbruh Tambore je od »super izjemnih«, edini v človeški zgodovini, ki so ga opazovali in opisali. Opomba: opise značilnosti označene z 1 prevedel avtor zaklada.
Izbruh Tambore 1815 je določen kot VEI 7 in opisan kot »super izjemen«. Če ga primerjamo z bolj znanimi primeri, je bil približno 5 krat močnejši kot mnogo bolj zloglasni izbruh leta 1883, ko je razneslo otok Krakatau (VEI 6), mnogo močnejši kot Pinatuba (1991, VEI 6), izvrgel je 100 krat več materiala kot Mount St. Helens (1980, VEI 5) in Vezuv (79, VEI 5), je bil približno 1000 krat močnejši kot izbruh Eyjafjallajökulla (Islandija, 2010, VEI 4), ki je ustavil polete letal po Evropi in čez Atlantik.
NEPOSREDNA ŠKODA
Vasi v soseščini ognjenika so bile uničene, prav tako mnogo drugih na otoku Sumbawa. Ocenjujejo, da je takoj umrlo približno 10.000 otočanov.
Številni potresni sunki in cunamiji so bili še najmanjša nesreča, ki je zadela otočje v širši okolici izbruha. Hiše so se pod težo pepela in plovca podirale stotine kilometrov od ognjenika. Izviri pitne vode, ki jih je vedno primanjkovalo, so bili onesnaženi. Letina na poljih in gozdovi so odmrli. Takojšnje posledice so bile najhujše na Sumbawi in sosednjih otokih. Približno 80.000 ljudi je umrlo zaradi bolezni in lakote, ker poljščine niso mogle rasti. Glavnih izbruhov je bilo na Tambori konec sredi julija 1815, a hude posledice so bile dolgoročne.
Ko so se izbruhani pepel in žvepleni aerosoli (meglice drobcenih kapljic) pomešali z atmosferskimi plini, so občutno zmanjšali količino sončne svetlobe, ki je dosegla Zemljino površje. Posledica je bilo znižanje povprečne temperature, ponekod celo za 3 stopinje Celzija.
GEOLOŠKI ZAKLAD
Pri nas zagotovo ne morete najti nobenih neposrednih dokazov o izbruhu Tambore. A posledice izbruha so boleče čutili tudi naši predniki. V Gorenjskem muzeju, v Kranju, so nekateri razstavljeni predmeti neposredno povezani z lakoto 1817 v naših krajih. Obiščite očarljivi stari del mesta in poskusite poiskati povezavo s tem delom zgodovine v muzeju.
Muzej je odprt od torka do nedelje, od 10h do 18h. Zaprt je ob ponedeljkih, 1. januarja, 1. maja, 1. novembra, 25. decembra in na veliko noč. Vstopnina (cene iz 2015) v grad Kishelstein (na koordinatah geološkega zaklada) znaša 2,5 EUR (odrasli), 1,7 EUR (otroci). Družinska vstopnica je 5 EUR. Ob muzeju je tudi prijetna kavarna.
Razstave si je možno ogledati tudi brezplačno: vsako prvo nedeljo v mesecu, na Slovenski kulturni praznik (8. februar), Poletno muzejsko noč v juniju in na Ta veseli dan kulture (3. december). O konkretnem dnevu prostega vstopa se pred odhodom v muzej še posebej pozanimajte.
VIRI
- Kmetijske in rokodelske novice, »Domazhe pergodbe«, letnik 1, številka 1, 05.07.1843, Izvor: Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica,
- Članek »Blast from the Past«, Robert Evans, Smithsonian Magazine, 2002,
- »Tambora Erupts in 1815 and Changes World History [Excerpt]« - povzetek iz knjige »The Year without Summer«, William K. Klingaman and Nicholas P. Klingaman, Saint Martin's Press, 2013,
- Neprijetna resnica, Al Gore, Mladinska knjiga, Ljubljana, 2007,
- Ajda in tatarska ajda, neobjavljeno, prof. Ivan Kreft.
tocke poti in dnevniki / waypoints and logs