The 2023 Cordell Expedition

La Palma, Canary Islands 2023

In September 2021, the Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma Island, Canaray Islands, erupted. Lave flowed directly through one of the main towns, destroying hundreds of buildings, and eventually flowing into the ocean, causing distuption and destruction of the marine life. Over years, the affected area will recover, altough not necessarily to the original conditions before the eruption. The dynamics of recovery is of great interest, since every few months lava flows into the ocean somewhere in the World. The La Palma eruption presents an exceptional opportunity to document the effects of the lava flow under well-documented conditions. Fortunately, officials on La Palma made many collections of the bottom sediment in the vicinity of the new lava, and these collections are conserved at the University of Las Palmas de Grand Canaria.

Cordell Expeditions made a request to examine these collections for microfauna, in order to provide baseline data and to initiate future long-term studies of the repopulatioin dynamics. The PLAN is available in the following link:

In mid-2024, a collection of samples of the sediment in the vicinity of the lava flow (into the ocean) was received from the University in Las Palmas. The samples were analyzed by R. W. Schmieder, who wrote a Report: "Marine microfauna from the vicinity of the 2021 eruption on La Palma, Island, Canary Islands, Spain," available on this website.