The Wandan mud volcano, located in the Wandan Township of southern Taiwan, spat bubbling mud out of four separate vents on Thursday (June 26) as ejected material reached a height of 6.6 feet (2 meters), Formosa Television (FTV) News reported.
Footage from the roughly 10-hour-long eruption shows flames igniting above the bubbling mud. However, while mud volcanoes can ignite naturally, the Wandan flames were deliberately set by local people to burn off ejected methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change, according to Reddit posts by Mark Tingay, an adjunct associate professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Adelaide in Australia.
"Local folks ignite these vents by throwing burning rags into them," Tingay wrote in response to one Reddit user asking about the flames. "They do it mostly to flare off the gases, but partly because it looks awesome!"
Mud volcanoes usually don't have anything to do with regular volcanoes, which eject molten rock and hot gases. Some mud volcanoes are linked to hot geothermal activity, like those in Yellowstone National Park. However, Wandan's mud volcano is the more common type of this geological feature.
"These mud volcanoes in Taiwan are driven by high fluid pressures that can form deep underground, rather than by magmatic influence," Tingay wrote in another Reddit comment.
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