What is a big province?
A large igneous province is an area of the Earth's surface, where a number of large eruptions after a geologically short period of time (~ 1 million years) have resulted in a thick layer of volcanic rocks covering the surface. Many scientists believe that large igneous provinces are caused by cloak clouds, where magmatic plumes from depth below the ground rise near the surface, such as bubbles in the lava lamp. Sometimes they are also called flood basalt events or flood basalt province, because most of the stored rock are basalt. The pressure increases and volcanic eruptions occur. A large province can release more than a million cubic kilometers of volcanic material. Some percentage of material, usually between 5% and 20%, is released pyroclastic, ie forcibly released into the air. The rest flows slowly from a large igneous province like lava. Often, the big Igneous provides inse from the united province, but rather more partial provinces in the same general area. Some large igneous provinces represent some of GEologically the youngest areas of the continental surface, because most continents are composed of a crust of billions of years old known as Shields.
famous large igneous provinces include Deccan Traps, 2 km thick layer of igneous (volcanic origin) covering 15% of modern India and Siberian traps in a similar depth and extent. These areas are called "traps" of the Swedish word for "stairs" ( Trappa or sometimes TRAPP ), due to large basalt hills similar to the staircase found during formations. Deccan and Siberian traps are associated with eruptions lasting less than a million years, which occur about 65 and 250 million years ago.
The large igneous Deccan provinces and Siberian traps match time with two of the worst mass extinction in the history of the planet, and the eruptions are considered the main causes of contributing. In the case of mass extinction 250 million years ago, the prewarIt is pounding that lava from the trap crawled to the edges of continental ocean shelves and released a huge amount of methane flats; Methane gas trapped in cages of ice microbes over tens of millions of years. Methane is a greenhouse gas tens of thicker than carbon dioxide, and it is assumed that its release pile increased the global temperature, leading to the process of feedback of further release of the valve and continuing warming, eventually killing up to 99.5% of life in the oceans.
Fortunately, for us, the creation of large igneous provinces is rare. They only appear once every 50 million years.