Why is a South American volcano rapidly expanding? 

It is a mystery that a team of scientists working in Bolivia  are hoping to solve. 

Uturuncu , a nearly 20,000 foot volcano located in southwestern  Bolivia, is expanding at a rate of one to two centimeters per year, "inflating with astonishing speed," reportsOurAmazingPlanet's Andrea Mustain on LiveScience.

According to Shan de Silva, an Oregon  State  University  professor studying the volcano, the 43 mile-wide disc of expanding land around Uturuncu is "one of the fastest uplifting volcanic areas on Earth." 

 Even though there are not serious fears that Uturuncu will become a supervolcano, "volcanoes in the region appeared to hoard magma for around 300,000 years before they erupt, [and] Uturuncu last erupted around 300,000 years ago," reports the Daily Mail.

At the rate that Uturuncu is expanding on the surface, scientists estimate that the magma underneath is expanding by 27 cubic feet every second, according to LiveScience. 

 Despite extensive research, volcanologists do not yet know why Uturuncu is expanding so rapidly. De Silva said that he has dubbed his team's work "'volcano forensics,' because [they are] using so many different techniques to understand this phenomenon."

A Wired Science blog writes, "This uplift is likely due to the intrusion of magma at depth and could imply that a large reservoir of magma is building under Uturuncu, which is thought to have not erupted since sometime in the Pleistocene (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago)."  

 De Silva and his colleagues discovered the volcano's expansion by looking at satellite image data, reports LiveScience. They found that the volcano has been continuously expanding for at least twenty years. But without older data, the volcano reamins a mystery.

Interesting. I wonder what damage could an eruption cause :|

That volcano is nothing like the Parícutin Volcano in Mexico.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Par%C3%ADcutin

I actually found out about this volcano (the one I mentioned in my post) from a nature CD I own called "Natural Wonders of the World".

http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Wonders-of-the-World/dp/B002HMSHIG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1320020562&sr=8-2 To listen to song #4.

Everest grows due to the tectonic pates pushing on eachother, this is a volcano that is growing due do huge amounts of magma building up inside, it's almost the size of a "supervolcano" and it's due to erupt :P Scary stuff, I'd say it's a big deal xD

It doesn't need to be near anyone, if it becomes a supervolcano (which it almost certainly will) than the ash clowd it produces will effect the whole world, air quality, air travel, sunlight etc. Think icelands volcano effecting europe a few months ago but on a global scale. And if the volcano is near people, many will die :/

Yeah, I've heard about st. helens, the eruption in 1980 actually left a massive crater in the mountain! See many people associate lava with the damage the eruption causes, it's actually the ash clouds and the pyroclastic flow that are devastating.  

Supervolcanoes affect more than just the nearby popluation, they pump ash into the air for years and block out the sun, cooling the whole earth down.  Yellowstone national park is a giant supervolcano and if it went off half the US would be covered in 3 feet of ash. 

The last time a big volcano went off it caused the "year without a summer".

Almost 2 years ago that iceland volcano went off halting air travel for a while.  I wonder what affects a supervolcano would have on the airlines.