You are browsing the archive for travel Archives - Page 3 of 5 - Magma Cum Laude.
5 June 2011
Another posting delay…
Another posting delay…because the rest of the cross-country road trip went fine, but the food poisoning at the end of it didn’t. Once I’m off the lovely drugs and can think straight again, I’ll put something with more substance up. In the meantime, here are some more photos from the road:
30 May 2011
Brief travel delay
I’m currently en route to this summer’s digs in Los Alamos, so posting will be light until I’m settled there. In the meantime, here are a few photos from the trip so far:
27 April 2011
Soufriere Hills Volcano: Recent deposits in 2010 and 2011
Last year I wrote about the February 2010 dome collapse deposits of the Soufriere Hills lava dome, and this year at the SHV: 15 Years On Conference I had the chance to revisit some of the very same spots. These deposits are mainly pyroclastic material (ash, dome rock and pumice), left behind after pyroclastic flows, surges, and a 50,000 ft (~15 km) high ash plume were created during a major collapse of the lava dome. These deposits extended the eastern coastline of Montserrat almost a km in the area of the old Bramble Airport, and surges were even observed flowing out over the ocean on the eastern side of the island. Here are a few before-and-after shots of the deposits:
17 April 2011
Soufriere Hills Volcano: The Belham River Valley
It’s snowing again, so in order to avoid being depressed by the weather, I thought I’d post a few photos of the Belham River Valley on Montserrat. The Belham, which drains into the sea on the west side of Montserrat, channels both pyroclastic flows and lahars from the Soufriere Hills lava dome. Prior to the eruption, the valley held a number of houses and the island’s only golf course, but material from the eruption has since filled the valley bottom and made it unwise to live too close. Volcanic and volcaniclastic processes are constantly reshaping the landscape there, and having visited two years in a row (here’s the link to last year’s post about the Belham), I thought I’d see if any of my photos were good for before and after comparisons.
12 April 2011
Soufriere Hills Volcano: 15 Years On Conference
If you’re wondering where I’ve been for the past week or so, the answer is attending the recent Soufriere Hills Volcano: 15 Years On conference, held from April 4-8 on the Island of Montserrat. (I gave a talk, which hopefully goes a little way toward justifying a trip to a Caribbean island in the last weeks of the semester!) The conference was fantastic, and I learned so much about lava dome eruptions (in addition to my own research) that I’ll probably be slotting whole chunks of new material into my dissertation.
19 March 2011
Back to blogging soon…
I actually took a trip for spring break this year, and I’m a bit behind on my blogging. I’ll get back in gear next week, but in the meantime, here are a couple of manatees!
22 December 2010
Travels near and far: 2010
It’s my 3-year Blogiversary (for the next 8 minutes, anyway)! I almost can’t believe I’ve been writing so long – and that I’ve gone through so many changes since the whole thing started. Quite a ride, indeed.
This post is becoming a bit of a tradition – a continuation of a post I did at the end of last year, and one that’s been picked up by lots of other geobloggers. It’s a neat way of looking back on all the traveling I’ve done in the last twelve months, and to get me thinking about what I might do in the future. This year has been a mixture of the local and the not-so-local…
14 December 2010
AGU Fall Meeting 2010: Monday Dec. 13 Recap
Well, I’ve learned my lesson not to book flights through the Midwest in December, although I made my reservations a few months ago (and of course had no way to predict a darn blizzard). Still, I missed Monday’s sessions, which was disappointing (lots of neat talks!), as well as the Social Media Soiree. I wish I could have been here just a little earlier!
9 March 2010
A Guatemalan Lago Como: Lago de Atitlán and its volcanoes
Aldous Huxley described Lake Atitlán as “Como with the additional embellishment of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing.” I completely disagree on the “too much” part, because Atitlan is stunning (and, in my opinion, the addition of volcanoes gives it a leg up on Lago Como!) At the end of our field work, and after a brief trip to the Santiaguito Volcano Observatory (more …
1 August 2009
Italy (Part II)
…and the rest of my favorite Italian photos. The Valle del Bove on Mount Etna, with the current lava flows steaming at the summit (upper left of the photo; click to see it larger!) Dikes in the Valle del Bove on Mount Etna. A cinder cone (maybe two?) on Etna’s south flank that was active during the 2001 eruption, with a channelized a’a lava flow at its base. A Norman …
Jessica Ball is a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, researching volcanic hydrothermal systems and stability, and doing science communication for the California Volcano Observatory. She previously worked at the Geological Society of America's Washington DC Policy Office, learning about the intersection of Earth science and legislative affairs. Her Mendenhall postdoc and PhD focused on how water affects the stability of volcanoes, and involved both field investigations and numerical modeling applications. Her blogging covers a range of topics, from her experiences in academic geosciences to science outreach and communication to her field and lab work in volcanology.