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13 September 2011
The arts of survival
This summer, while I was out in New Mexico, I went to the International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe, which is hosted on Museum Hill, Santa Fe’s equivalent of the National Mall. As part of the festival, attendance at all of the museums was free, and I took advantage of the chance to visit a unique exhibit and hear one of the visiting folk artists speak about his work.
The Museum of International Folk Art was hosting the exhibit, entitled “The Arts of Survival: Folk Expression in the Face of Natural Disaster”; the concept behind it was to display art that came about as a result of natural disasters. In this case, four events were represented: Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the flooding in Pakistan in 2010, the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and the 2010 eruption of Merapi. Being a volcanologist, I was particularly interested in the Merapi part of the exhibit – and lucky enough to be there on a day when the artist, Tri Suwarno of Java, Indonesia, was available to speak about his volcano-inspired shadow puppets.
17 August 2011
“Mount Boom” a bit of a bust: NatGeo’s “How to Build a Volcano”
Last week I happened to be watching the National Geographic Channel and caught their new program, “How to Build a Volcano”. Being somewhat interested in volcano-building processes myself, I sat down with a pad of paper and got ready to take notes for a review.
The show started off with an exciting idea: bring together a special effects team and a group of volcanologists and try to replicate volcanic processes on a large (but controllable scale). Thus, building a volcano. The four volcanologists (Mike Manga and Ben Andrews of UC Berkely, Josef Dufek of Georgia Tech, and Ed Llewellyn of Durham University) worked with special effects expert Max MacDonald to create a 10-meter-high volcano in a Canadian quarry (and we all know from Mythbusters that anything involving an abandoned quarry is also going to involve explosions).
11 August 2011
What I did this summer:
Went to work at a not-so-super-secret government lab: Got in touch with my inner river rat: Did a little caving: Experienced a natural disaster (not good for my particular natural hazard research, by the way): Explored some ruins: Split a few rocks: Drove through a volcano: Drove up a volcano: Put 5,000 miles on the car: Took in some scenery: And came across a W&M alum a bit west of where …
15 June 2011
Obsidian hunting in the Jemez Mountains
This past weekend I took a day to go revisit the Valles Caldera. While I was wandering the trails, I decided to do a little “rockhounding”. Geologists are often notorious for their rock collections, and I felt like mine was missing something that no volcanologist should be without: Obsidian.
Obsidian is basically volcanic glass – the result of lava cooling so quickly that it doesn’t have time to develop crystals. Pure glass is basically SiO2, and obsidian tends to form from rhyolitic magmas (which already have a high percentage of SiO2, typically greater than 68%). “Heavy” minerals in the obsidian (such as iron and magnesium) make the glass dark, and (depending on their oxidation state) can give it reddish or greenish hues.
10 June 2011
Valles Caldera
I meant to post this last year after my brief trip to Los Alamos, but now that I’m back on the Hill for the summer, it seems a shame not to show off the scenery!
The Jemez Volcanic Field in northern New Mexico – which includes the Valles Caldera – straddles the Rio Grande Rift in the east and the Colorado Plateau in the west. The Jemez contains volcanic rocks erupted from >13 to 0.13 million years ago, with compositions ranging from basalt (low silica content) to rhyolite (high silica). The best known of these is the Bandelier Tuff, a thick sequence of pyroclastic deposits which were erupted in several phases around 1.62 to 1.25 million years ago. The total volume of material in the Bandelier is around 300 cubic km (~75 cubic miles), and it covers much of the area in the Jemez Volcanic Field. (The Bandelier tends to be unwelded and relatively soft, and canyons have cut down through it in many places, creating wonderful vertical exposures as well as the mesas and plateaus that Los Alamos is built on.)
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.
1 April 2011
USGS releases updated volcanic hazards poster
Just a quick post today, as I’m getting ready for a conference trip next week. For those of you who are familiar with the USGS poster “Geologic Hazards at Volcanoes” – a great graphical depiction of the different types of volcanic activity common at volcanoes – you’re in luck, because there’s a new version out today.
Download or view the updated poster for free here: “Geologic Hazards at Volcanoes 2011”
23 March 2011
Earthquakes and eruptions II: Long-term triggering
Statistical analysis and volcano monitoring has established that there are both eruptions which were likely triggered by large earthquakes, and given us some plausible mechanisms for how this might happen, although this is still a rather rare event. Ron Schott brought up an interesting point in a comment, however: The mechanisms that I discussed are generally regarded as operating in the short-term – i.e., a few days to weeks after an earthquake (perhaps even a few months). But what about long-term earthquake triggering – are there connections between volcanic eruptions and earthquakes which happened years before? Are there any plausible mechanisms for long-term triggers, and how would they operate? I did a little research to see if I could find answers to either of these questions.
13 February 2011
“I don’t know that!” – Accretionary Wedge #31
Jim Lehane at The Geology P.A.G.E. is hosting this month’s Accretionary Wedge, and asks:
What geological concept or idea did you hear about that you had no notion of before (and likely surprised you in some way)?
I can’t think of any particular moments where something like this hit me all at once, but one concept that I’ve encountered as a grad student strikes me as something that I never really thought about much as an undergrad (or as a kid who liked volcanoes, for that matter). It’s the idea that an eruption style at a single volcano – not just in a region – can change dramatically in a relatively short period of time.
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.