My friend has written a paper on Pantelleria (which I am a co-author of), and I thought it was a good opportunity to discuss some of the techniques we can use to reconstruct a volcano's magma chamber using the petrology (chemistry and texture of the crystals and glass) of the rocks erupted at the surface.
As my last few blogs have been a bit heavy on the science, I thought I'd write something a bit lighter. So here are some pretty pictures of the fieldwork for master's project, when I went to Pantelleria to measure the CO2 degassing that was occurring there.Favare Grande, a fumarole on Pantelleria.
In the first part of this look at magma chambers, I talked about some of the processes that dominate what goes on beneath an active volcano. The twin actions of fractionation and assimilation were what preoccupied the early researchers, however more recently we've realised things are a little more complicated than that. In this part I want to take a closer look at some of those intricacies.
This post is the first of a new series I plan to write, on the techniques used to study and monitor volcanoes. The reason science is the best method we have of investigating the world around us is not so much what we know, but how we know it. I thought I'd start with a technique that always amazes me; we can measure centimetres of ground deformation over an area of many square kilometres, from an altitude of 800 km. Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar, InSAR for short.
What goes on underneath the most deadly volcanoes? As my PhD investigates the processes that occur below the ground on Santorini, I thought I would try to explain some of what goes on under every active volcano.
Almost a year ago I started my PhD with fieldwork on Santorini, Greece. As I am currently planning a second round of fieldwork, I though it was time to write up my first trip.
A recent BBC docu-drama called 'Atlantis' recreated the last days of the Bronze Age civilisation on the island of Thera (now known as Santorini), that I've meant to blog about for a while now. This program, along with a more traditional 'Timewatch' documentary, argued that the eruption in roughly 1600 B.C.
Erik Klemetti (of the Eruptions Blog) posted about this paper (An extraordinary episode of Yellowstone caldera uplift, 2004–2010, from GPS and InSAR observations) that has been
A little while ago, I had the pleasure of working on the Aegean island of Santorini. Santorini was the subject of my first blog post, and now I would like to go into a little more detail. I had meant to do it earlier, but recently I have been busy moving to another country...
UPDATE: This was written before the 22 February earthquake, and I realise that recent events show my arguments may be a little too simplistic. My heart goes out to all thouse affected.In hindsight, comparing Christchurch and L'Aquila to other earthquakes like Haiti and Sichuan would have better illustrated my point about building codes saving lives.
Simple answer: Just don't be there in the first place.I am currently on fieldwork on Santorini, which does involve a fair bit of walking from outcrop to outcrop. Walking past deposits from the last big eruption, the Minoan, I can't help but be impressed by the size of some of the chunks of rock the eruption transported. To pass the time, I have been playing a game of "what would I do if the volcano erupted now", thinking about pyroclastic flows and trying to work out where would be safest. So just a quick post until I get back and can write up the trip in some more detail.
With all the fuss surrounding whether the l'Aquila earthquake should have been predicted, the point is often missed that it didn't need to be. As the recent Christchurch earthquake has shown, a city can survive relatively unscathed without an accurate prediction. All it takes is proper preparation.
Nuclear waste is one of the biggest downsides to nuclear power, and can remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. Geological disposal is often stated as the most preferable way of dealing with it, but what does it entail? What are the problems that need to be overcome, and how are governments going about overcoming them? Fortunately, most governments are trying to be transparent about the process, with thousands of reports available on the web. For some coursework earlier this year, I looked at the subject from a geological point of view.
