In the Company of Volcanoes

- Janine My first AGU Fall Meeting was so full of wonderful science - emergency management exchanges with Colombia to address hazards of lahars (Nevado del Ruiz), volcanic lightning, active monitoring of volcanoes, community preparedness, and all aspects of volcanic activity above, on, and below the surface. I had great conversations with people excited by their work and eager to communicate their work with the AGU masses. One of the many posters that caught my attention was " Don't forget Kilauea: Explosive Hazards at an Ocean Island Basaltic Volcano " by USGS volcanologist Don Swanson. When I talk to people about volcanology the first thing to come up is usually how cool it must be to study lava flows at Hawaii. Well, I don't study effusive lava flows, I am on the explosive end of the spectrum with dome collapse block and ash flows, and I have not yet visited Hawaii. One thing is obvious, many people I talk to think of the relatively safe (with exceptions) pahoe...

-Alison and Janine The largest geoscience conference happens every year in San Francisco. The American Geophysical Union (AGU)  meeting draws more than 20,000 participants from around the world every December. We gather to share our new results, catch up with friends and colleagues, and drink beer. Janine and Alison will both be attending this year. Although we have been to conferences in three other countries together, this will be Janine's first AGU and the first conference in the US where we both be in attendance. Both of us have posters to present on our research, and then will spend the rest of the visit stuffing our brains full of new information and names of new colleagues. If you are going to AGU we'd love you to stop by and chat! Janine and Alison in Japan for the IAVCEI conference in 2013. So what sort of topics get covered in a 20,000 person conference? Way more than we could fit in a blog post, but you can get the idea just from our examples....