In the Company of Volcanoes

- Dr. Janine Krippner We are fortunate that there is a large availability of volcanic eruption videos online for all of us to enjoy (see below warning), and we can learn a lot from them too. When I am looking at my satellite images of dome collapse block and ash flow and column collapse pyroclastic flow deposits on Shiveluch and Mount St. Helens volcanoes I have videos of these processes running through my mind. This is a short guide to what you are seeing in these incredible videos. WARNING: There are very dangerous and life threatening hazards associated with retrieving this footage, and here at In the Company of Volcanoes we strongly discourage anyone from trying to take your own. It is never, ever worth risking your life. --- This video shows the dome at Unzen volcano undergoing a partial collapse in 1991. This shows how a near-solid body of rock rapidly fragments down to smaller pieces of rock and ash, creating a billowing ash plume rising from the block and ash...

-Alison Most of my research can be described as looking at rocks to figure out what happened in the past.  There are many deposits from volcanic eruptions that don't just contain rocks. As volcanic soils are very fertile, many volcanoes are forested which means that falling ash or debris flows interact with trees and other plants. The way trees are damaged by the eruption can tell us a lot about what happened. The trees in the blast zone of Mount St. Helens are a dramatic example. Trees blown down by the 1980 later blast at Mt St Helens (image from 2015). I was recently lucky enough to visit Calbuco Volcano in the lake region of Chile. You may remember the impressive pictures of Calbuco erupting at sunset on April 22, 2015.  This heavily forested stratovolcano produced a large plume (which dropped tephra, coarse scoria on the slopes of the volcano and ash all over eastern Chile and Argentina), pyroclastic flows, and lahars (debris flows) from melting gla...

- Dr. Janine Krippner On the afternoon of the 22 nd of April I was working on my PhD research and I distracted myself for a second to check twitter (which is all volcano and remote sensing tweets, so it counts as work for a volcanologist, right?). SERNAGEOMIN had just posted that Calbuco volcano was now on Red Alert (from green) and incredible photos and videos of the ash column exploded onto the internet. Social media gave me a window, not only into the volcanic eruption, but into the lives of those who were affected. (Translations are indicated in italics, please excuse any mistakes, I rely on the internet for help.) To be honest I hadn’t even heard of Calbuco volcano before this moment: #VolcánCalbuco pasa desde este momento a alerta Roja. 22 de abril de 2015: 18: 10 horas. pic.twitter.com/JEAEuiXDep — Sernageomin (Chile) (@Sernageomin) April 22, 2015 (#VolcánCalbuco now on Red Alert. April 22, 2015: 18:10 hours.) That short distraction turned into hours on the ...