Cracking Volcanoes

The fieldwork group with Santiaguito and Santa Maria in the background. From left: Yours truly, Silvio De Angelis, Andreas Rietbrock, Armando Pineda, Adrian Hornby, Anthony Lamur and Yan Lavallee. Last Thursday I returned to the UK after an amazing three weeks of fieldwork around the Santiaguito volcano in Guatemala. For this post I will write a little bit about the experience and what had to be done during the trip. For those interested, I've also added a section at the end about the activity that we witnessed during our time there. Quetzaltenango (also known as Xela), our base for the fieldwork. Photo taken from near the summit of Santa Maria. After negotiating the mazy and congested streets of Guatemala City, and finally getting our equipment through customs, we arrived in the lovely little city of Quetzaltenango. Guatemala's second largest city sits in the shadow of the Santa Maria volcano, at the foot of which is the volcano we had come to study. We had a tight s...

This wednesday, I will be starting three weeks of fieldwork in Guatemala. There I will be working with a group of fellow volcanologists and seismologists from the University of Liverpool. We are heading to the Santiaguito dome complex, one of the most active and fascinating volcanoes in the world. Santiaguito dome complex, with an explosion plume rising from the active Caliente vent. The older Santa Maria volcano forms the high peak on the far right. (Taken Dec. 2005. Source: photovolcanica.com)  I've introduced Santiaguito on this blog before , but I thought I would rewrite it with a little update on its recent activity. Santiaguito is a lava dome complex that has been growing non-stop since 1922; an exceptionally long eruption for any kind of volcano. It is forming inside a crater created during a massive VEI 6 eruption of the Santa Maria volcano in 1902. The dome eruption has been accompanied by regular vulcanian explosions, lava flows, pyroclastic flows, and lahars. In ...

It's now been a year since I started my PhD here at the University of Liverpool. To commemorate the occasion, I thought it would be great to list some interesting numbers related to all the things I have managed to do in that time. Here goes: Published 1 paper based on the work I did for my masters thesis at the University of Oxford. I'm delighted to finally have it published and very thankful for Tamsin Mather, David Pyle, Nick Varley, Patrick Smith and Emma Liu for all their help!  Attended 3 conferences: VMSG in Edinburgh in January, EGU in Vienna in April, and BGA right here in the University of Liverpool. Attended no less than   6   workshops: the workshops covered a wide range of topics (e.g. environmental geophysics, volcano deformation, magma, glasses and melts) and took me across Europe (e.g. Lake District, Iceland and Munich).  Started this very blog in April, and this is post number  6 . I have no plans to stop any time soon! Visited 7  ...

Last week I flew to Munich to join 29 other students to take part in the Magma, Glasses and Melts short course. The course is about the behaviour of magmas under certain conditions and what implications this has for volcanic activity. You also get the chance to see laboratories which replicate the conditions inside volcanoes and have helped produce the research taught in the course. It has been run annually for over a decade by the volcanology group which is headed by Prof. Don Dingwell. Don has been at the forefront of this research area for over 25 years so there is no one more suitable for teaching the course. An explosion at Volcan de Colima earlier this year. Was this explosion started by fracturing bubbles?  The purpose of the course is to teach about the peculiar properties of magma as it squeezes and stretches on its way up to the surface. Small changes in temperature, pressure and chemistry can have a dramatic effect on the viscosity of the magma. Viscosity is a...

Volcan de Colima, looking north-west, with the active lava dome on the summit and Volcancito on the east flank (taken 3rd June 2014). Since my last blog post  I have been lucky enough to head out to Colima, Mexico, for fieldwork. The state boasts long pacific beaches, beautiful river gorges, friendly locals, delicious food, and one very big, very active volcano. Volcan de Colima has been erupting near-continuously since 1998 and is one of the volcanoes that I am investigating as part of my project (see my introduction to the volcanoes ). On a clear day, its hard to not notice the volcano which completely dominates the generally low-lying landscape around it; this is nicely shown by this photo  taken from the ISS last year. The latest phase of it's eruption has been going since January 2013, and is producing a new lava dome accompanied by many small pyroclastic flows, rockfalls, and explosions (over 4000 in total as of the start of May 2014). The lava dome at th...

Last week, I was fortunate enough to attend the European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2014 which was held in the beautiful city of Vienna, Austria. For those of you who are not entirely familiar with the meeting, it is one of the biggest annual gathering of geoscientists in Europe. These scientists come together every year to discuss the latest research in their respective fields, which includes everything from the understanding the dynamics of the core, to behaviour of the Earth's atmosphere, and beyond. How big is it you may ask? It's big, really big. Over the course of 5 days, 568 sessions were attended by 12,437 researchers from 106 countries, 4892 presentations were watched, 9538 posters were scrutinised, and 483 PICO s were played with on giant touchscreens. Of course, this pales in comparison with the annual American Geosciences Union Fall meeting which clocked in over 22,000 attendees last December. However, considering the fact the largest conference I had been ...

For my first proper post on this blog, I thought I should follow up the post about my research  with some short introductions to the volcanoes that I'm studying. These volcanoes are: Volcán de Colima, Mt St Helens, Santiaguito, and Mt Unzen. Why have I chosen these volcanoes? One simple reason really, all of them have produced or are currently producing lava domes within the past 20 years. Instead of focusing on just one volcano or one eruption, I can compare and contrast my findings from multiple sources and hopefully gain a better understanding of the processes I'm looking at. Volcán de Colima View of Volcán de Colima from the north-west in August 2012. The large lava flow in the foreground was formed in 2004.  Volcán de Colima, located in mid-western Mexico is the most active volcano in North America and it is one of two volcanoes on this list that is erupting today. It has been erupting almost continuously since 1998, with the exception of an 18-month hiatus fr...

After the warm enthusiasm I received from my guest blog post a few weeks ago, I couldn't shake the feeling that maybe I should write my own blog. So here it is. Over the next few weeks, months or maybe even years I'll be writing about volcano-related topics, my experiences and thoughts as I work through my PhD, as well as any other interesting topics. This is going to be a very steep learning curve for me, so I hope you enjoy reading this blog as it evolves. Thanks! The author on the south flank of Volcàn de Colima, July 2012