Slashdot Mirror
Volcano Cowboys
Volcano Cowboys: The Rocky Evolution of a Dangerous Science begins a year before the 1980 eruption of Washington's Mount St. Helens volcano, and attempts to chronicle major developments in the field of eruption prediction over the next decade. This is done in an engaging manner, aimed toward the general reader. Thompson's many years of experience as a science writer for Time prepared him well for the writing of his first book. In the introduction he writes, "This is a book about how science operates. It is the story of how one scientific goal, the prediction of explosive eruptions, evolved during its most intense and productive periods, from the eruptions of Mount St. Helen to the cataclysm of Mount Pinatubo."
The book is divided into three parts. The first part covers the most well-known eruption of recent times in the U.S. -- the May 18, 1980, eruption of Mount St. Helens. The second portion covers the almost ten years from Mount St. Helens' main event to the explosive eruptions of Mount Pinatubo in the Phillipines, and the final part covers the response to activity at Mount Pinatubo in 1991.
The May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens did not catch volcanologists entirely by surprise. In 1978, two geologists working for the United States Geological Survey, Dwight "Rocky" Crandall and Donal Mullineaux, published a report calling St. Helens "an especially dangerous volcano." After an initial flurry of panic by Washington state residents, not much was done to prepare for an eruption.
On March 20, 1980, a magnitude 4.2 earthquake was detected near Mount St. Helens. Originally, the scientists at the University of Washington who ran the seismic network felt the quake was associated with Mt. Hood, a volcano to the south of St. Helens. Arrival times were punched onto cards and run through the computer, revealing a surprise -- the event had originated directly under Mount St. Helens. The next day, UW scientists installed several seismographs on the restless volcano, which had previously been unmonitored. On Monday, March 24, Steve Malone, a seismologist at UW, contacted the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver.
Soon scientists from various branches of the USGS began to arrive in Washington to help monitor the eruption, but there was little precedent or organization, and tensions quickly rose. Thompson covers the details of the difficulties of coordinating a response to an eruption in a populated area with multiple agencies holding jurisdiction.
In part two of the book, Thompson covers developments in volcanology and eruption prediction between the May 18 Mount St. Helens eruption and the buildup of activity at Mount Pinatubo in the Phillipines. This section of the book is short, but important, since part three, which covers the response to the 1991 eruption of Pinatubo, is largly presented in contrast to the 1980 St. Helens response and thus relies on both preceding sections.
Part three, the response to the 1991 Pinatubo eruption, focuses on the team of "trained decision makers" that had evolved from events of the past. Many scientists involved in the 1980 St. Helens response were also involved in the 1991 Pinatubo response. Advances in technology were essential to the Pinatubo response as well. Some of Thompson's finest writing is in the final section of the book, where he allows more of the personal character of some scientists to shine through (and what volcanologists lack in common sense they often make up for in character.)
Overall, the book is an enjoyable one. I found a few small flaws -- a few sentences that must have slipped past a tired editor, a few incorrect details that I spotted only because I've worked with some of the people mentioned in the book. Having spent entirely too much time in my academic career thinking about volcanoes, particularly Mount St. Helens and Pinatubo, I am probably biased by my background into rating it slightly lower than it deserves.
There is plenty within its pages to fascinate all sorts of geeks. Aside from the obvious appeal of explosions and hot molten magma, there is some discussion of the hardware requirements for volcano monitoring -- can your Linux box withstand a pyroclastic flow? What sort of monitoring software can be designed to run on the only computer in a small Central American town on the flanks of a volcano? Food for thought ...
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I: Mount St. Helens, 1980
1. Hoblitt's Floating Island, Summer 1979
2. Disbelief
3. The Musketeers
4. The Bulge
Field Notes: May 17, 1980/Mindy Brugman
5. Swanson
Field Notes: May 18, 1980/The St. Helens Observers
Part II: The Learning Season, 1980-1989
Field Notes: August 1980/The FPP Experiment
6. The Volcano Lab: St. Helens After the Blast
7. Mammoth Lakes: Between a Rock and a Hard Place
8. The Volcano Zoo
9. After Armero
Field Notes: December 15, 1989/Redoubt, Alaska
Part III: Mount Pinatubo, 1991
10. Trained Decision Makers
11. They'll Think You're a Hero
12. Eruption
Field Notes: August 1991/Bezymianny
Notes
Glossary
Acknowledgements
Index
It's a joke.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
Kilauea is where they train new vulcanologists. It's dangerous, but safe enough for grad students that have signed liability limiting contracts with their schools. Sheild volcanos are at least somewhat predictable. Stratovolcanos are way too dangerous. Something like 4 scientists are lost every year to S.V.'s.
As for which to study... They study the ones that kill people, destroy property, and alter climates on a global scale. When was the last time you heard someone mention that kilauea's eruption was going to depress global tempuratures by 2 degrees for the next couple years? Sure it destroys people's houses, roads, churches, etc... But nothing compared to the effects of say Mt. Pinatubo's 1991 eruption.
Kilauea is pretty.... But boring.
Temkin (BS Geology)
Here in Hawaii, we just found 2 people toasted on a lava field. I guess no one reads the warning signs.
You mean you'll put down your rock, and I'll put down my sword and we'll try and kill each other like civilized peo
all the messages are being posted in the previous topic.
1700+ messages as of now.. woah..
when the rain comes, they run and hide their heads. they might as well be dead.
you don't often hear the words cowboy and volcano in the same sentence. at least, not where I come from.
The anti-salmon
Looks like we could get some insight into this intriguing thing called Volcano, but where is the time and the energy required? It would be much better if someone did a tv program based on the book. Not to mention though that Discovery channel and likes would be already having scores of such programmes.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
The UK TV channel 'Channel 4' showed a two-part documentary about volcanoes last month (called 'Volcano', funnily enough ;):
7 45
0 06
http://www.channel4.com/guide/listings.cfm?id=856
http://www.channel4.com/guide/listings.cfm?id=857
It featured some absolutely amazing footage of volcanic eruptions, and the foolhardy vulcanologists who were getting as close a possible - not something I would like to do, what with rocks the size of cars being flung into the air, choking pyroclastic clouds, the burning pyroclastic flows and lahars (volcanic mud-slides)...
I've now added seeing a volcanic eruption to the list of things I want to do in my life - apparently Mount Etna in Sicily is currently pretty active and erupts at least once a month!
[Happosai]
I'm sorry, but you're dead wrong. For a number of reasons, too. One: bouillabaisse is a faggot french fuck-shit soup, and being non-US it cannot be eligible for any public office. Two: Since bouillabaisse is from that shithole of a faggot cuntry france, it is obviously weak and prone to running away. Therefore it couldn't take over anything, let alone a rather large and mean-tempered state like Florida. Now, since your claim is obviously totally false, I suggest you take your precious bowl of bouillabaisse and jump right in the nearest volcano! (This last bit to bring this back OT).
Why is this on Slashdot? This has absolutely nothing to do with the election!
(attn moderators on crack: This is meant to be a joke)
I'd be interested to know if the book mentions Kilauea and Hawai'i Volcano National Park at all, since Kilauea is still active and has been in an eruption cycle for a long-ass time. I mean, sure, stuff blowing up is interesting, but I would think that it would be just as interesting to hear about studies being done on non-explosive volcanoes.
They also discussed deaths of researchers caught too close to the scene.
----
an earthquake jockey.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Some of us are quite happy with our LCD's, thank you very much.
Nerd Rock In Progress
"If you drop your laptop into a river of molten lava, forget it, because, man, it's gone!"
--
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
The romance of geological field work in remote and exciting places is pretty much history save for a few lucky geologists. Most geology is now these days. Much volcanology is done with seismic sensors or radar topographic maps that done in front of a CRT. Geoscientists put sensors out in orbit or on ships, collect and analyze as much data as current computer systems allow- about five terabytes for a typical oil prospect. VOlcanoes are monitored with seismic sensors and very sensitive satellite radar topographic maps.
I got my start in tech-land many years ago on a VAX 11-780 trying to create models of soil-slump and mudslides. I then had to alter those models to try to predict pyroclastic (volcanic mud)flows. Since this was during the oil bust of the mid-80's, and geologists without a PhD were earning squat, I became a tech.
Every nerd career involves working with a computer, even if it's just checking email to see what the latest response is to your paper. Geologists are lucky enough to be paid to do much of their work outdoors, but we still can't do squat without adequate models. (Models!=legos, although I have done some great examples of flows with maple syrup.)
Modeling is all about the numbers, and the better your box, and your model, the better your prediction. Fieldwork may be measured in cases of beer, but time out of the field uses the same tool everyone else uses. BTW, Linux World had a great article a couple of months back on visual modeling of meteorological datapoints. Can't find the reference.
And risk losing my laptop in a melting horror?! I think not!
Quid rides ignare?
Just my experiences...
At 13, YMCA camp at Spirit Lake (right under the north side) - the mountain loomed up there all the time, so close it felt like one could almost reach out over that deep blue lake and touch it. Hiked up the east shoulder to the Plains of Abraham (a pumice desert) and Apes Canyon (named for a pair of real apes that escaped from a circus-train wreck in the 1920s). Hiked up Norway Pass above the east end of Spirit Lake - beautiful forest (but lots of salal and salmonberry brush up there, too).
Late teens, climbed St. Helens twice (led the second time for my climbing club). Both climbs were up the Dogs Head route, on the north side (right over the chunk blown out by the later eruption). A 30-degree slope might not sound too steep, but it certainly _feels_ steep when you're facing straight uphill with your ankles straining to keep several crampon-points engaged in the ice and it's several thousand feet both up and _down_, behind you. You only do this three to four to a rope, with ice-axes to arrest a fall, and start before dawn so you're well up the hill before the sun starts softening the slope. With 10-20 people in a party, you'd make the summit by about noon, hang out for awhile eating lunch, etc., then descend in spectacular long glissades. From the top on a clear day you could see all the way from the Three Sisters, Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Hood, and Mt. Adams to the south, to Mt. Ranier, Mt. Baker, and Mt. Stuart to the North, plus a hundred smaller peaks in between and beyond. Cold, but exhilarating.
Explored a lava tube on the south side once, too. That's still there, I'm sure. Then there was the eruption. Didn't feel it, living in Portland at the time, but could see the ash cloud from my front lawn and went up the Columbia Gorge that Sunday afternoon to watch. Simply awesome - grey ash cloud, lighting in it, towering to 40,000 feet. The ash cloud mostly blew east, piling two or three feet on some areas of southeast Washington, but some ash hit Portland, a nuisance to clean off cars and out of rain gutters.
A few years later, flew over the crater in a friend's light plane, the cinder dome in the center of crater still smoking and growing, Spirit Lake filled-in, thousands of square miles north of the mountain devastated, just bare hills covered by blown-down forests, all the trees pointing north....
This is a perfect job for a geologist with culinary aspirations. Rockhounds can add to the body of scientific knowledge about volcanism and cook up tasty BBQ meals at the same time!
Simply hang meat seasoned to taste at precisely measured distances from lava flow. Within minutes, you can have tender, wholsome meals on the job. And talk about easy baked potatoes? Bury them in volacnic ash [don't forget to wear your asbestos gloves!] and Voila! Baked spuds.
I just wanted to know if the book offered any recipes along these lines for amature Volcano-heads like me.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.