VolcanicDegassing

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The fate of volcanic ash in the environment

December 4, 2014
The fate of volcanic ash in the environment
Cartoon from Bertrand et al. (2014) showing the fate of pumice and ash from the 2011 eruptions of Puyehue - Cordon Caulle, Chile

Over the past few years, we have been working to piece together the record of major post-glacial volcanic eruptions in southern Chile that have occurred over the past 18,000 years. This work started off with a search for volcanic ash layers that were preserved in road cuttings, or cliff faces other accessible geological locations in the region. Since then it has expanded to include the search for ...[Read More]

Doctoral Training in Environmental Research in the UK

November 12, 2014

It is now a year since the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) announced the results of its first competition for ‘Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTP)’, and just a few weeks since each of the 15 funded DTPs welcomed their first cohorts of doctoral students. In this time, the training landscape for PhD (or DPhil) students across the environmental sciences has changed radically. ...[Read More]

William Dampier and the Burning Islands of Melanesia

November 11, 2014
William Dampier and the Burning Islands of Melanesia
Ritter volcano, New Guinea, 1700.

A tweet from Jenni Barclay about a Pirate Scientist gave me an excuse to visit the newly opened reading rooms in the Bodleian’s Weston Library.. William Dampier was a seventeenth century pirate, and later maritime adventurer, whose several books of ‘Voyages and Discoveries’ make for fascinating reading. In 1699, he set sail in HMS Roebuck to try and find Terra Australis, a mythic ...[Read More]

Volcano Top Trumps: the Online Game

October 9, 2014

After some months of testing and refining, a free-t0-use online version of Volcanoes Top Trumps has been launched by Winning Moves. This should greatly extend the reach of Volcanoes Top Trumps – which is a fun and educational game about volcanoes that has spun off from the NERC – ESRC funded project ‘STREVA‘ – Strengthening Resilience in Volcanic Areas. Why not play t ...[Read More]

There’s (volcanic) dust in the archives

August 14, 2014
There’s (volcanic) dust in the archives
Volcanic ash samples collected on Barbados, deposited after eruptions of St Vincent in 1812 (small vial) and 1902. British Geological Survey Archives.

There’s not much that beats the thrill of discovery.. particularly when it turns up in your own backyard.  This summer, I have been on the hunt for records and reports of the 1902 eruptions of St Vincent, a lush volcanic island in the Eastern Caribbean. There are indeed many reports from this eruption, carefully documented in official records from the time. But, more surprisingly, there are ...[Read More]

Summer Reading – H is for Hawk

August 11, 2014

Much of my time is consumed with reading, but it is almost always for a purpose: essays, assignments, proposals, drafts of papers, re-drafts of papers, papers for classes, for review..  This almost always means reading fast, with a goal: to measure, assess, hone, distil, critique and rewrite.  Often, it means hacking through tangled and cumbersome layers of scientific prose, to reveal the central  ...[Read More]

Friday Field Photo – St Vincent, 1902

May 30, 2014

Today’s field photo is by Tempest Anderson, of the ‘Roseau Dry River flowing with Boiling Mud’, a picture taken in the aftermath of the May 1902 eruptions of the Soufrière of St Vincent.  The full published caption explains the origins of this boiling mud – a phenomenon we now call a lahar: ‘This is a small stream in the Wallibu Basin. When the water undermines the ba ...[Read More]