Seeing Volcanoes in a New Light

V OLCANOLOGY

been hauled in too had he not been on Nyi- National University of Rwanda and once could help rebuild his country. “Maybe I’ll ragongo at the time. The others are now free, Rwanda’s only volcanologist, lost 12 fami- go back some day,” he says.

ECTION nursing injuries. But visiting volcanologist ly members in the 1994 genocide, and if he Aka Tongwa is not going anywhere. Yes, S Jean-Christophe Komorowski of IPGP says had not been working in Nepal at the time, life would be easier with a phone or even just that armed men visit the observatory every he probably would be dead too. His wife a rock crusher—luxuries within reach if only few days demanding donations to buy beer. and two children survived, and he bribed a he would emigrate. “I want to work at home, Grimmer threats aren’t far away: In the chaot- diplomat to get them out. Now Rwanda— where I can serve my country,” he says. “I was PECIAL ic countryside beyond Goma, the U.N. has vulnerable to the Congo volcanoes along born here. In New York or Tokyo, I can make S confirmed reports of mass executions, rapes, its border, and having five of its own—has a lot of money. But at home, the negatives I and torture. Kasereka’s new house is filled no volcanologist. Katabarwa is a consultant see, I can help to improve.” with relatives who have fled the violence. in Sherbrooke, Quebec, currently working –KEVIN KRAJICK All this is too much for some. Jean- on a technique for turning volcanic ash in- Kevin Krajick is the author of Barren Lands: An Epic Baptiste Katabarwa, a former dean at the to cheap, strong bricks, a resource that Search for Diamonds in the North American Arctic.

NEWS Seeing Volcanoes in a New Light

Two new software packages merge data ranging from seismic patterns to testing ground. Although it has not had a ma- escaping gases into a unified view of a volcano’s behavior; the hope is that jor eruption in 20,000 years, several small this bigger picture will improve eruption predictions hydrothermal blasts from the central crater in the 19th century, and a spate of earthquakes CAMBRIDGE,U.K.—For scientists at the Greek island of Nisyros in the southeastern underneath the island between 1996 and Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO), the Aegean Sea as a natural laboratory to devel- 1998, suggest that the volcano may be slow- spectacle of lava gushing from Mount Ki- op a software package called Geowarn. ly emerging from hibernation. lauea in late January—a major eruption in Much like VALVE, Geowarn unifies various Over the past 2 years, the Geowarn team which the summit throbbed like a pair of monitoring data in a common time frame. has been using state-of-the-art monitoring lungs inflating and deflating—was a famil- But Geowarn goes a step further, presenting equipment to scrutinize Nisyros from every iar thrill, yet one experienced from a totally them in a three-dimensional map of the vol- possible angle. Global Positioning Systems new vantage point. The re- and satellite radar interferometry—a searchers had watched this con- new technique that clocks the travel stantly active volcano go full time of microwave signals beamed throttle dozens of times in recent from a satellite—have measured years, but the latest flare-up was ground deformations on the island the first in which a new monitor- on the order of a few millimeters, ing system merged data on Ki- from which scientists can infer alter- lauea’s land heaves, gas emis- ations in the magma chamber that sions, and seismic rumblings into feeds Nisyros. They glean informa- a single picture, in real time. “It tion on the magma’s behavior from made the observation much more the composition of gases wafting dynamic,” says Donald Swanson, from the mountain, the temperature scientist-in-charge at HVO. and electrical conductivity of the is- “People were gathering around land’s hot springs, and the pattern of monitors and watching things seismic activity beneath the volcano. happening, and that created a The data suggest that during the lat- sense of excitement.” est tremblings, magma welled up but HVO is the first observatory is now shedding heat, so Nisyros is in the world to have wrapped all unlikely to erupt any time soon. these kinds of monitoring data to- Many observatories gather these gether onto one computer screen, sorts of data, but what is about to in real time. The rationale behind change is the way the data are ana- the newly developed Volcano Seeing with new eyes. Geowarn software depicts, in 3D, CO2 rising lyzed. At many places, the routine is Analysis and Visualization Envi- from a modified satellite picture of the Nisyros volcano. Peak sizes in- for various experts to sit around a ronment (VALVE) is for scien- dicate CO2 volume, and colors indicate temperature variations. table with printouts of their data and tists to “come up with a kind of discuss what it all means. “That sort unified understanding of what’s going on,” cano that dominates the tiny island. of works. But it isn’t anywhere near as clever says Peter Cervelli, a geophysicist at HVO. Geowarn is meant to serve as an early as it could be,” says Christopher Newhall, a That is an idea that volcano observatories warning system to catch the first signs of un- volcanologist at the University of Washing- around the world are starting to pick up on. rest. “We try to grasp a volcanic system in its ton, Seattle. Another major attempt to compile monitor- entirety before it reawakens and threatens to In contrast, “Geowarn brings data togeth- ing data into a bigger picture is now under erupt,” says Volker Dietrich, a volcanologist er in a unique way,” says Lorenz Hurni, head way in Europe. Scientists from Germany, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of the Institute of Cartography at the Swiss

Greece, Italy, and Switzerland are using the in Zurich. In this sense, Nisyros is an ideal Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. CREDIT: ZURICH INSTITUTE OF CARTOGRAPHY/ETH

2026 28 MARCH 2003 VOL 299 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org V OLCANOLOGY S PECIAL to create a template that standing on a fuming mountain must have “a monitoring data can be gut feeling for how the activity is going,” fed into and displayed. says geophysicist Paul Segall of Stanford

Experts find the approach University—something that today’s comput- S

intriguing. The system, ers, at least, cannot possibly register. ECTION says Newhall, gives “an Volcanologists hope that Geowarn or unusually good integra- VA LVE will help them refine their predic- tion of different kinds of tions of when a mountain might erupt, but data and an ability to look they would be even more pleased if the new at them together in space systems could aid in getting the message out and time.” Moreover, Ge- to the public. “You could be scientifically su- owarn and VALVE, both perb at predicting something, but unless you of which could be adapted can communicate that to the people who to use on any volcano, might be affected, it doesn’t do any good,” promise to fundamentally says David Hill, scientist-in-charge at the alter how scientists who Long Valley Observatory in Menlo Park, Cal- Show time. Thanks to VALVE, scientists were able to observe various study volcanoes interact, ifornia. Geowarn’s backers say that scientists facets of Kilauea’s latest flare-up in a single picture. says William Rose, a vol- outlining hazard zones to elected officials and canologist at Michigan the public will be able to do so more effec- Hurni and his colleagues are the architects of Technological University, Houghton. “We tively with three-dimensional, interactive Geowarn’s visualization software. His team are all specialists trapped in disciplinary maps. Newhall agrees: “This is absolutely the has combined digital three-dimensional holes unless we … put our observations to- way to go.” Indeed, plans are already afoot to maps with the powerful data-processing gether,” he says. hook up other volcanoes: VALVE at Long tools of Geographic Information Systems One caveat, of course, is that the new sys- Valley, and Geowarn at Vesuvius. used by surveyors and other field specialists tems are blind to instinct. Volcanologists –DANIEL BACHTOLD

NEWS Bracing for the Big One on Montserrat

The Soufrière Hills volcano destroyed the capital and much of the rest of this ed to be the most precise readings yet of the island’s southern half in the mid-1990s, and it may not be done yet: Its mountain’s inner stirrings. massive and still-growing lava dome has begun to threaten communities in “We’re hoping to get a feel for what’s hap- the north, raising the stakes for the scientists who are keeping watch pening deep in the system,” says Voight, who is from Pennsylvania State University, Uni- MONTSERRAT—Some of the hottest pop could collapse at any time, in any direction. versity Park. “This volcano is a unique natural songs of the 1980s came to life here, in a Today, the volcano is calm, a taupe ash laboratory.” The mountain’s often enigmatic pale beige ranch-style house perched on a cloud drifting lazily out to sea. The re- convulsions have been a boon to modelers, bluff. Elton John, Paul McCartney, and searchers have just about finished installing who are starting to put together a coherent Stevie Wonder, among others, made the two devices—a meter-long steel-sheathed picture of the relation between magma move- pilgrimage to this recording studio on the seismometer that resembles an artillery rock- ments and the varying seismic signals they “Emerald Isle” of the Caribbean. Perhaps et and a smaller, more cylindrical tiltmeter— trigger. “The models are starting to give us they drew inspiration from the shimmering near the bottom of the borehole, one of four some power to explain the phenomena we’ve turquoise waters, or maybe their muse was drilled around the volcano. The sensors sit seen in this eruption”—insights that can be the mountain looming in the southeast: the atop a strainmeter so Soufrière Hills volcano. sensitive that it can de-

The vista is as entrancing as ever, long af- tect motions in the rock HAITI DOMINICAN VIRGIN ISLANDS REPUBLIC (U.S. & U.K.) ter the music died. AIR Studios, part of the of the dimensions of an ANGUILLA vast Montserrat estate of Beatles producer atom. The recordings from these instruments PUERTO RICO BARBUDA George Martin, sits abandoned on a swath of ST. KITTS AND NEVIS land evacuated by authorities last October. may not rival the sounds ANTIGUA The only sounds on a sunny afternoon last that once filled AIR Stu- GUADELOUPE month were the sloshing of a cement mixer dios, but they will be MONTSERRAT DOMINICA

and the banter of volcanologist Barry Voight music to the ears of sci- MARTINIQUE and his colleagues as they yanked yard after entists: They are expect- ST. LUCIA yard of plastic piping, conduit for the fresh ce- ST. VINCENT AND THE ment, from a borehole near the studio. If a Exclusion Zone BARBADOS Hot zone. Growth of the GRENADINES siren had blared, Voight’s team members lava dome toward the Volcano GRENADA would have dropped what they were doing north forced the island’s and hauled out of the exclusion zone as fast as governor last October to Maritime Exclusion Zone TOBAGO Approx 4 km they could have: The lava dome of Soufrière evacuate another swath of TRINIDAD Hills is bigger than ever since the volcano Montserrat’s dwindling in-

CREDIT: USGS (TOP) roared back to life in the mid-1990s, and it habitable territory.