I’m quite aware that at this point I owe more than a few posts to this site in order to make good on some of the promises I’ve made at the outset of past expeditions. I’ll be attempting to do some housekeeping in that regard and post pictures from the Cascades, Hawai`i 2.0, and Peru. That’s not the real reason I’m here again, however.

I’ve now progressed from nascent volcanology freak to certifiably insane volcanophile. It’s certifiable by virtue of the fact that I’m now 4 months into a PhD in Volcanology/Tectonics at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. Yes, Brisbane is not exactly a hotbed of volcanic activity these days. Yes, Australia is pretty far from Hawai`i (and North America, if you’re keeping track of those things). Yes, PhDs require a few years and a few pounds of flesh (so I’m told).

They enticed me Down Under with a few fabulous points of note. Namely, I’m now investigating the role of prehistoric volcanoes in the rifting of continents. Which continent? Which rift? Which volcanoes? Allow me to illustrate.

That’s Mexico as seen by NASA satellites, and the greenish blobs in the red circle are the volcanoes that make up the Sierra Madre Occidental. The quick and dirty on that mountain range is that it’s massive and not very well studied. Just by looking at that nifty image (thanks, MS Paint!) you may have pieced together the fact that the North American continent was at one time much more, well, pieced together. When that was the case there was no Gulf of California. I’ll get into explaining the science more the next time I post.

What all of this means is that I’ll be bouncing between Australia and Mexico for the next 2.5 years, writing science-y stuff for publication (hopefully), and attempting to explain various aspects of life as an American Expat PhD-seeking Volcanologist in Australia. I’ve just finished my first field season in Mexico (2 months in Sinaloa with brief forays to Durango and Queretaro) and I have plenty of science chambered and ready for the ol’ internets to read. Also, I have a feeling there will be occasional discussion of how weird it is to drive on the opposite side of the road.

Just remember, volcanologists do it hotter.

Since I last posted, I managed to successfully finish my thesis, an absolutely riveting piece of research entitled Lava Flow Morphologies and Structural Features Along the Axis of the South Rift Zone of Loihi Seamount, Hawai`i. Say that five times fast. In all seriousness, it was a very interesting project and I couldn’t have done it without the help and guidance of Dr. Mark Kurz and Dr. Dan Fornari of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. I also received critical assistance from Dr. Kim Bishop and Dr. Pedro Ramirez of California State University, Los Angeles, and timely and essential help from Luis Carlos Pelaez and Greg Kurras. Thanks so much to all of you! As a result of our combined efforts, I am now officially the holder of a Master of Science in Geology. As a super nifty side note, my degree was signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. California is indeed awesome.

So, what does a volcanologist-errant do after the glory of the thesis is behind her? Well, if she has a brilliant scientist friend, she’ll be offered a spot on a research expedition to Peru. Since I’m friends with the inimitable Dr. Joe Licciardi of the University of New Hampshire, that very situation is coming to pass! Joe received funding from National Geographic for his work on Peruvian glacier fluctuations and their relationship to the European Little Ice Age, and then was kind enough to invite me along to help collect samples this time around.

That means that tomorrow morning at 7:45, I’ll be boarding a TACA airlines flight to Cusco, Peru.

My travel time is about 21 hours, and I’ll be spending a night in Lima before I arrive. Joe is getting there a few hours after I do, and then we’re spending a few days in Cusco before we head into the Cordillera Vilcabamba for nearly two weeks of sampling!

I’ll be updating this when I’m in Cusco before the expedition starts, and then again after I return. We’ll hopefully even have time to squeeze in a visit to Machu Picchu!

To summarize, I know this isn’t volcano work, but I think that the same kind of people who were interested in my previous doings may find this latest batch of geology work enjoyable. Here’s to another great summer, and I’ll leave you with a sample of where we’ll be camping from one of Joe’s previous trips. The tents in there are for scale, of course!

Photo by Joe Licciardi

Our group was assembled to perform calibration work for the CRONUS-Earth Project using Mauna Loa lava flows. CRONUS is an international effort by geoscientists to use cosmogenic isotopes in dating many types of geologic features around the world. You may be scratching your head and wondering what the heck a cosmogenic isotope is, so I’ll give you the short version. The sun continually bombards the Earth with cosmic rays, and when some of these rays strike the ground they interact with certain elements contained in the rock. These interactions cause the elements to change into a slightly different version of themselves known as an isotope. You may be familiar with the concept of Carbon-14 dating, where scientists employ analysis of an isotope of carbon in order to date how old something is. CRONUS uses similar concepts but with rocks instead of carbon-based samples.

We are here in Hawai`i as part of an effort to determine just how accurate cosmogenic isotope dating methods can be. We are sampling lava from flows that we already know the ages of, whether through Carbon-14 dating of burned plant material (charcoal) or from historical accounts. The samples will be sent to laboratories for analysis, and we’ll be able to clearly see how accurate this dating method is. The benefit of cosmogenic isotope dating is that we are not limited as severely as we are with Carbon-14, and much older ages may be obtained. Basically, I’m hanging out with a bunch of geochemists who are into travelling the world and ascertaining the ages of various geologic features such as lava flows and landslides. It’s all in the name of science!

Ok, so that’s the detailed stuff. Let’s move on to the part you’ve all been waiting for: pictures!

In this photo Mark, Brent, and Shasta are debating the merits of sampling from this particular lava ball. They’re standing on a roughly 900 year old Mauna Loa a`a lava flow. Site selection is key to our undertaking, as anything that could shield the rocks from the cosmic rays will throw off the dating technique. Also, the surface that is selected for sampling has to be the rock’s original surface. Erosion wears rocks down, and that type of material loss would make the rock appear younger than it actually is since the sun’s rays would have bombarded the eroded surface for less time. Scientists also like to use site selection as a means to argue amongst themselves. (No scientists were harmed in the making of that joke, FYI.) In the foreground of the picture you’ll find a 6lb sledgehammer, which can be used for sample collection or warding off greedy competing scientists. In the back right of the picture you can see Kilauea’s summit plume, which repeat readers may remember from last year. The summit eruption is indeed still going, in case anyone was wondering.

Hurricane Felicia never materialized by HVO, but the typical tradewinds were affected enough to cause the plume to blow in the direction opposite its normal route. Seeing the plume is like having a giant (and intensely awesome) welcome mat rolled out in greeting. The vent has increased substantially in size since I left HVO last September, and it now spans approximately 130 meters. To put it in perspective, that’s larger than a football field. Amazing.

I’m about to fall asleep while typing, so this’ll conclude tonight’s post. Tune in tomorrow for sampling fun on the beach, the reappearance of the most awesome truck ever, and a very handy use of fisheye photography!

P.S. – It’s great to be back!

Lassen Peak: Our visit included stops at active fumaroles and boiling mudpots as well as a hike to the 10,462-foot summit. Lassen is the southernmost active Cascade Volcano, and is located in northern California. We made use of the Lost Creek campsite, and here’s a non-geologic point of interest: we saw a bear! That may not be very exciting to some of you, but when you consider that the most exotic animals I typically see in L.A. are errant housecats, I bet you’ll understand the novelty.

Crater Lake: This area is the remnant of a much larger prehistoric stratovolcano known as Mount Mazama. Its last eruption created its present distinctive geologic appearance, and rain and snowmelt are responsible for its vibrantly blue waters. The lake is too interesting to encapsulate without accompanying photos, so I’ll wait to elaborate on its features until I post some images.

Lava Butte: This tourist-friendly cinder cone situated in the northwest rift zone of Newberry Volcano is an easy way to introduce people to the effects of volcanism on the landscape. The complex it is part of is very interesting, and the cinder cone’s a`a lava flows reminded me entirely too much of my vaunted Ainapo Trail hike from last summer’s Hawaiian adventures. The major differences are that during this encounter with a`a I was not carrying ~60lbs of equipment and the hike only lasted 15 minutes!

Mt. Rainier: I have to say unequivocally that the Mt. Rainier hike was my favorite time on the trip. Those 5 miles were some of the most ethereal and memorable I’ve covered in my life, and the rapidly changing weather cycled through the vagaries of all four seasons in the span of a few hours. The heavily-glaciated and snow-capped summit of Rainier was wrapped in wispy clouds, and the resulting vision is not one I will soon forget. At any rate, this volcano will definitely receive more discussion.

Mt. St. Helens: For some people, a hike to the summit of Mt. St. Helens would be the high point of such a trip. Unfortunately, I was unable to complete the hike due to a flare-up of my kidney stone pain. My sudden illness that first manifested on the Waikupanaha flow fields last year was eventually diagnosed as a kidney stone. As I did not have insurance at the time of diagnosis, I’ve been unable to afford the removal procedure. What this means for purposes of this site is that I didn’t make it all the way up St. Helens. 75% of the way just doesn’t cut it, but for once in my life I actually turned back when my physical health demanded it. Anyway, I’ll make certain to discuss the St. Helens experience in greater detail when I post the pictures.

So, there you have the trip’s highlights in brief! Rest assured that the full discussions will be replete with the usual science and commentary that you’ve come to expect from VolcanoSummer. See you in a few days!

On Monday (June 15th), I’m heading north to the volcanoes of the Cascade Range in California, Oregon, and Washington. It’s the culmination of a volcanology course I took this spring, and it should be a blast. Since I won’t have internet access while camping my way across these excellent volcanoes, I set up a VolcanoSummer Twitter account to keep the updates coming. If you want to follow my escapades directly on Twitter, the URL is twitter.com/volcanosummer.

So, what will I be doing up there? The answer is mostly just taking in the scenery and exploring some of the world’s most beautiful stratovolcanoes. Along the way I’ll be visiting Lassen Peak, Mount Shasta, Lava Beds National Monument/Medicine Lake Volcano, Crater Lake, Newberry, the Three Sisters, Mount Jefferson, Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, and of course, Mount St. Helens. Unfortunately, Mount Rainier isn’t on the agenda, but that just means I’ll have to go back! Also, I’ll be hiking up Mt. St. Helens and providing you, my excellent readers, with pictures and some awesome scientific facts about the whole ordeal. Huzzah!

Ok, so now you might be wondering what will happen after this Cascades trip concludes. Well, I have a few potential research opportunities in the works, including a return trip to Hawai`i. Regardless, I will also be working on my thesis. I know, I know. You’re thinking that thesis work could be monumentally boring to read about. Fear not! My thesis is creating a map of the rift zone of the Loihi Seamount, the undersea volcano I helped research last October. I’ll be travelling to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Massachusetts to work on creating the map. Time permitting, I’ll also be performing geochemical analyses on some of the rocks we collected last year. I’ll be sure to finally post those pics I took on the research cruise, too!

At any rate, the updates from the Cascade trip will be brief (thanks for the 140 characters, Twitter) but pithy. I’ll throw in phone camera pics for good measure, and I’ll upload the real pictures upon my return. Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know I’m back in business stalking volcanoes around the world! Welcome back, everyone.

(I will begin practicing my pirate-talk ASAP.) AHOY!

My amazing boss then put in a good word for me with the scientist, and after an interview and much airline and school wrangling…I’m going on a research cruise! That means that instead of leaving here tomorrow to return to California, next Sunday I fly to Oahu. I’ll meet up with the boat and we’ll depart on Monday, 9/22. We’ll return to port on October 12, and I’ll fly back to California the next day. That’s about three weeks at sea! Since marine geology is what really butters my bread, this is one of my strongest dreams come true. Now, here are the details.

The cruise is actually going out under the auspices of the FeMO Iron Microbial Observatory at Loihi Volcano. The boat is the R/V Thomas G. Thompson, a NOAA-owned and University of Washington-operated vessel. If you click the ship’s link you can see all of the details, including the berthing setup. I’ll be in berth #35! Excitement. If you read the FeMO link, you know that they primarily study biology. I will most likely help out with that, but I’m there for an experiment in sampling volcanic glasses. My boss on the ship is from WHOI, as I mentioned before. That’s not all of the awesomeness, oh no. It gets better.

I assume most of the people who read this blog have watched the Discovery Channel at some point. Many of you may have heard of the ROV Jason. I certainly had, and using ROV and submersibles to do research was another of my life’s goals. You can guess where I’m going with this, can’t you? Jason will be on board, and we’re using him to collect the samples. Absolutely incredible. Words just can’t do justice to how amazing this whole summer has been (and continues to be).

I think this is an appropriate time to thank the people who’ve made it all possible. Thank you to my parents, for obvious reasons, and because they’re the best parents anyone could ever have. They gave me chemistry sets and helped me with science fair projects since as early as I can remember. Thank you to my professors at California State University – Los Angeles, and in particular Dr. Kim Bishop. They are magnanimous enough to allow me to make up the coursework I’ll miss while on the cruise, and Dr. Bishop is taking over my teaching duties while I am gone. Thank you to everyone who reads this journal, whether I know you in real life or not. You have made documenting this journey of a lifetime a true pleasure. If you have specific questions you’d like answered, please leave them in the comments of this post. It’s often hard for me to go back and pick the questions out from the comments, so let me know what you’d like answered!

Ok, just so this post isn’t all texts n’ links, here’s a picture of the R/V Thompson!

The round part on top of the tripod is a telescope, and the box on top is the spectrometer. Anyway, since we were on the rim and right over the vent, I think perhaps a picture of the lava’s incandescence is in order.

Yep, that’s lava down there. That sort of glow just doesn’t normally happen during daylight hours. It was truly impressive to stand right above a lava lake. The noises were loud, tremendous, and unrelenting. If it wasn’t clanging with rock falls, it was making gas-rushing noises that sounded like jet engines. The earth is alive!

I have a special treat for all of you. My colleague Brian White was down on the other side of the vent from where I was, and he recorded video. You can finally hear the noises I keep writing about! Make sure your sound is turned on. It’s possible to see some of the incandescence as well.

Thanks Brian!

Saturday brought more impressive sights. I ventured up Mauna Kea with some colleagues to check out the view and do some stargazing. The name Mauna Kea means White Mountain, and that’s because it frequently has snow on its peak during winter. It stands 13,796 feet above the ocean, and is older than Mauna Loa and Kilauea. Mauna Kea is considered dormant, but not extinct. It’s also home to some of the world’s best telescopes and astronomical observatories.

Those are the Keck Twins, formally known as the W.M. Keck Observatory. They sit 85 meters apart at Mauna Kea’s summit and they each have a 10 meter primary mirror.

Those are cinder cones on the north flank of Mauna Kea. Since the volcano is in its “post-shield building” stage, it is literally pockmarked with cones like these.

This is the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. It was posing nicely for me. It was built to support the Voyager missions.

This is the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory with its dome open.

I don’t think that one needs much explanation.

Here we have the moon, some stars, and the Subaru Telescope.

Last but certainly not least, I give you this:

Yes, that’s a laser issuing from one of the Keck Twins. It actually creates an artificial star that astronomers use to establish a relative location in the sky. I’m sure it does some other neat things, too, but I’m not aware of what they are, exactly. ***EDIT*** Check out Andrew Cooper’s comment at the end of this post for the actual use of the artificial star. He knows what he’s talking about!

If you’re ever in Hawai`i, sunset on Mauna Kea is definitely in order. Oh yeah…you might want to check out any available lava lakes, too.

Let’s just say it’s a good thing that this road is closed to the public. Some of the ejected material was incandescent at the time of eruption, which signifies fairly high temperatures.

We left that area and journeyed to the less-travelled southern end of Halema`uma`u crater. Here’s a view of the crater wall that you can’t see from the Observatory or Jaggar Museum.

We continued hiking around to the western edge of the crater and stopped for a bit to watch the plume. The vent was making banging noises like it had all day on Tuesday, and after a while it switched to gas rushing sounds. It’s akin to the noise a 747 jet makes as it lands. At one point the plume almost died out, and then it resumed more vigorous puffing and turned brown.

Our resident gas geochemist was nice enough to model for me.

He’s standing in an area of the crater known as the Postal Rift. When Halema`uma`u was filled entirely with lava back in 1919, visitors could walk right up to the rift and dip their postcards into the lava. The edges would become a nicely singed, unique souvenir of their visit to Kilauea. Try to imagine that whole crater and the rift where the scientist is standing as a lava lake. Pretty amazing.

So, I’m sure you’re all curious about what sulfur dioxide does to the areas surrounding it.

It makes sulfur crystals! When sulfur-rich gas seeps out of the earth and the area remains relatively undisturbed, it gives sulfur crystals the chance to grow. They’re beautiful.

Here’s a fumarole up close and personal. The crystals are about 1/2-3/4 inch at their longest. They also smell like rotten eggs. Hey, perfection is hard!

This is what we do with fumaroles…we sample the gas they emit! I’m using a technique called evacuated-bottle fumarole gas sampling. First we measure the temperature of the fumarole using a probe. The temperature around the crater is right near the boiling temperature at this altitude = 94.8 degrees Celsius. After that we insert a teflon tube into the fumarole, and connect the tube to a specially-made vacuum-sealed Pyrex bottle. We then pump the gas into the bottle slowly, and make sure that it cools and condenses enough to close the bottle off.

Once we get back to the lab we run the samples through a manometer (pressure-reading device) to compare the gas pressure in the bottles to the ambient room pressure. After that we stick it on a gas chromatograph and measure the bottle’s levels of air, water, CO2, and SO2. Fumaroles from different areas have different gas concentrations, and this helps us to understand the magma and gas beneath the crater’s surface.

Not a day goes by without me learning something incredibly interesting!

Ok, in all seriousness I did something incredible. So you know the vent in Halema`uma`u I keep writing about? Today I helped install a time-lapse camera where the red dot in this photo is located. Keep in mind that the dot is about the size of 3 adults standing right next to each other, and make sure you click to see the full view of the image.

We also walked all along the rim on either side of that dot to perform maintenance on the ash-catching stations we have set up. I was directly over the vent and it was thrilling.

Here you can see the initial setup phase with the monster sulfur dioxide plume in the background. That’s the tripod.

Here’s the conversation I had with the geologist in that photo just seconds after I snapped the pic.

Him: “Hey, do you hear those loud banging noises from the vent?”
Me: “Yeah! They’re so loud! It’s amazing.”
Him: “If you hear a particularly loud one, get ready to run.”
Me: “Oh, right. Rocks can be ejected.”
Him: “You do realize that we could die, right?”
Me: “Yep!”
Him: “Ok, can you hand me those pliers over there?”

Not your average conversation at the office, was it? Let’s just say I pondered my time on this mortal coil for a minute whilst gazing into the swirling maw of Hell.

Maybe I should take up modelling hard hats? Anyway, here’s the end product of our efforts:

In the foreground you can see the solar panel that is responsible for powering the camera. The grey case on the ground is the battery, and the camera is in the open case on the tripod. The camera case lid is shut once we’re done adjusting it. The reason we installed it is that the vent has been growing. The lip and side walls have been collapsing quite a bit lately, so that first picture in this post actually shows the vent even smaller than it is now.

The noises issuing from the vent were otherworldly. I now understand perfectly why ancient Greeks and Romans believed that Hephaestus or Vulcan, respectively, was hammering away inside of the volcanoes. It honestly sounds like someone is forging things in the traditional hammer-and-anvil way. The booms are loud, metallic, and frequent. Sometimes it sounds like metallic popcorn, and other times it sounds like the resonating, drawn out intonation of a gong. It’s not always noisy like this. In fact, everyone is remarking on how unusual the noises actually are. I feel privileged to have heard them.

For those who are curious, I threw several rocks into the vent. I stopped after it belched out a massive plume that immediately blew in our direction. Making Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess, angry while perched on the lip of the vent was not on my To Do List for today.

Also of note: Both my photography and my person are present on the official HVO website! Visit the Kilauea Eruption Update page on HVO’s site to take a look. August 28th is the magic date. Those of you keeping up with the blog will recognize some of the images! The Quicktime video from August 31 is definitely worth a watch, too.