Question: what is facinating about volcanos

Philippa Demonte answered on 12 Jun 2011:

@selina97 @pril @meggie What is fascinating about volcanoes? I can’t pinpoint one thing. All I know is that I’ve been hooked since visiting my first active one 10 years ago – Mount Nakadake in southern Japan. It took half a day to get there by train, bus, cable car, and then walking, and when I reached the top and peered down into the crater, I saw a baby blue colour, not red like you would expect. Someone explained to me that this was caused by a chemical reaction between the volcanic gases and rain water forming a crater lake. I suddenly realised that there was so much more to volcanoes than what we see on tv.

Several years later I watched a film at the IMAX cinema at the Natural History / Science Museum in London which featured the scientists who were working here in Montserrat in the mid-1990s. Soufriere Hills volcano had just woken up after being dormant (asleep) for many years and was starting to show signs that it might erupt. The scientists had managed to put some equipment out to take measurements from the volcano including its seismicity (earthquakes caused by rising magma cracking the harder rock around it, and gas within the volcano’s conduit resonating), and were advising the Governor of Montserrat of the situation, as it was then his job to decide when the residents of the island should be evacuated. This is not such an easy task, as a volcano may often show raised signs of activity, but then not erupt, so if you evacuate people living / working around a volcano and then nothing happens, they won’t listen to you next time an evacuation is called.

So I am as much fascinated by how local residents react to the volcanoes they live near as by the volcanoes themselves.