WEBVTT 00:00:04.850 --> 00:00:08.200 Good afternoon, everybody. 00:00:08.330 --> 00:00:11.130 I know that you've had a number of people from 00:00:11.130 --> 00:00:15.855 our office speak as part of this series over the last several weeks. 00:00:15.855 --> 00:00:19.605 And you've got a great speaker coming up next week with Steve Olson. 00:00:19.605 --> 00:00:23.250 What I'm hoping to do today is cover the topic of 00:00:23.250 --> 00:00:26.490 monitoring the Cascade Range volcanoes, but more importantly, 00:00:26.490 --> 00:00:32.840 giving you a sense of what this group is that is called the Cascades Volcano Observatory, 00:00:32.840 --> 00:00:33.960 who we are, what we do, 00:00:33.960 --> 00:00:38.230 what our mission is, and how we do our work. 00:00:39.230 --> 00:00:42.920 Just get into this with showing, first off, 00:00:42.920 --> 00:00:46.220 I picture of the staff at CVO. 00:00:46.220 --> 00:00:47.315 This is a couple years ago, 00:00:47.315 --> 00:00:51.905 pre-pandemic times when nobody was having to worry about wearing masks, good times. 00:00:51.905 --> 00:00:55.970 The staff, there's about 80 folks at CVO who work there, 00:00:55.970 --> 00:00:57.500 not all of them on the Cascades. 00:00:57.500 --> 00:01:01.790 There's others that do international work and others that work in other observatories. 00:01:01.790 --> 00:01:10.265 But this is a big group that has a lot of different specialties. 00:01:10.265 --> 00:01:11.630 Throughout the course of this talk, 00:01:11.630 --> 00:01:17.315 I'll be introducing you to the span of things that people do there. 00:01:17.315 --> 00:01:19.670 Just as a teaser, 00:01:19.670 --> 00:01:22.300 not everybody is a volcanologist. 00:01:22.300 --> 00:01:26.930 CVO was born out of the May 18th, 00:01:26.930 --> 00:01:29.000 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:32.810 Before that, there was no observatory in the Pacific Northwest. 00:01:32.810 --> 00:01:37.100 We were officially brought into being in 1982. 00:01:37.100 --> 00:01:39.665 Next year, we're going to hit our 40th anniversary. 00:01:39.665 --> 00:01:42.380 The reason why CVO was established was that the Mount St. 00:01:42.380 --> 00:01:44.975 Helens eruption was so monumental in so many different ways, 00:01:44.975 --> 00:01:51.650 obviously it had a huge impact on the geography of southwestern Washington. 00:01:51.650 --> 00:01:53.675 The ash impacted many people, 00:01:53.675 --> 00:01:55.360 many lives were lost. 00:01:55.360 --> 00:02:00.255 It was also a tremendously well-understood, well-recorded eruption, 00:02:00.255 --> 00:02:05.440 and many lessons were there to be learned in the coming years. 00:02:05.440 --> 00:02:09.020 And scientists knew that even back in 1982, and so there 00:02:09.020 --> 00:02:13.770 was this effort to establish a permanent outpost. 00:02:14.030 --> 00:02:17.270 That was the main reason for the birth of CVO. 00:02:17.270 --> 00:02:21.050 CVO is located in Vancouver, Washington. 00:02:21.050 --> 00:02:23.540 Right here on the border between Washington, 00:02:23.540 --> 00:02:26.195 Oregon. Portland, Oregon is just across the river. 00:02:26.195 --> 00:02:28.790 We are not located in Vancouver, British Columbia, 00:02:28.790 --> 00:02:33.085 which is a not uncommon thing that people understandably get mixed up. 00:02:33.085 --> 00:02:38.840 We are one of five observatories in the US Geological Survey's observatory system. 00:02:38.840 --> 00:02:42.380 The other four are the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, which is our oldest. 00:02:42.380 --> 00:02:44.420 It's been around since 1912. 00:02:44.420 --> 00:02:46.790 Then the Alaska Volcano Observatory, 00:02:46.790 --> 00:02:49.730 where I started off working back in the '90s, 00:02:49.730 --> 00:02:54.605 and then Yellowstone Volcano Observatory and the California Volcano Observatory. 00:02:54.605 --> 00:03:02.120 Collectively, we divvy up the 161 active US volcanoes, 00:03:02.120 --> 00:03:04.655 which are shown here with the red triangles. 00:03:04.655 --> 00:03:08.030 By active, what we mean is that magma has come out of 00:03:08.030 --> 00:03:11.705 the ground at least at some point in the last 12,000 years. 00:03:11.705 --> 00:03:13.280 The last 12,000 years, 00:03:13.280 --> 00:03:17.290 the significance of that is the end of the last ice age. 00:03:17.290 --> 00:03:20.960 The ice age wiped out lots of evidence of past eruptions, 00:03:20.960 --> 00:03:25.250 so the geologic record is really most thorough, 00:03:25.250 --> 00:03:27.890 most complete, for the last 12,000 years. 00:03:27.890 --> 00:03:32.400 So that's our best understanding of eruption histories. 00:03:33.160 --> 00:03:35.915 We work as a group. 00:03:35.915 --> 00:03:38.990 We work under a common organization, a common bureaucracy, 00:03:38.990 --> 00:03:44.810 which may seem a little bit trivial to understand, 00:03:44.810 --> 00:03:49.580 but it becomes very important when we have a large eruption happening 00:03:49.580 --> 00:03:54.135 under one of our feet. 00:03:54.135 --> 00:04:00.840 That happened in 2018 with the Kilauea 2018 eruption. 00:04:00.840 --> 00:04:03.330 During the course of the three months of that crisis, 00:04:03.330 --> 00:04:05.750 many staff came from these other observatories to help 00:04:05.750 --> 00:04:08.810 out our sisters and brothers at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. 00:04:08.810 --> 00:04:11.150 That was made easier by the fact that we're all 00:04:11.150 --> 00:04:13.910 part of one broad system that collectively is 00:04:13.910 --> 00:04:20.380 responsible for mitigating volcanic hazards in the United States. 00:04:20.380 --> 00:04:24.350 This map here shows the locations of all of 00:04:24.350 --> 00:04:30.080 the active volcanic centers in the Western US, the lower 48. 00:04:30.080 --> 00:04:32.180 The colors here I'll talk about in a minute. 00:04:32.180 --> 00:04:33.620 The main thing is just that for now, 00:04:33.620 --> 00:04:37.040 just to see where all of the volcanic centers are. 00:04:37.040 --> 00:04:40.520 Pretty much every state in Western US has one, 00:04:40.520 --> 00:04:46.430 an actual active volcano, except for Montana, 00:04:46.430 --> 00:04:50.930 and east of New Mexico and Colorado, 00:04:50.930 --> 00:04:54.245 no volcanoes, the rest of the eastern United States. 00:04:54.245 --> 00:04:56.550 It's just here in the West. 00:04:59.840 --> 00:05:03.190 Here is CVO again, down by Portland, 00:05:03.190 --> 00:05:05.900 and Whidbey Island is up here. 00:05:05.900 --> 00:05:06.970 In our part of the world, 00:05:06.970 --> 00:05:10.070 there's some very well-known volcanic centers. 00:05:10.070 --> 00:05:12.680 One of them is Mount St. Helens, 00:05:12.680 --> 00:05:15.305 that's this red triangle here. 00:05:15.305 --> 00:05:17.990 Another one is Crater Lake down in 00:05:17.990 --> 00:05:21.590 southern Oregon and if any of you have not had a chance to visit it yet, 00:05:21.590 --> 00:05:26.275 strongly recommend, it's a beautiful place to go. 00:05:26.275 --> 00:05:31.915 One of the few places where you can go and be inside a volcano. 00:05:31.915 --> 00:05:35.600 Then there's some less well-known volcanoes like Glacier Peak, 00:05:35.600 --> 00:05:37.130 which is one of the two volcanoes that's 00:05:37.130 --> 00:05:39.425 closest to Whidbey Island, the other being Mount Baker. 00:05:39.425 --> 00:05:41.270 Glacier Peak is not that well-known in 00:05:41.270 --> 00:05:43.220 large part because it's in the middle of a wilderness, 00:05:43.220 --> 00:05:44.525 the Glacier Peak Wilderness. 00:05:44.525 --> 00:05:47.360 It's not easy to see from Puget Sound, 00:05:47.360 --> 00:05:48.890 it's not easy to get to. 00:05:48.890 --> 00:05:51.215 Also, it's not obviously, 00:05:51.215 --> 00:05:53.420 as obvious a volcano as is say, 00:05:53.420 --> 00:05:56.655 Mount Rainier because it has all these peaks around it. 00:05:56.655 --> 00:06:01.730 But it is a place where there's been some interesting geologic eruptive history, 00:06:01.730 --> 00:06:03.785 and I'll talk about that in a little while. 00:06:03.785 --> 00:06:07.130 Then another volcanic center that's really not well-known 00:06:07.130 --> 00:06:10.270 is Diamond Craters way out here in southeastern Oregon. 00:06:10.270 --> 00:06:12.490 There's a variety of volcanoes, 00:06:12.490 --> 00:06:17.270 some that people know about, some that people don't know about in our world. 00:06:17.270 --> 00:06:21.580 One thing I just want to convey to you is that Washington, Oregon, 00:06:21.580 --> 00:06:26.890 really interesting places to be in the perspective of volcanism. 00:06:26.890 --> 00:06:29.695 There's one place where you can go, 00:06:29.695 --> 00:06:34.465 where you can have what many people in my office would consider to be a perfect day, 00:06:34.465 --> 00:06:37.930 which is a 10 volcano day where you can stand in one place and see 00:06:37.930 --> 00:06:42.940 10 volcanoes if there's no smoke in the air and it's all clear. 00:06:42.940 --> 00:06:45.340 I'm going to show you a picture here that I took from a place. 00:06:45.340 --> 00:06:46.540 It's just north of Bend, 00:06:46.540 --> 00:06:48.905 this is like maybe 12 years ago now. 00:06:48.905 --> 00:06:55.610 That was a 10 volcano day for me and here are the 10 volcanoes going from south to north, 00:06:55.610 --> 00:06:58.430 Mount Bachelor, Three Sisters, Belknap Crater, 00:06:58.430 --> 00:07:00.485 Mount Washington, Black Butte, 00:07:00.485 --> 00:07:02.205 Mount Jefferson, and Mount Hood. 00:07:02.205 --> 00:07:04.440 Then actually, I could see Mount Adams off in 00:07:04.440 --> 00:07:07.550 the distance and then over here on the left, there is Newberry. 00:07:07.550 --> 00:07:09.995 So it was actually more than a 10 volcano day. 00:07:09.995 --> 00:07:14.795 This is one of the few places on Earth where you can do this. 00:07:14.795 --> 00:07:19.065 There's not many places on Earth that have this high a concentration of 00:07:19.065 --> 00:07:23.685 volcanic centers in one location. 00:07:23.685 --> 00:07:27.770 It really is a special part of living in the Pacific Northwest, 00:07:27.770 --> 00:07:30.685 is having landscapes like this. 00:07:30.685 --> 00:07:35.630 Another thing that's unique about where we live is a feature 00:07:35.630 --> 00:07:41.240 of where the Cascades Volcano Observatory is, where we're located. 00:07:41.240 --> 00:07:45.815 CVO is located actually right there. 00:07:45.815 --> 00:07:47.810 I'm speaking to you today from Camas, 00:07:47.810 --> 00:07:51.230 which is located, my house is just right there. 00:07:51.230 --> 00:07:54.425 These red dots here correspond to the locations of 00:07:54.425 --> 00:07:59.125 volcanic centers that have erupted in the last several million years. 00:07:59.125 --> 00:08:02.610 The most recent one was 57,000 years ago. 00:08:02.610 --> 00:08:06.070 Geologic studies from about a decade ago tell us that 00:08:06.070 --> 00:08:12.260 these centers erupt about every 10,000-15,000 years, 00:08:12.260 --> 00:08:17.705 which is a very long time apart and there hasn't been one since the last ice age. 00:08:17.705 --> 00:08:24.850 But it's something that is considered to be an active field and it's a geological oddity. 00:08:24.850 --> 00:08:27.080 It's not something that people really understand, 00:08:27.080 --> 00:08:29.480 the reasons why there's volcanoes happening here. 00:08:29.480 --> 00:08:32.810 This is a fair ways to the west 00:08:32.810 --> 00:08:38.580 of the Cascade Arc where the standard charismatic volcanoes are. 00:08:40.030 --> 00:08:48.280 CVO actually has a volcano very close to it called Green Mountain. 00:08:48.280 --> 00:08:55.030 This is a cinder cone that erupted several 100,000 years ago. 00:08:55.030 --> 00:08:59.640 Volcanism has played a large role in what we see on the surface of the Earth, 00:08:59.640 --> 00:09:02.985 and there's some really interesting places to go visit and look and see. 00:09:02.985 --> 00:09:06.395 As far as the job of CVO, 00:09:06.395 --> 00:09:12.700 we mainly are focused on volcanic hazards from the here and now, 00:09:12.700 --> 00:09:15.090 the volcanoes that have the most likely potential to 00:09:15.090 --> 00:09:18.780 erupt and to cause problems for people. 00:09:18.780 --> 00:09:22.020 This map now shows the turf of CVO, 00:09:22.020 --> 00:09:24.345 which is mostly Washington and Oregon. 00:09:24.345 --> 00:09:27.560 CalVO has California and Nevada. 00:09:27.890 --> 00:09:30.310 These triangles correspond to 00:09:30.310 --> 00:09:33.380 the 21 volcanoes that have erupted in the last 12,000 years. 00:09:33.380 --> 00:09:36.690 Now the colors, I showed this before with different colors, 00:09:36.690 --> 00:09:39.290 and I'll explain the colors now what they mean. 00:09:39.290 --> 00:09:43.170 These correspond to different threat levels that have been assigned 00:09:43.170 --> 00:09:48.300 by a USGS study that looked at all of the 161 volcanoes in the US, 00:09:48.300 --> 00:09:50.600 and ranked them based on two factors. 00:09:50.600 --> 00:09:52.250 One was the hazard, 00:09:52.250 --> 00:09:55.620 which is basically what has the volcano done? 00:09:55.620 --> 00:09:56.725 What can it do? 00:09:56.725 --> 00:09:58.865 How frequently has it erupted? 00:09:58.865 --> 00:10:00.710 How explosively has it erupted? 00:10:00.710 --> 00:10:02.405 You get a score for that. 00:10:02.405 --> 00:10:09.240 Then the exposure factor of how much of a society is exposed to this. 00:10:09.240 --> 00:10:12.660 That has to do with how many people live close to it. 00:10:12.660 --> 00:10:16.640 What kind of infrastructure is nearby? 00:10:16.640 --> 00:10:24.335 Are there air routes that go nearby and things like that. So these two things. 00:10:24.335 --> 00:10:34.300 Out of that, there were 18 categorized as very high threat in Alaska, 00:10:34.300 --> 00:10:35.655 Hawaii, but not Yellowstone, and in California. 00:10:35.655 --> 00:10:40.110 Of those 18, eight are in Washington and Oregon. 00:10:40.110 --> 00:10:43.140 They're Mount Baker, Glacier Peak, Mount Rainier, 00:10:43.140 --> 00:10:45.700 Mount St. Helens, Mount Hood, 00:10:45.700 --> 00:10:47.895 Three Sisters, Newberry and Crater Lake. 00:10:47.895 --> 00:10:49.950 Then there's also a ninth that comes in, 00:10:49.950 --> 00:10:51.090 just one tick below, 00:10:51.090 --> 00:10:53.370 and that's Mount Adams, a high threat. 00:10:53.370 --> 00:10:57.600 The importance of these colors is that the red triangles and also the orange one, 00:10:57.600 --> 00:11:01.710 are ones where we are prioritizing monitoring. 00:11:01.710 --> 00:11:04.260 We are understanding the volcanic hazards and 00:11:04.260 --> 00:11:08.080 mitigating those hazards through monitoring networks. 00:11:08.890 --> 00:11:13.650 That's part of the work that I will be presenting to you today. 00:11:14.200 --> 00:11:18.025 One overall summary statement, 00:11:18.025 --> 00:11:29.350 some of you may not remember the last time there was a Cascade volcano that erupted, 00:11:29.450 --> 00:11:34.670 that was Mount St. Helens because volcanoes in the Cascades don't erupt that often. 00:11:34.670 --> 00:11:36.795 Certainly in comparison to Kilauea, 00:11:36.795 --> 00:11:38.865 to other countries like Japan, 00:11:38.865 --> 00:11:41.760 or Indonesia, or in the Caribbean, 00:11:41.760 --> 00:11:44.220 the volcano that erupted a couple weeks ago. 00:11:44.220 --> 00:11:46.920 What we know is that on average, 00:11:46.920 --> 00:11:54.320 there are two eruptions per century going back as far as we can go. 00:11:54.320 --> 00:11:57.135 There are often multi-year eruptions. 00:11:57.135 --> 00:11:59.975 Mount St. Helens 1980, erupted from 1980-86, 00:11:59.975 --> 00:12:03.600 and then in 2004 erupted for 2004-2008, 00:12:03.600 --> 00:12:08.295 so for 10 years over that time frame. 00:12:08.295 --> 00:12:10.470 Often it is multi-year. 00:12:10.470 --> 00:12:14.790 Mount Hood erupted from 1781-1790 thereabouts. 00:12:14.790 --> 00:12:17.520 What we say is that about 10 percent of the time 00:12:17.520 --> 00:12:21.485 a volcano in the Cascades is going to be erupting. 00:12:21.485 --> 00:12:25.230 What that means for people that are living in the Pacific Northwest, 00:12:25.230 --> 00:12:29.670 is that you should expect to be here if you're here for your entire life, 00:12:29.670 --> 00:12:33.660 for at least one eruption and it's probably Mount St. Helens, 00:12:33.660 --> 00:12:35.550 but it could be other volcanoes as well. 00:12:35.550 --> 00:12:37.844 To put that into some perspective, 00:12:37.844 --> 00:12:42.260 this magnitude 9 earthquake that hopefully you all know about, 00:12:42.260 --> 00:12:45.230 as a potential thing that can happen in our future, 00:12:45.230 --> 00:12:49.720 the last one happened on January 26th, 1700. 00:12:50.180 --> 00:12:53.655 Geologic investigations have shown that 00:12:53.655 --> 00:12:59.920 those large earthquakes happen on average about every 450-500 years. 00:13:00.120 --> 00:13:07.710 When the big earthquakes happen, big consequence up and down the West Coast, 00:13:07.710 --> 00:13:10.755 means lots of impact, lots of places. 00:13:10.755 --> 00:13:15.330 To put the volcano hazard in comparison to that, 00:13:15.330 --> 00:13:18.490 any individual eruption will not merely be 00:13:18.490 --> 00:13:21.500 as high consequence as the next magnitude 9 earthquake, 00:13:21.500 --> 00:13:23.505 but it will still be high consequence. 00:13:23.505 --> 00:13:27.240 In between each of those magnitude 9 earthquakes 450, 500 years, 00:13:27.240 --> 00:13:31.890 there will be between nine and 10 eruptions at Cascade volcanoes. 00:13:31.890 --> 00:13:35.085 It's a more frequent occurrence than the large earthquakes, 00:13:35.085 --> 00:13:40.990 much less hazardous, but nevertheless still high consequence. 00:13:43.010 --> 00:13:49.110 With volcano hazards, I'm going to 00:13:49.110 --> 00:13:55.820 pivot now and focus more on the specifics of what we do, 00:13:55.820 --> 00:13:58.085 and how we work with volcano hazards. 00:13:58.085 --> 00:14:02.895 The first thing to talk about is what do we mean by volcano hazards? 00:14:02.895 --> 00:14:05.970 This slide, pretty nicely shows, 00:14:05.970 --> 00:14:09.755 captures all the different kinds of things that can happen 00:14:09.755 --> 00:14:14.655 at a volcano during eruptions and not during eruptions. 00:14:14.655 --> 00:14:17.130 We can have landslides independent of eruptions, 00:14:17.130 --> 00:14:18.705 we can have the lahars, 00:14:18.705 --> 00:14:21.375 which are volcanic mudflows, independent of eruptions, 00:14:21.375 --> 00:14:23.780 and not all eruptions feature all of these things. 00:14:23.780 --> 00:14:25.909 There are some volcanoes that erupt explosively, 00:14:25.909 --> 00:14:27.785 other volcanoes that have lava flows, 00:14:27.785 --> 00:14:30.645 lava domes, and not too much explosivity. 00:14:30.645 --> 00:14:37.700 Part of the goal of volcano research or volcano geology is 00:14:37.700 --> 00:14:45.100 to understand the eruption history of each volcano that is in our midst. 00:14:45.100 --> 00:14:48.365 That not only tells us how frequently 00:14:48.365 --> 00:14:51.220 it's erupted and how likely it is to erupt again in the future, 00:14:51.220 --> 00:14:56.445 but also what style of eruption typically does each volcano have. 00:14:56.445 --> 00:14:58.905 One of the things that I would like you to leave with is that 00:14:58.905 --> 00:15:03.400 each volcano has its own personality. 00:15:04.080 --> 00:15:07.600 Yeah, its own personality. 00:15:08.960 --> 00:15:14.830 The remarkable thing is that history tends to repeat itself. 00:15:14.830 --> 00:15:18.335 It's a good thing to understand the geologic history, the eruptive history, 00:15:18.335 --> 00:15:21.420 the styles that had happened in the past, 00:15:21.420 --> 00:15:27.900 because those are the most likely things to happen at volcanoes in the future. 00:15:27.900 --> 00:15:31.335 Volcano hazards is in three broad areas. 00:15:31.335 --> 00:15:34.710 The first is research. Of asking 00:15:34.710 --> 00:15:39.245 questions about volcanoes like how frequently does it erupt? 00:15:39.245 --> 00:15:43.820 Or where is magma located beneath the volcano? 00:15:43.820 --> 00:15:49.335 Then trying to answer those questions by doing various kinds of investigations. 00:15:49.335 --> 00:15:51.675 The second is monitoring. 00:15:51.675 --> 00:15:55.290 Again, this is where we mitigate the hazards 00:15:55.290 --> 00:16:01.090 by putting up instrumentation that will give us as early warning as possible, 00:16:01.090 --> 00:16:03.750 that the volcanoes waking up and give us data that we can 00:16:03.750 --> 00:16:07.740 use to interpret the likelihood of eruptive activity, 00:16:07.740 --> 00:16:11.820 and maybe also say some things about the style of eruptive activity. 00:16:11.820 --> 00:16:16.170 Then the final thing is community preparedness and this is to make sure that people 00:16:16.170 --> 00:16:21.245 are ready to hear the messages that we're bringing when a volcano wakes up, 00:16:21.245 --> 00:16:23.670 and that they know what to do. 00:16:23.670 --> 00:16:26.075 That it's just not coming out of the blue, 00:16:26.075 --> 00:16:28.740 they're wondering, "Who is the Cascades Volcano Observatory 00:16:28.740 --> 00:16:32.180 and what do they know about what's going on out there?" 00:16:32.180 --> 00:16:34.980 These are the three areas that we've 00:16:34.980 --> 00:16:37.680 learned are important for us to be successful in our job. 00:16:37.680 --> 00:16:43.785 And I'd now like to walk you through examples of each of those three areas. 00:16:43.785 --> 00:16:46.030 First, with research. 00:16:46.070 --> 00:16:49.590 One really important part, 00:16:49.590 --> 00:16:54.570 a key element of research is in understanding eruptive histories. 00:16:54.570 --> 00:16:56.535 I already talked about that a little bit before. 00:16:56.535 --> 00:17:01.530 The primary way to do that is through geologic field investigations. 00:17:01.530 --> 00:17:07.215 This is a photograph taken a few miles east of Glacier Peak, 00:17:07.215 --> 00:17:11.310 which is one of the two closest to Whidbey Island. 00:17:11.310 --> 00:17:15.480 What this shows is a big pile of what looks like sand. 00:17:15.480 --> 00:17:17.550 It has these labels here, 00:17:17.550 --> 00:17:19.335 G tephra and B tephra. 00:17:19.335 --> 00:17:22.560 Tephra is a geologic term for ash, 00:17:22.560 --> 00:17:24.705 and what this means, 00:17:24.705 --> 00:17:27.270 some geologists have written on this slide. 00:17:27.270 --> 00:17:30.990 What they're saying is that there's two different ash layers that were 00:17:30.990 --> 00:17:36.210 deposited by Glacier Peak in an eruption 13,600 years ago. 00:17:36.210 --> 00:17:38.925 To give you a sense of scale of these, 00:17:38.925 --> 00:17:44.265 here is one field geologist and there's another one over here that's not circled. 00:17:44.265 --> 00:17:46.710 This person's about six-foot tall, 00:17:46.710 --> 00:17:49.440 so that gives you some sense of scale. 00:17:49.440 --> 00:17:52.875 These are tens of feet thick deposits of ash, 00:17:52.875 --> 00:17:54.630 a lot of stuff. 00:17:54.630 --> 00:17:58.065 It turns out that 13,600 years ago, 00:17:58.065 --> 00:17:59.880 Glacier Peak produced an eruption that was 00:17:59.880 --> 00:18:04.110 about five times the size of Mount St. Helens in 1980. 00:18:04.110 --> 00:18:07.635 That's a little bit eye-catching when you hear that number. 00:18:07.635 --> 00:18:09.165 It hasn't done that since, 00:18:09.165 --> 00:18:12.480 so it's not something that's considered very likely, 00:18:12.480 --> 00:18:16.560 but it's something that it does have in its playbook as a possibility. 00:18:16.560 --> 00:18:18.810 It's these kinds of investigations, 00:18:18.810 --> 00:18:22.950 looking at exposures, tall and small, 00:18:22.950 --> 00:18:27.420 that are important for unearthing the geologic history of 00:18:27.420 --> 00:18:32.955 what's happened at individual volcanoes. 00:18:32.955 --> 00:18:36.360 With investigations that have been happening up and down 00:18:36.360 --> 00:18:39.225 the Cascade Range over the last 50 years, 00:18:39.225 --> 00:18:42.165 recently, we've been able to assemble this image, 00:18:42.165 --> 00:18:45.585 it's a very powerful image, I think for me, 00:18:45.585 --> 00:18:50.160 that shows the eruptive history over the last 4,000 years, 00:18:50.160 --> 00:18:55.245 which is our most complete sense of the geologic record. 00:18:55.245 --> 00:18:57.480 What you can do with this, 00:18:57.480 --> 00:19:00.465 I'm guessing many of you have already started doing this is, most of you, 00:19:00.465 --> 00:19:02.115 each of these volcanic icons, 00:19:02.115 --> 00:19:07.610 is that moment in time when geologists know that a volcano erupted. 00:19:07.610 --> 00:19:11.375 What you can do with this is count the number of volcano icons 00:19:11.375 --> 00:19:15.150 and come up with the answer to the question, 00:19:15.150 --> 00:19:18.390 which Cascade volcano is the most frequently active? 00:19:18.390 --> 00:19:21.750 The answer to that is Mount St. Helens, 00:19:21.750 --> 00:19:24.870 followed by Mount Rainier and then Glacier Peak, 00:19:24.870 --> 00:19:26.400 and then going down to California, 00:19:26.400 --> 00:19:28.900 it's Mount Shasta and Medicine Lake. 00:19:29.570 --> 00:19:31.770 This is a really important, 00:19:31.770 --> 00:19:33.450 powerful thing to be able to say. 00:19:33.450 --> 00:19:38.385 It does inform our messaging about 00:19:38.385 --> 00:19:40.500 what is the most likely volcano to erupt in 00:19:40.500 --> 00:19:43.515 the Cascades next and the answer to that is Mount St. Helens, 00:19:43.515 --> 00:19:49.990 based purely on the principle that the past is the best guide to the future. 00:19:50.240 --> 00:19:53.700 It's really as simple as that. 00:19:53.700 --> 00:19:59.025 But this reflects lots and lots of time out in the field, 00:19:59.025 --> 00:20:01.635 and also in the laboratory coming up with 00:20:01.635 --> 00:20:07.030 the ages for deposits that people are finding and things like that. 00:20:07.160 --> 00:20:10.230 Zooming in on Glacier Peak, actually before that I'll go back. 00:20:10.230 --> 00:20:11.850 One important thing to notice, 00:20:11.850 --> 00:20:16.605 of the two volcanoes that are closest to Whidbey Island that are red, very high threat. 00:20:16.605 --> 00:20:21.150 Mount Baker, you'll notice has no volcano icons except for one out here that 00:20:21.150 --> 00:20:27.990 corresponds to an event in 1843, no magma reached the surface, 00:20:27.990 --> 00:20:30.360 but there was an explosion, produced a landslide, 00:20:30.360 --> 00:20:35.445 it would definitely catch people's attention today were it to happen again. 00:20:35.445 --> 00:20:38.220 That was legit, but there's been 00:20:38.220 --> 00:20:40.620 no eruptions in the sense of 00:20:40.620 --> 00:20:43.575 magma coming out of the ground at Mount Baker over this time frame, 00:20:43.575 --> 00:20:46.660 whereas Glacier Peak has had a number. 00:20:47.120 --> 00:20:50.670 In terms of the likelihood of something happening, 00:20:50.670 --> 00:20:54.060 Glacier Peak is the place that has the higher likelihood. 00:20:54.060 --> 00:20:58.095 Just want to focus in on that just for a little bit from that perspective. 00:20:58.095 --> 00:20:59.865 Here's what we know about Glacier Peak. 00:20:59.865 --> 00:21:05.250 At present, it's had several pulses of eruptions that were 13,000, 00:21:05.250 --> 00:21:07.815 14,000 years ago, 5-7, 00:21:07.815 --> 00:21:11.775 1-2,500, and also possibly a few 100 years ago. 00:21:11.775 --> 00:21:16.935 Now, you can see from this picture that Glacier Peak is a place that gets a lot of snow, 00:21:16.935 --> 00:21:19.470 lot of ice, there's a reason why it's called Glacier Peak. 00:21:19.470 --> 00:21:21.390 It's a place that's very difficult to work on, 00:21:21.390 --> 00:21:22.874 very difficult to access, 00:21:22.874 --> 00:21:24.420 and because of that, 00:21:24.420 --> 00:21:29.310 the primary geologic investigations are still happening today out there. 00:21:29.310 --> 00:21:33.390 It is likely that there will be evidence of small eruptions that will be found in 00:21:33.390 --> 00:21:35.520 the coming years that will fill 00:21:35.520 --> 00:21:38.955 out our understanding of what's happened at Glacier Peak. 00:21:38.955 --> 00:21:41.595 But this is what it looks like in detail, 00:21:41.595 --> 00:21:46.335 this graphic down here, that about every 1,000 years or so, 00:21:46.335 --> 00:21:51.360 there has been an eruption at Glacier Peak going back the last 3,000 or 4,000 years. 00:21:51.360 --> 00:21:55.020 This is a place that has definitely, an active volcano, 00:21:55.020 --> 00:21:58.720 although it may not look like it in this picture. 00:21:59.420 --> 00:22:02.684 I mentioned that there's active geologic investigations 00:22:02.684 --> 00:22:04.800 ongoing right now at Glacier Peak. 00:22:04.800 --> 00:22:07.680 It's quite possible that there will be 00:22:07.680 --> 00:22:12.690 more triangles to fill in this line and maybe it will change its ranking. 00:22:12.690 --> 00:22:16.860 That in fact happened at Mount Rainier a decade ago, 00:22:16.860 --> 00:22:19.335 actually more than a decade ago now. 00:22:19.335 --> 00:22:24.929 What we thought about Mount Rainier was this, only four icons. 00:22:24.929 --> 00:22:29.250 But in the early aughts, there was very, 00:22:29.250 --> 00:22:32.730 very careful geologic investigations that were 00:22:32.730 --> 00:22:37.980 done that teased out more eruptions. 00:22:37.980 --> 00:22:41.100 This is what we think of today and it went from number five to number 00:22:41.100 --> 00:22:44.190 two and it's quite possible the same thing could happen at Glacier Peak. 00:22:44.190 --> 00:22:46.965 This is an example of the importance of research, 00:22:46.965 --> 00:22:49.110 really giving us the information we need to make 00:22:49.110 --> 00:22:52.710 informed decisions about what volcanoes to prioritize our work on, 00:22:52.710 --> 00:22:55.095 what volcanoes to communicate to communities, 00:22:55.095 --> 00:22:57.720 or ones that people should be thinking about. 00:22:57.720 --> 00:23:00.585 Also to inform monitoring strategies and 00:23:00.585 --> 00:23:04.545 what volcanoes we really should be thinking about focusing on. 00:23:04.545 --> 00:23:07.695 Continuing on with Glacier Peak just for a little while, 00:23:07.695 --> 00:23:12.570 so also something that happens with geologic mapping is mapped deposits 00:23:12.570 --> 00:23:18.315 that are produced by eruptions and one of the results of that is a hazard map. 00:23:18.315 --> 00:23:27.960 This map shows the pink area is the area that's close to Glacier Peak. 00:23:27.960 --> 00:23:29.880 This is a place you would not want to be 00:23:29.880 --> 00:23:33.780 when a volcano awakens, glaciers melt, volcanic bombs fall out of the air, 00:23:33.780 --> 00:23:40.980 where rivers of hot gases can sweep down the slopes and get there pretty quickly. 00:23:40.980 --> 00:23:46.095 Then we've got lahars as another big hazard. 00:23:46.095 --> 00:23:50.700 Lahar is an Indonesian term for a volcanic mud flow, 00:23:50.700 --> 00:23:58.455 and it's something that happens when you have a lot of ice and snow or water, 00:23:58.455 --> 00:24:02.730 and you get hot rock on top of that snow and ice, that melts 00:24:02.730 --> 00:24:06.915 it and you get a big flood coming down, 00:24:06.915 --> 00:24:09.375 but it's a different kind of a flood. 00:24:09.375 --> 00:24:13.560 There's Whidbey Island, sorry, down here for geographic reference, 00:24:13.560 --> 00:24:15.910 how close you are to Glacier Peak. 00:24:16.490 --> 00:24:21.135 These are pictures from Mount St. Helens that show what 00:24:21.135 --> 00:24:22.590 happened during 1980 with 00:24:22.590 --> 00:24:25.560 very large lahars that were produced during the May 18 eruption. 00:24:25.560 --> 00:24:28.560 Here's a smaller lahar in 1982 that was produced by 00:24:28.560 --> 00:24:32.700 an explosion that put hot rock on top of snow and created this slurry. 00:24:32.700 --> 00:24:34.920 You can see that the deposit it leaves behind, 00:24:34.920 --> 00:24:36.255 looks a lot like cement. 00:24:36.255 --> 00:24:41.760 It is pretty tough stuff and it's very destructive because it can float boulders. 00:24:41.760 --> 00:24:50.055 Here, I've got a video that is a much, much smaller version of a lahar. 00:24:50.055 --> 00:24:52.410 This is something that's called a debris flow, 00:24:52.410 --> 00:24:53.850 but it's the same principle. 00:24:53.850 --> 00:24:58.440 This is taken at Mount Rainier nearby by tourists 00:24:58.440 --> 00:25:01.590 in 2015, so six years ago now. 00:25:01.590 --> 00:25:04.560 The debris flow is coming towards us and you'll 00:25:04.560 --> 00:25:08.130 notice that it's carrying trees on top of it. 00:25:08.130 --> 00:25:10.560 I'll just let you watch this a little bit. 00:25:10.560 --> 00:25:16.770 "I'm scared. Get back. 00:25:16.770 --> 00:25:24.560 I'm scared. This is all dry. 00:25:24.560 --> 00:25:27.670 There hasn't been water down here, look at all this." 00:25:27.670 --> 00:25:30.115 Look at all these trees that it is carrying, the trees are about, 00:25:30.115 --> 00:25:34.045 I don't know, 50 feet long, big trees. 00:25:34.045 --> 00:25:36.635 And that interacts 00:25:36.635 --> 00:25:41.695 with bridges like a battering ram we've been talking about. 00:25:41.695 --> 00:25:43.450 "Look at that tree, 00:25:43.450 --> 00:25:46.945 that's like 50 feet tall tree going down." 00:25:46.945 --> 00:25:49.390 Here behind you can see- 00:25:49.390 --> 00:25:50.590 "The ground is shaking." 00:25:50.590 --> 00:25:52.015 in that particular flow 00:25:52.015 --> 00:25:56.710 there are boulders that are being carried and that in a regular flood, 00:25:56.710 --> 00:25:58.270 a water-based flood, 00:25:58.270 --> 00:26:02.620 would not be able to carry. 00:26:02.620 --> 00:26:07.840 "Run!" 00:26:07.840 --> 00:26:09.385 "Look at that tree how tall that is." 00:26:09.385 --> 00:26:13.989 Moving on, on a large-scale, 00:26:13.989 --> 00:26:16.090 that's the thing that could happen during 00:26:16.090 --> 00:26:19.915 the Glacier Peak eruption if there was a significant eruption. 00:26:19.915 --> 00:26:21.010 All the snow and ice up there, 00:26:21.010 --> 00:26:23.020 we'd expect to have lahars coming down. 00:26:23.020 --> 00:26:27.880 This color scheme corresponds to the likelihood of it reaching different places. 00:26:27.880 --> 00:26:33.850 Darrington would be a place that we would be concerned about and would be working 00:26:33.850 --> 00:26:40.285 with the community there to have evacuation plans in place, and so on. 00:26:40.285 --> 00:26:42.430 Arlington would be much less likely, 00:26:42.430 --> 00:26:44.410 particularly because there's not right now 00:26:44.410 --> 00:26:48.715 a direct connection between river channels down to there. 00:26:48.715 --> 00:26:53.230 Also going up here towards possibly Concrete and Hamilton, 00:26:53.230 --> 00:26:57.955 but these are fairly low likelihood things in terms of the lahar event itself. 00:26:57.955 --> 00:27:01.390 But what would happen in the following days and weeks would be, 00:27:01.390 --> 00:27:03.340 there's a lot of sediment that gets deposited in 00:27:03.340 --> 00:27:05.620 here and that sediment would make its way down here 00:27:05.620 --> 00:27:10.495 and cause flooding in weeks and months and years to come following that. 00:27:10.495 --> 00:27:16.630 One person once said that lahars are the gifts that keep on giving. 00:27:16.630 --> 00:27:19.945 It is a hazard initially when it happens, 00:27:19.945 --> 00:27:23.650 but then the problems that it creates in terms of flooding 00:27:23.650 --> 00:27:28.075 in stream valleys can last for decades after the eruption is actually finished. 00:27:28.075 --> 00:27:32.410 The other big consideration for Glacier Peak or 00:27:32.410 --> 00:27:37.075 any eruption that happens when you're not in the near field is ash. 00:27:37.075 --> 00:27:42.715 This is a picture 00:27:42.715 --> 00:27:48.850 of ash distribution that happen from a Mount St. Helens eruption on June 12th of 1980. 00:27:48.850 --> 00:27:52.945 This hachured mark, this is from the Oregon Journal, 00:27:52.945 --> 00:27:58.030 this hachured area shows where ashfall was 00:27:58.030 --> 00:28:00.520 reported and it made it all the way to Tacoma and 00:28:00.520 --> 00:28:03.010 down to Portland and Salem and even over to the coast, 00:28:03.010 --> 00:28:05.575 which is really weird that it went that far west, 00:28:05.575 --> 00:28:08.425 given that winds mostly blow west to east. 00:28:08.425 --> 00:28:11.740 What ash looks like when it lands, 00:28:11.740 --> 00:28:13.780 even a small amount of ash, a millimeter, 00:28:13.780 --> 00:28:16.975 which is less than a quarter of an inch [~1/16 in] it looks like this. 00:28:16.975 --> 00:28:18.985 This is what Portland looked like the day following. 00:28:18.985 --> 00:28:21.250 It looks like fog, mist, 00:28:21.250 --> 00:28:25.360 but it's these little particles of ash that are really 00:28:25.360 --> 00:28:29.650 annoying and can be hard on equipment and hard on machinery, 00:28:29.650 --> 00:28:30.865 and also hard to get rid of. 00:28:30.865 --> 00:28:35.200 Really the best way to get rid of them is with water and spraying off things. 00:28:35.200 --> 00:28:39.830 You don't want to wipe your windshield ever, you want to get the stuff off with water. 00:28:40.770 --> 00:28:45.655 A decent question to ask is for a Glacier Peak, 00:28:45.655 --> 00:28:51.235 what is the likelihood of Whidbey Island ever receiving ash from Glacier Peak? 00:28:51.235 --> 00:28:55.960 This is another example of applicability of research. 00:28:55.960 --> 00:29:01.210 We know from understanding the Glacier Peak volcanic history that 00:29:01.210 --> 00:29:03.910 the most likely eruption to happen at Glacier Peak 00:29:03.910 --> 00:29:06.805 is not the 13,600 year big explosive one, 00:29:06.805 --> 00:29:10.210 but actually one that's more like what happened at Mount St. Helens, say in 2004. 00:29:10.210 --> 00:29:12.160 It's a small dome that collapsed 00:29:12.160 --> 00:29:15.715 and produced some ash into the air, not a ton. 00:29:15.715 --> 00:29:21.355 We know that there have been four of those in the last 10,000 years. 00:29:21.355 --> 00:29:24.310 That's a probability of once every 2,500 years. 00:29:24.310 --> 00:29:27.340 That's one number that we can put into this question of 00:29:27.340 --> 00:29:31.700 what's the likelihood of ash falling on Whidbey Island? 00:29:32.040 --> 00:29:37.615 Another part of this is, 00:29:37.615 --> 00:29:41.950 where would the ash go if it were to go into the air? 00:29:41.950 --> 00:29:44.815 We have a person at our office, Larry Mastin, who studies 00:29:44.815 --> 00:29:48.580 what happens to ash when it gets into the air. It involves bringing 00:29:48.580 --> 00:29:53.965 wind field data and volumes of modeling how ash falls out of clouds. 00:29:53.965 --> 00:29:59.090 It's a terribly complex process, 00:29:59.100 --> 00:30:05.545 but in this modeling, one thing that he does is he uses historic wind field data, 00:30:05.545 --> 00:30:08.515 just takes random 1,000 days of wind field data, 00:30:08.515 --> 00:30:12.535 takes it from straight from the weather service and does 1,000 run. 00:30:12.535 --> 00:30:16.720 From that, he puts together this map that shows that that 30 percent of the time there's 00:30:16.720 --> 00:30:18.400 a millimeter of ash that's produced within 00:30:18.400 --> 00:30:22.315 this area and 10 percent of the time, this area. 00:30:22.315 --> 00:30:26.455 Out here is the one percent number. 00:30:26.455 --> 00:30:28.390 One percent of the time, 00:30:28.390 --> 00:30:32.230 an eruption is big enough and the winds are blowing far enough in the right direction. 00:30:32.230 --> 00:30:34.450 For one millimeter of ash, 00:30:34.450 --> 00:30:38.035 or about a quarter of an inch [~1/16 in] of ash to land there. 00:30:38.035 --> 00:30:42.010 That's the other number to put into this calculator is 00:30:42.010 --> 00:30:48.640 one percent chance of 0.04 inches falling on Whidbey Island if there's an eruption. 00:30:48.640 --> 00:30:51.549 In order to come up with this magic probability, 00:30:51.549 --> 00:30:53.185 we take the one percent chance, 00:30:53.185 --> 00:30:58.150 if there's an eruption, with the chance of an eruption and we multiply them together. 00:30:58.150 --> 00:31:00.280 What comes out of that is a 00:31:00.280 --> 00:31:09.040 1 in 25,000 annual chance or 00:31:09.040 --> 00:31:12.010 a one and nine million, of ash falling on the communities in 00:31:12.010 --> 00:31:14.740 Whidbey Island from an eruption at Glacier Peak. 00:31:14.740 --> 00:31:16.525 To put those numbers in perspective, 00:31:16.525 --> 00:31:23.395 Powerball odds on a one-off basis is one in over 290 million. 00:31:23.395 --> 00:31:26.230 Chances are better than winning the Powerball, 00:31:26.230 --> 00:31:30.460 which is always something good to keep in mind when you think about doing Powerball. 00:31:30.460 --> 00:31:34.970 On the other hand, your odds of getting into a car accident are much higher. 00:31:37.470 --> 00:31:41.380 The way that I like to think of this is that this helps me understand what 00:31:41.380 --> 00:31:44.770 my personal risk is and what things I should really be focusing on. 00:31:44.770 --> 00:31:47.080 It's easy to focus on eruptions and go, 00:31:47.080 --> 00:31:49.270 "whoo, that could be really bad." 00:31:49.270 --> 00:31:52.090 But the reality is that the thing that we all do every day, 00:31:52.090 --> 00:31:53.890 most days, getting into a car, 00:31:53.890 --> 00:31:56.695 that's something that we really need to pay attention to in terms of 00:31:56.695 --> 00:32:00.895 minimizing our risk to our personal selves on a day-to-day basis. 00:32:00.895 --> 00:32:03.310 This isn't to say that wouldn't happen. 00:32:03.310 --> 00:32:05.755 When Glacier Peak wakes up again, 00:32:05.755 --> 00:32:08.065 then the chances become a lot greater. 00:32:08.065 --> 00:32:10.840 But this is just something as 00:32:10.840 --> 00:32:16.780 a useful data point to keep in the back of one's mind. That's research. 00:32:16.780 --> 00:32:20.515 Next thing to focus on is monitoring. 00:32:20.515 --> 00:32:25.030 Monitoring is where we mitigate volcanic hazards through 00:32:25.030 --> 00:32:29.815 providing society with information that needs to understand what it should do, 00:32:29.815 --> 00:32:32.710 especially if a volcano wakes up. 00:32:32.710 --> 00:32:38.485 The basic idea behind monitoring is that as magma moves towards the surface, 00:32:38.485 --> 00:32:40.255 it breaks a pathway, 00:32:40.255 --> 00:32:44.064 and so it creates earthquakes that we can measure with seismometers. 00:32:44.064 --> 00:32:47.815 It releases gases as it gets closer to the surface. 00:32:47.815 --> 00:32:53.110 Pressure is less, and that allows gases that are kept inside the magma to escape. 00:32:53.110 --> 00:32:57.520 This is equivalent to what happens when you have a can 00:32:57.520 --> 00:33:02.170 of Coke and you shake up the can of Coke and then you can see bubbles, 00:33:02.170 --> 00:33:06.085 but the bubbles are staying inside the Coke until you take off the lid. 00:33:06.085 --> 00:33:09.940 Once you take off the lid, all the bubbles come out. 00:33:09.940 --> 00:33:15.235 Taking off the lid is reducing the pressure on the soda that's inside. 00:33:15.235 --> 00:33:16.615 It's the same exact principle, 00:33:16.615 --> 00:33:18.265 as magma moves upwards, 00:33:18.265 --> 00:33:20.410 the pressure is less and that allows more of 00:33:20.410 --> 00:33:22.870 the gas that's stored in the magma to come out. 00:33:22.870 --> 00:33:27.445 That gas will make its way up the vent and can be measured at the surface. 00:33:27.445 --> 00:33:30.115 There are particular gases, 00:33:30.115 --> 00:33:32.515 carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide, 00:33:32.515 --> 00:33:37.870 that are very diagnostic for telling us that magma is on the move. 00:33:37.870 --> 00:33:41.500 The last thing is that as magma moves around, 00:33:41.500 --> 00:33:45.385 it changes position and it changes volume. 00:33:45.385 --> 00:33:50.560 That results in changes of locations on the surface, 00:33:50.560 --> 00:33:52.195 what we call surface deformation. 00:33:52.195 --> 00:33:56.035 It's swelling of the surface or sagging of the surface. 00:33:56.035 --> 00:34:02.425 Those also are indicators that we can use to determine is magma moving? 00:34:02.425 --> 00:34:08.155 Where is it moving? How much magma is down there? 00:34:08.155 --> 00:34:13.735 To detect those early warning signs, 00:34:13.735 --> 00:34:17.290 there's a whole array of different types of instrumentation that we use. 00:34:17.290 --> 00:34:21.130 Standard ones are things that look at deformation. 00:34:21.130 --> 00:34:22.795 Nowadays we use GPS, 00:34:22.795 --> 00:34:27.400 which is what all of us have on our cell phones that tell us where we are. 00:34:27.400 --> 00:34:30.130 In this case, we put the GPS instruments out in the field. 00:34:30.130 --> 00:34:35.050 Their job is to tell us where the location of that spot over and over and over, 00:34:35.050 --> 00:34:38.425 and we can tell if that spot has moved by a millimeter, 00:34:38.425 --> 00:34:40.675 which is less than a quarter of an inch [~1/16 in], 00:34:40.675 --> 00:34:46.210 and very, very small ground motions can be detected that way. 00:34:46.210 --> 00:34:48.730 With gas monitoring, we use 00:34:48.730 --> 00:34:54.625 both ground-based and air-based forms of looking at what's coming out of volcano. 00:34:54.625 --> 00:35:00.475 For earthquakes, we work with various centers that pick up ground vibrations, 00:35:00.475 --> 00:35:02.440 both from earthquakes, but also we can use 00:35:02.440 --> 00:35:04.780 that for looking at lahars and other things. 00:35:04.780 --> 00:35:07.555 Then there's other detections, 00:35:07.555 --> 00:35:10.090 other ways to record information. 00:35:10.090 --> 00:35:14.410 We can use drones, we can use helicopters for doing thermal imaging, and cameras, 00:35:14.410 --> 00:35:19.045 just for being our eyes out there and telling us what's happening on the ground. 00:35:19.045 --> 00:35:20.650 Satellites are also important, 00:35:20.650 --> 00:35:25.120 also for tracking ash as well as hotspots and deformation. 00:35:25.120 --> 00:35:29.440 It's a whole wide range of things that can be done in monitoring. 00:35:29.440 --> 00:35:36.070 Typically, what we focus on right now are installing seismic and GPS station. 00:35:36.070 --> 00:35:38.845 Seismic and deformation monitoring stations. 00:35:38.845 --> 00:35:42.010 This shows a site down at Newberry, 00:35:42.010 --> 00:35:47.515 which is near Bend, Oregon, south of Bend, Oregon. 00:35:47.515 --> 00:35:50.320 This has a GPS instrument, 00:35:50.320 --> 00:35:53.470 this dome here is picking up 00:35:53.470 --> 00:35:58.870 satellite transmissions and sending it over to a box over here. 00:35:58.870 --> 00:36:01.990 Then we also have a seismometer buried in the ground right here. 00:36:01.990 --> 00:36:05.140 These solar panels charge batteries that are inside this enclosure. 00:36:05.140 --> 00:36:07.120 The enclosure is about five foot tall. 00:36:07.120 --> 00:36:10.720 You can see a colleague of mine, their hat just barely sticking over the rim. 00:36:10.720 --> 00:36:12.520 My colleague there is about five foot six, 00:36:12.520 --> 00:36:14.635 that gives you a sense of how big it is. 00:36:14.635 --> 00:36:18.580 Then a radio antenna that we use to beam 00:36:18.580 --> 00:36:23.230 the data out to a place where it makes its way back to the observatory. 00:36:23.230 --> 00:36:29.240 This site was installed in 2011 and it's been happily operating ever since then. 00:36:31.410 --> 00:36:36.040 It's a very quiet site and we can see a lot things with it. 00:36:36.040 --> 00:36:40.960 A non-standard site, is this one at Mount Rainier. 00:36:40.960 --> 00:36:45.670 We're looking straight on the west face of Mount Rainier into the Sunset Amphitheater. 00:36:45.670 --> 00:36:49.465 This red circle shows a site that's located at about 11,000 feet. 00:36:49.465 --> 00:36:52.285 It's totally surrounded by glacial ice, 00:36:52.285 --> 00:36:55.435 very difficult to get to by foot. 00:36:55.435 --> 00:36:57.580 We often use helicopters to get to it. 00:36:57.580 --> 00:37:00.070 This is what it looks like up close and personal. 00:37:00.070 --> 00:37:03.085 The big ice falls all around it. 00:37:03.085 --> 00:37:06.700 We have this right there because we need to be close to 00:37:06.700 --> 00:37:09.880 the volcano with some of our sites to be able to detect very small earthquakes, 00:37:09.880 --> 00:37:12.220 and very small amounts of ground deformation. 00:37:12.220 --> 00:37:15.430 This is a site from Mount St. Helens showing 00:37:15.430 --> 00:37:18.205 one of the difficulties of doing this work in the Cascades. 00:37:18.205 --> 00:37:20.560 Snow is a big deal. 00:37:20.560 --> 00:37:22.090 We get lots of snow, 00:37:22.090 --> 00:37:26.470 especially high altitudes, and sometimes we have to go out and unbury them. 00:37:26.470 --> 00:37:28.720 This is a site that's in the crater of Mount St. Helens, 00:37:28.720 --> 00:37:31.795 it's a really important site to keep operational. 00:37:31.795 --> 00:37:34.600 Sometimes we do go out there and literally just dig a whole lot of 00:37:34.600 --> 00:37:38.360 snow to unearth the site and get it running again. 00:37:39.270 --> 00:37:47.605 Efforts over the last decade have resulted in improved networks up and down the Cascades. 00:37:47.605 --> 00:37:50.605 This gives you a sense of where the networks are. 00:37:50.605 --> 00:37:53.140 Mount St. Helens is the gold standard 00:37:53.140 --> 00:37:56.080 as it should be because it has had two eruptive cycles. 00:37:56.080 --> 00:37:58.540 Mount Rainier is pretty close. 00:37:58.540 --> 00:37:59.770 Mount Hood is pretty close, 00:37:59.770 --> 00:38:02.469 but you can see that Glacier Peak has just one seismometer. 00:38:02.469 --> 00:38:06.610 Mount Baker has three seismometers and these are two places where we are focusing 00:38:06.610 --> 00:38:11.590 on right now to try and improve the monitoring situation there. 00:38:11.590 --> 00:38:15.700 At Glacier Peak, every 00:38:15.700 --> 00:38:18.730 once in a while a volcano gives you a reminder of the importance of doing something. 00:38:18.730 --> 00:38:21.100 Right on Thanksgiving eve in 2015, 00:38:21.100 --> 00:38:22.570 there was a mini-swarm. 00:38:22.570 --> 00:38:25.150 Here is Glacier Peak right here, 00:38:25.150 --> 00:38:26.410 and we've got one station. 00:38:26.410 --> 00:38:29.980 That's the one station located fairly close to the volcano. 00:38:29.980 --> 00:38:33.910 These blue circles here are earthquakes from the historic catalog. 00:38:33.910 --> 00:38:38.245 These yellow circles here show the locations of two Magnitude 3+ earthquakes, 00:38:38.245 --> 00:38:43.240 not small events, that happened in fairly rapid succession of each other. 00:38:43.240 --> 00:38:47.620 The network here is so poor that the errors on these earthquakes, 00:38:47.620 --> 00:38:49.675 we don't really know whether they are low. 00:38:49.675 --> 00:38:53.720 They could've been underneath the volcano or off to the side. 00:38:53.760 --> 00:38:57.865 There were a half dozen earthquakes in total. 00:38:57.865 --> 00:39:01.390 This is an example of a kind of thing that can sometimes lead to 00:39:01.390 --> 00:39:04.900 the start of a crisis at a volcano. 00:39:04.900 --> 00:39:09.865 This is how Mount St. Helens started in 1980 with a Magnitude 4, out of the blue. 00:39:09.865 --> 00:39:13.060 In this case, luckily nothing happened. 00:39:13.060 --> 00:39:14.710 It started and stopped. 00:39:14.710 --> 00:39:16.600 But here's the Magnitude 3, here's the 3.4. 00:39:16.600 --> 00:39:19.930 Here's a couple of other aftershocks, and then that was it. 00:39:19.930 --> 00:39:22.915 This is just an illustration that Glacier Peak is 00:39:22.915 --> 00:39:27.535 an active system and we always have to keep our eyes out. 00:39:27.535 --> 00:39:30.310 We are working on a permanent proposal right 00:39:30.310 --> 00:39:33.400 now for four news sites out at Glacier Peak. 00:39:33.400 --> 00:39:35.830 There's actually five yellow dots, 00:39:35.830 --> 00:39:39.760 two of these are alternatives depending on how things work. 00:39:39.760 --> 00:39:44.050 We submitted the permanent request initially in 2015. 00:39:44.050 --> 00:39:48.100 There is a public comment period coming in 2021, 00:39:48.100 --> 00:39:50.750 in the spring, May or June. 00:39:51.060 --> 00:39:55.120 If you have comments to make about this, 00:39:55.120 --> 00:40:01.430 then pay attention, the Forest Service will send out announcements about this. 00:40:01.500 --> 00:40:03.805 That's the monitoring story. 00:40:03.805 --> 00:40:08.365 The last piece that I want to talk about is community preparedness. 00:40:08.365 --> 00:40:11.260 This is not something that typically 00:40:11.260 --> 00:40:15.985 scientists think of or are thought of doing as part of their work. 00:40:15.985 --> 00:40:21.730 But there was a major lesson learned by 00:40:21.730 --> 00:40:25.990 the global volcano community in a volcano disaster that happened in 00:40:25.990 --> 00:40:30.670 Armero, Colombia, in 1985, 00:40:30.670 --> 00:40:33.040 there was a volcano called Nevado del Ruiz, 00:40:33.040 --> 00:40:35.935 that had been restless for a number of months, 00:40:35.935 --> 00:40:39.820 and there were scientists that were working on the eruption. 00:40:39.820 --> 00:40:42.580 Then the volcano erupted and scientists were aware 00:40:42.580 --> 00:40:44.995 that it had erupted and sent word out. 00:40:44.995 --> 00:40:46.900 But for a variety of reasons, 00:40:46.900 --> 00:40:50.365 the word never got to the people that were in harm's way. 00:40:50.365 --> 00:40:55.390 Two hours later, a massive lava came through and wiped out several towns, 00:40:55.390 --> 00:40:59.275 including the town of Armero where over 20,000 people died. 00:40:59.275 --> 00:41:04.150 The big part of the tragedy of this, is 00:41:04.150 --> 00:41:08.305 that two hours was more than enough time for these people to get out of the way. 00:41:08.305 --> 00:41:10.525 All they had to do was walk this way, 00:41:10.525 --> 00:41:12.850 go uphill or go this way, go uphill. 00:41:12.850 --> 00:41:16.375 There's plenty of time for me to do that if one word had gotten to them. 00:41:16.375 --> 00:41:21.025 This was regarded as largely a failure in communication and community preparedness, 00:41:21.025 --> 00:41:23.950 and the importance of scientists being involved in 00:41:23.950 --> 00:41:28.370 ensuring that that happens was really underscored by this event. 00:41:28.500 --> 00:41:32.800 This is something that we do in 00:41:32.800 --> 00:41:36.490 the Cascades through things like putting together products like this. 00:41:36.490 --> 00:41:40.195 This is from Mount Rainier, but there's a similar product that exists for Glacier Peak, 00:41:40.195 --> 00:41:42.190 that I showed you before. 00:41:42.190 --> 00:41:46.840 That has not just the hazard map information, 00:41:46.840 --> 00:41:49.360 but also information about what you can do. 00:41:49.360 --> 00:41:52.570 One of the things that's really important in all this is 00:41:52.570 --> 00:41:56.380 that in volcanology we have weird language. 00:41:56.380 --> 00:42:00.325 The language of volcanology reflects an international language and reflects 00:42:00.325 --> 00:42:04.435 the origins of where people have been doing the work. 00:42:04.435 --> 00:42:06.220 One example is Strombolian, 00:42:06.220 --> 00:42:07.495 that's a kind of eruption, 00:42:07.495 --> 00:42:09.835 and that comes from Stromboli, Italy. 00:42:09.835 --> 00:42:11.695 That's an Italian word. 00:42:11.695 --> 00:42:14.410 Then there's other terms like lahar, 00:42:14.410 --> 00:42:23.630 is an Indonesian term, pyroclastic is sort of a Latin term. 00:42:23.880 --> 00:42:25.960 These words that we use, 00:42:25.960 --> 00:42:27.250 we have to be careful with jargon, 00:42:27.250 --> 00:42:30.790 and we also have to make sure people understand what they are when we say them, 00:42:30.790 --> 00:42:34.855 and so lahar is a word that is not part of the common language and so it's 00:42:34.855 --> 00:42:39.130 our role to ensure that people understand what we mean when we say, 00:42:39.130 --> 00:42:42.940 lahar, and this is a product, 00:42:42.940 --> 00:42:47.290 this hazard map product is one of the ways that we attempt to communicate that. 00:42:47.290 --> 00:42:50.470 Something else that we've done in the USGS is ensure that we've got 00:42:50.470 --> 00:42:56.699 a fairly simple way of communicating hazard levels at different volcanoes, 00:42:56.699 --> 00:42:58.780 and this is a system that's used at 00:42:58.780 --> 00:43:03.640 all observatories so you can go to Alaska and hear the same thing, 00:43:03.640 --> 00:43:05.425 and you'd understand what it would mean. 00:43:05.425 --> 00:43:10.330 It's also tied to the National Weather Services alert level system, 00:43:10.330 --> 00:43:11.995 normal advisory watch warning, 00:43:11.995 --> 00:43:15.370 you have language that directly maps into that so if you're used to hearing 00:43:15.370 --> 00:43:19.990 about snowstorm warnings or flood warnings from the National Weather Service, 00:43:19.990 --> 00:43:26.525 the language maps into our understanding of alert levels at volcanoes. 00:43:26.525 --> 00:43:33.490 Another thing that we do is work with the various groups of partner agencies and 00:43:33.490 --> 00:43:40.885 groups that have a vested interest in responding to a crisis at specific volcanoes. 00:43:40.885 --> 00:43:43.780 Over the course of the last several decades, 00:43:43.780 --> 00:43:45.100 there have been working groups formed 00:43:45.100 --> 00:43:47.770 at the major volcanoes from Mount Baker / Glacier Peak, 00:43:47.770 --> 00:43:49.000 from Mount Rainier, from Mount St. Helens, 00:43:49.000 --> 00:43:52.225 Mount Adams, Mount Hood, to the central Cascades, 00:43:52.225 --> 00:43:55.030 and there are plans that have been produced for each of 00:43:55.030 --> 00:43:58.165 those that spell out all of the different agencies that 00:43:58.165 --> 00:44:04.855 would have a role to play in a crisis response and how we would start communicating. 00:44:04.855 --> 00:44:08.920 This is not a response plan in the sense of here's what would you do if a, 00:44:08.920 --> 00:44:11.935 b, and c, this is more like how would we get the thing started? 00:44:11.935 --> 00:44:13.585 How would we get the response started? 00:44:13.585 --> 00:44:15.850 That can be the most difficult thing to begin with. 00:44:15.850 --> 00:44:19.465 If nobody knows who anybody else is and you get a crisis going, 00:44:19.465 --> 00:44:24.040 you're behind the eight ball already and the response is not going to be as effective. 00:44:24.040 --> 00:44:28.330 Hopefully, people feel some sense of assurance that the agencies that will be 00:44:28.330 --> 00:44:33.235 responsible for responding to a crisis are talking to each other now, 00:44:33.235 --> 00:44:38.305 are thinking about hazards at these specific volcanoes and what steps will be taken 00:44:38.305 --> 00:44:44.485 to mitigate the hazards should that specific volcano wake up. 00:44:44.485 --> 00:44:47.320 Lots of partners are involved in this. 00:44:47.320 --> 00:44:53.560 This is a small spattering of logos from all the different agencies. 00:44:53.560 --> 00:44:56.815 There's federal folks, there's universities, 00:44:56.815 --> 00:44:59.350 there's regional, there's counties, 00:44:59.350 --> 00:45:02.290 there's state-level types of things, 00:45:02.290 --> 00:45:07.820 so it's a multi-agency effort in all of the different volcanoes. 00:45:07.980 --> 00:45:11.080 We also lastly, try to be out in 00:45:11.080 --> 00:45:16.240 the community doing things like having workshops with various partner groups, 00:45:16.240 --> 00:45:19.330 producing hazard products like I mentioned before, 00:45:19.330 --> 00:45:23.320 and also doing a lot of work with news and social media, 00:45:23.320 --> 00:45:25.435 and just want to highlight this at the very end 00:45:25.435 --> 00:45:30.770 that we have three active social media accounts, 00:45:31.290 --> 00:45:37.780 all under USGS Volcanoes is the tagline to search on for Facebook, 00:45:37.780 --> 00:45:39.265 for Twitter, and for Instagram, 00:45:39.265 --> 00:45:43.405 and it's an active channel with posts multiple times a day, 00:45:43.405 --> 00:45:48.025 as well as daily updates or weekly updates as things proceed. 00:45:48.025 --> 00:45:51.370 Something for those of you who are interested in following along to go 00:45:51.370 --> 00:45:55.195 check it out after this talk is done. 00:45:55.195 --> 00:45:58.450 That's CVO in a nutshell. 00:45:58.450 --> 00:46:03.490 I started off showing this picture of these 80 or so folks. 00:46:03.490 --> 00:46:08.320 A lot of things that we do and what's 00:46:08.320 --> 00:46:13.450 really required is a lot of different kinds of specialties to bring to bear. 00:46:13.450 --> 00:46:14.860 So we have a lot of "-ologists" 00:46:14.860 --> 00:46:19.750 we have geologists who do the mapping of eruption deposits. 00:46:19.750 --> 00:46:21.670 We have people like myself, seismologists, 00:46:21.670 --> 00:46:27.130 who study earthquake waves and have more of a physics and a math background. 00:46:27.130 --> 00:46:30.295 We have geochemists who are the folks that do work with gas, 00:46:30.295 --> 00:46:32.080 they've got more of a chemistry background. 00:46:32.080 --> 00:46:35.545 Geodesists are also looking at surface deformation, 00:46:35.545 --> 00:46:37.345 they are more physics and math based. 00:46:37.345 --> 00:46:41.605 We have people specialized working with satellites. 00:46:41.605 --> 00:46:44.575 We've got hydrologists who think a lot about 00:46:44.575 --> 00:46:49.330 fluid flow and looking at changes in river channels over time. 00:46:49.330 --> 00:46:51.789 These are the folks that model lahars. 00:46:51.789 --> 00:46:53.950 We have GIS specialists, 00:46:53.950 --> 00:46:55.420 people who help with computers, 00:46:55.420 --> 00:46:58.074 people who do physical modeling, computer programmers, 00:46:58.074 --> 00:47:01.285 field instrumentation specialists and engineers who are folks that 00:47:01.285 --> 00:47:05.430 oftentimes have really great ability to work with their hands, 00:47:05.430 --> 00:47:07.920 and so it's not so much a question of people who are going 00:47:07.920 --> 00:47:10.710 through and getting their degrees in volcanology to work on volcanoes, 00:47:10.710 --> 00:47:13.770 but people who were up working in farms or working out in 00:47:13.770 --> 00:47:18.210 the woods have excellent talents that really are important. 00:47:18.210 --> 00:47:22.525 We have outreach specialists that help with getting messaging out. 00:47:22.525 --> 00:47:27.145 Lastly, we have administrators who are people that help us navigate 00:47:27.145 --> 00:47:30.280 the government bureaucracy that we live in and work 00:47:30.280 --> 00:47:33.940 in to ensure that we are able to do our jobs safely, 00:47:33.940 --> 00:47:38.665 effectively, and without getting afoul of any kind of rules. 00:47:38.665 --> 00:47:43.030 The message of this slide is that you don't have to be a scientist, 00:47:43.030 --> 00:47:46.465 you don't have to be a volcanologist to work in an observatory. 00:47:46.465 --> 00:47:48.460 The beautiful thing about an observatory is 00:47:48.460 --> 00:47:51.280 that everybody here has these different trainings, 00:47:51.280 --> 00:47:55.375 these different backgrounds but we all get the mission and we all get how 00:47:55.375 --> 00:48:00.070 each of us has a role to play and how that role fits in with other roles, 00:48:00.070 --> 00:48:02.020 and that really we can't do it by ourselves, 00:48:02.020 --> 00:48:04.585 we have to have this larger group, 00:48:04.585 --> 00:48:09.950 and it's really as truly a team environment in the end. 00:48:10.380 --> 00:48:13.870 Last thing, I'll leave you with is that we 00:48:13.870 --> 00:48:18.970 exist because volcanoes in the Cascades are there. 00:48:18.970 --> 00:48:21.160 We know that they erupt, they will erupt again. 00:48:21.160 --> 00:48:22.390 We know that when they do erupt, 00:48:22.390 --> 00:48:23.980 they can awaken very little notice, 00:48:23.980 --> 00:48:30.775 this is a plot of earthquakes over a five-day window that shows 00:48:30.775 --> 00:48:34.300 earthquakes occurring at Mount St. Helens where we went from nothing on 00:48:34.300 --> 00:48:38.620 September 22nd to a full-on crisis on September 27th, 00:48:38.620 --> 00:48:42.925 28th, and that all led to this, 00:48:42.925 --> 00:48:46.990 which is a picture of my wife took out of our back window on 00:48:46.990 --> 00:48:51.670 March 8th, 2005 when there was an explosion that happened at Mount St. Helens. 00:48:51.670 --> 00:48:53.260 This was the last time ash was in the air, 00:48:53.260 --> 00:48:56.290 but this thing can happen with very little warning, 00:48:56.290 --> 00:49:00.820 and so that's the reason why the Cascades Volcano Observatory exists so that 00:49:00.820 --> 00:49:05.935 we will be ready the next time something happens in the Cascades. 00:49:05.935 --> 00:49:08.530 With that, thank you for your 00:49:08.530 --> 00:49:11.840 attention and happy to take any questions.