August 5, 2005: Headlines: COS - Philippines: Science: Geology: Volcanoes: Seattle Intelligencer: Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Chris Newhall, one of the world's leading volcano scientists, is leaving Seattle and returning to a small village in the Philippines to live near Mayon Volcano, where he'll create a database tracking the behavior of volcanoes around the world

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Philippines: Peace Corps Philippines: The Peace Corps in the Philippines: August 5, 2005: Headlines: COS - Philippines: Science: Geology: Volcanoes: Seattle Intelligencer: Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Chris Newhall, one of the world's leading volcano scientists, is leaving Seattle and returning to a small village in the Philippines to live near Mayon Volcano, where he'll create a database tracking the behavior of volcanoes around the world

By Admin1 (admin) (pool-151-196-37-25.balt.east.verizon.net - 151.196.37.25) on Friday, August 05, 2005 - 6:51 pm: Edit Post

Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Chris Newhall, one of the world's leading volcano scientists, is leaving Seattle and returning to a small village in the Philippines to live near Mayon Volcano, where he'll create a database tracking the behavior of volcanoes around the world

Returned Peace Corps Volunteer  Chris Newhall, one of the world's leading volcano scientists, is leaving Seattle and returning to a small village in the Philippines to live near Mayon Volcano, where he'll create a database tracking the behavior of volcanoes around the world

Newhall likes volcanoes. Even after decades of working on these destructive beasts, he remains fascinated by their mysteries and immense power to alter the face of the planet. But Newhall, who first saw Mayon in 1970 as a Peace Corps volunteer to the Philippines, is just as obsessed with making sure science serves humanity. "Since Pinatubo, I'm less concerned about (research) publications and more concerned about just getting people out of the way," he said. The man who many refer to as a "walking encyclopedia of volcanology" is going to quit his Seattle post with the USGS to try to launch a Web-linked worldwide network of volcano observatories -- something he thinks is desperately needed to improve our ability to predict the behavior of these ticking, tectonic time bombs.

Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Chris Newhall, one of the world's leading volcano scientists, is leaving Seattle and returning to a small village in the Philippines to live near Mayon Volcano, where he'll create a database tracking the behavior of volcanoes around the world

Moving on: A volcano scientist to the core
Researcher to create network of observatories

By TOM PAULSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Will it explode or not?

If so, when and how big?

Those are the kinds of questions Chris Newhall has spent the past 30 years or so trying to answer.

Newhall, a world-renowned volcano scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey who also teaches at the University of Washington, has decided the best thing he can do now to help answer such questions is relocate some 6,600 miles away.

"Well, he's always liked to work in the background, out of the spotlight," joked Steve Malone, a volcano seismologist and colleague at the UW.

The man who many refer to as a "walking encyclopedia of volcanology" is going to quit his Seattle post with the USGS to try to launch a Web-linked worldwide network of volcano observatories -- something he thinks is desperately needed to improve our ability to predict the behavior of these ticking, tectonic time bombs.

Newhall, 56, who came here in 1980 to work on the Mount St. Helens eruption, is moving with his wife, Glenda, to a small village in the Philippines -- back near the lava-spewing fissure in the Earth's crust where his career began, the Mayon Volcano.

"It's a really pretty volcano and it erupts frequently," he said, as if describing a blossoming flower.

Newhall likes volcanoes. Even after decades of working on these destructive beasts, he remains fascinated by their mysteries and immense power to alter the face of the planet. But Newhall, who first saw Mayon in 1970 as a Peace Corps volunteer to the Philippines, is just as obsessed with making sure science serves humanity.

"Since Pinatubo, I'm less concerned about (research) publications and more concerned about just getting people out of the way," he said.

But Newhall has had to quit his job at the USGS to make it happen.

"The Survey wasn't interested in funding it and the agency's ethics rules forbid me from seeking funding for it," he said. "Sort of a Catch-22."

So, he's decided to move back to the Philippines (where he has wireless DSL access despite living in a remote area) and pursue his goals while gazing across the bay at beautiful Mayon. Seattle and the USGS are losing their volcano encyclopedia, but perhaps the world will gain a better system for diagnosing restless volcanoes.

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Newhall played a critical role in the emergency response to the 1991 massive eruption of Pinatubo. The volcano is north of Manila, near where the U.S. Air Force had operated Clark Air Base. "It had not erupted in historical time and Chris was the first to recognize what was happening," said Dan Dzurisin, a volcano expert and USGS colleague at the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash.

When Pinatubo started acting up, Newhall and others with expertise from monitoring Mount St. Helens were flown out with equipment to evaluate the risk. The military brass, of course, wanted clear, simple answers to the same questions. Now. After some furious -- and often risky -- evaluation of what had been a dormant volcano for hundreds of years, the gang from Mount St. Helens felt confident enough of a major eruption to eventually persuade officials to evacuate 80,000 people, saving countless lives.

"We got that one right," said Newhall.

But it isn't always so easy to determine what a volcano will do. Mount St. Helens had surprised the experts in 1980 with much greater violence than expected and, when it reawakened last fall, kept everyone guessing for quite a while as to what it intended.

If Pinatubo was a success, Newhall said, the 1985 eruption of Colombia's Nevada del Ruiz was a failure.

There was clear geological evidence indicating a town at the base, Armero, was at risk from massive mudflows. The volcano was being monitored for any signs of major eruption, he said, but there had been insufficient attention given to the mudflow history and the need for a much larger and more aggressive evacuation plan.

A relatively small eruption at Nevada del Ruiz (just 3 percent of the size, in terms of magma ejected, of the Mount St. Helens eruption) ended up melting the peak's glacier and causing a massive mudflow that buried Armero and killed about 23,000 people.

"That really shook everyone up," Newhall said.

Newhall thinks his latest project can significantly reduce the kind of scientific uncertainty, or ignorance, that still often complicates the crisis of a reawakening volcano.

He used a medical analogy to describe the state of affairs in volcanology today.

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If a doctor examining a patient encounters an unusual set of symptoms or lab test results he can't quite fathom, Newhall said, the physician checks the medical literature database to search for similar symptoms and findings to narrow down the diagnosis. "That's what we should be able to do for volcanoes," said Newhall. "We should be able to look for patterns and associations in the way volcanoes behave ... something like volcano epidemiology."

What he wants to create is called WOVOdat -- World Organization of Volcano Observatories database -- a globally accessible Web-based system of information on real-time monitoring of volcanoes around the world along with a directory of historical and reference literature that can be used to compare "symptoms" during emergencies.

"I will be out of the scientific rat race but still working on what I enjoy," Newhall said.

"It will be the best of both worlds."
P-I reporter Tom Paulson can be reached at 206-448-8318 or tompaulson@seattlepi.com.





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Story Source: Seattle Intelligencer

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Philippines; Science; Geology; Volcanoes

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By Antonio Stafford & Parneet Kohli (smtp.waikowhai.school.nz - 219.89.126.89) on Sunday, November 18, 2007 - 5:30 pm: Edit Post

Hi
We need to ask you these questions
for our school topic:
VOLCANOES
1] How long does iot take for a
volcano to be extinct?
2] What do scientists do to know if a volcano
will erupt?
3] How can we reduce the impact of a volcano?

A.S 11 y6 & P.K is 9 y5

By joshua jesus aquino (58.69.207.156) on Sunday, October 19, 2008 - 2:44 am: Edit Post

bicolano ako, haha... ganda talaga didi

By joshua jesus aquino (58.69.207.156) on Sunday, October 19, 2008 - 2:45 am: Edit Post

bicolano ako, haha... ganda talaga didi

By joshua jesus aquino (58.69.207.156) on Sunday, October 19, 2008 - 2:45 am: Edit Post

bicolano ako, haha... ganda talaga didi


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