{"id":19503,"date":"2017-05-12T09:51:43","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T13:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=19503"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:36:06","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:36:06","slug":"volcano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=19503","title":{"rendered":"A volcanologist\u2019s vigilance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cotopaxi,
Cotopaxi, one of South America\u2019s most dangerous volcanoes, emits a mixture of volcanic gases and steam on October 19, 2015. (photo by Mary Lide Parker.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As director of Ecuador\u2019s Geophysical Institute, Mario Ruiz has monitored some of the most active (and potentially destructive) volcanoes in South America. After earning his PhD at UNC 10 years ago, Ruiz has come back to Carolina to sift through data from the recent eruption of the Cotopaxi volcano.<\/em><\/p>\n

On a warm morning in mid-October, Ecuador\u2019s colorful capital, Quito, buzzes with activity. Throngs of people move through the market in the Mariscal, Yarav\u00ed music emanates from cars stuck in traffic, and street vendors sell fragrant salchipapas and empanadas to tourists and locals alike. The equatorial city basks in the abundant sunshine and crisp air of the Andes mountain range. But on this breezy, blue-sky day, Quito\u2019s alpine skyline includes an alarming sight\u2014the Cotopaxi volcano, a massive snow-capped peak located 30 miles outside the city, is smoking.<\/p>\n

Mario Ruiz, director of Ecuador\u2019s Geophysical Institute<\/a>, hunches over his desk, stressed and exhausted. Over the past several weeks, he has been fielding requests from reporters and government officials. He shuffles through papers, pushing aside a copy of last week\u2019s El Comercio<\/a> with the bold headline: Four Months on High Alert and Still No Agreement on Volcano Emergency Plans. <\/em><\/p>\n

Today is October 19, 2015. Cotopaxi erupted two months ago, spewing ash across the town of Latacunga and some southern neighborhoods in Quito. Ever since the eruption, the volcano has continued to emit ominous clouds of gas and steam, while the ground beneath it rumbles. Meanwhile, Ruiz and his team work around the clock to monitor Cotopaxi\u2019s seismic activity, trying to figure out if the ash blast was a singular event\u2014or is a bigger eruption building?<\/p>\n

Seismic rumbling is a regular occurrence around volcanoes\u2014dozens of minor earthquakes (only detectable by highly sensitive instrumentation) can occur in a week. \u00a0But now the instruments on Cotopaxi are picking up continuous seismic events\u2014over 100 a week.<\/p>\n

Anticipating the timing of an impending eruption, however, is complicated. Ecuador\u2019s geophysicists pore over their latest data, looking for patterns and clues, and compare them to past eruptions. Yesterday, Ruiz told a reporter from Cuenca High Life<\/em>: \u201cThe historic record shows that there have been 20 large eruptions over the past 2,000 years, and we are overdue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Studying South American Seismicity at UNC<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Ruiz first started working at the Institute in 1987, many of Ecuador\u2019s volcanoes were quiet. \u201cI was in charge of monitoring active volcanoes that weren\u2019t very active,\u201d he says. But in 1999, two volcanoes, Tungurahua and Guagua Pichincha, erupted at the same time. \u00a0Meanwhile Cotopaxi started to have more sustained seismic activity.<\/p>\n

To better understand the sudden rumblings of these volcanoes, Ruiz knew he needed to go back to school. He applied to two graduate programs in the United States, and was accepted to both. \u201cWe were fighting for him to come here,\u201d says Jonathan Lees, chair of the department of geological sciences at UNC. \u201cBut he chose New Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research at New Mexico Tech, however, was focused on Antarctica. \u201cIn Ecuador, we feel like we\u2019re the center of the globe,\u201d Ruiz says. \u201cSo the idea of going to the most southern volcano in the world was mind-boggling.\u201d<\/p>\n

He ended up spending three months in Antarctica, but never turned his attention away from the volcanic activity in his home country. \u201cWe have so many volcanoes in Ecuador,\u201d Ruiz says. \u201cThey produce beautiful landscapes and fertile soil but they also pose very real dangers\u2014over half the country\u2019s population could be affected by them.\u201d In the middle of his Antarctica research, Ruiz went back to Ecuador to install more equipment on Cotopaxi.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Lees hadn\u2019t given up on recruiting Ruiz to Carolina. \u201cI got funding to work on volcanoes in Ecuador, and I wrote him a letter,\u201d he says. \u201cI told him \u2018if you come to UNC, you can work on your data from Ecuador.\u2019 I think that convinced him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ruiz finished his master\u2019s degree at New Mexico Tech, then came to UNC in the fall of 2003 to complete his PhD in geophysics. Lees kept his promise. The two volcanologists traveled to Ecuador together to install seismic and infrasound equipment on Tungurahua<\/a>\u2014the same volcano that inspired Ruiz to go back to school. After writing his thesis on Tungurahua, Ruiz returned to the Geophysical Institute in Ecuador.<\/p>\n

\"An
An image of an acoustic wave captured by an infrasound microphone on the Tungurahua volcano on July 3, 2010.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Monitoring living mountains <\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the most heavily monitored volcanoes in Latin America, Cotopaxi is home to 14 seismic stations, five infrasound sensors, four detectors of volcanic gases, and a system to detect whether or not magma is moving in the volcano\u2019s conduit.<\/p>\n

Despite all of Cotopaxi\u2019s instrumentation, all the modern advancements in seismology, and all the hard work conducted by Ruiz and his colleagues, predicting exactly when and how the volcano will erupt is a dubious process.<\/p>\n

In fact, most volcanologists avoid using the word \u201cpredict\u201d at all\u2014analyzing seismic activity is not like forecasting the weather.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople think everything in volcanology is so exact\u2014that it\u2019s like physics,\u201d Lees says. \u201cBut there are so many things about volcanoes that we still don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Lees was a PhD student at the University of Washington in 1984, he talked with Steve Malone, a research scientist involved in tracking the seismic activity leading up the massive eruption of Mt. St. Helens on May 18, 1980. Malone and his colleagues had made accurate estimates about when<\/em> the volcano would erupt, but did not anticipate the nature of the eruption\u2014a massive lateral blast that produced the largest debris avalanche in Earth\u2019s recorded history<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe felt that he had failed,\u201d Lees recalls. Malone blamed himself for the 57 people, including some close friends, who lost their lives on that fateful day. He told Lees, \u201cwe got part of it right, but lots of it wrong, and that\u2019s why there were casualties.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just a few years later, a lack of understanding mixed with some disagreement among authorities resulted in a massive loss of life from a volcano in Colombia. On November 13, 1985, one day after officials deemed there was no immediate danger, Nevado del Ruiz erupted. While the eruption was relatively small, its lava melted enough ice on the volcano\u2019s high summit to create a major lahar, or mudflow, \u00a0wiping out the town of Armero<\/a> and killing over 20,000 people. \u201cThe politicians and agencies that are supposed to warn people in that valley had disagreements about whether there was danger or not,\u201d Lees says.<\/p>\n

But the reverse\u2014playing it safe and calling for a mandatory evacuation\u2014 produces different problems when an eruption doesn\u2019t come. In 1982, USGS geologists issued a notice of potential volcanic hazard (the lowest level of alert) to the resort community of Mammoth Lakes, California. Perhaps the devastation caused by Mt. St. Helens two years earlier was still too fresh in peoples minds\u2014after the notice was issued, housing prices dropped 40 percent overnight<\/a>. The nearby Long Valley caldera continued to produce some small earthquakes, but no eruption came. By 1983, the seismic rumblings had quieted down, but it was another three years before the local economy began to recover.<\/p>\n

Contending with Cotopaxi\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

All of these things weigh heavily on Ruiz as he and his colleagues try to make sense of the data streaming in from Cotopaxi. \u201cWe sit with this idea that a mistake in our job could bring about a similar result,\u201d Ruiz says. \u201cWe are not able to understand 100 percent of the volcano, but we also know a failure in our understanding could result in the deaths of thousands of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ruiz and his colleagues work over 12 hours every day.\u00a0 When something happens\u2014a jump in the number of seismic events, for example\u2014Ruiz\u2019s team has to act fast. They evaluate the signals to the best of their ability, and then translate the data into a statement for the authorities and the general public.<\/p>\n

Cotopaxi\u2019s last major eruption occurred in 1877 and caused massive destruction. If it were to erupt in a similar fashion today, the impact would be catastrophic. \u201cThe country would be broken into two parts,\u201d Ruiz explains. \u201cAll of the infrastructure\u2014the main roads, the water supply, the electricity lines, the gas pipelines\u2014all of that could be affected.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 19,347 feet, Cotopaxi is topped with a glacier year-round. Molten lava could melt that glacier and its surrounding snow and ice to create devastating lahar, similar to what happened on Nevado del Ruiz.<\/p>\n

Lahars are often referred to as mud flows, but they are much more than that. \u201cIt\u2019s not just mud,\u201d Lees says. \u201cIt\u2019s this thick mixture of ash, mud and water, but can also include tree trunks and boulders\u2014it\u2019s very dangerous and moves very fast.\u201d When the flow of destructive debris comes to a halt, it solidifies like cement.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo that happened in Armero,\u201d Lees says. \u201cAnd they\u2019re very worried about that happening in Quito.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cracking the volcano\u2019s code at Carolina <\/strong><\/p>\n

Because of the urgent need for information during Cotopaxi\u2019s heightened activity, Ruiz and his team simply did not have time to comb through their data in the same way that they typically would.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to act fast\u2014we couldn\u2019t ask the authorities to give us more time,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was very stressful to put out information as fast as possible while maintaining our scientific requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, in early 2017, Cotopaxi has been quiet for over a year, and Ruiz has a robust set of valuable data. \u201cI want to revisit everything we collected and try to find if we missed some clues, or if we overlooked something,\u201d he says. \u201cNow is the correct time to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the UNC Department of Geological Sciences is the place.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe could have taken his data to many different places,\u201d Lees says, \u201cBut he came here because he knows that I\u2019m also interested in discovering the patterns of earthquakes that lead up to an explosion. He knew he would have an ally here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thousands of earthquakes can occur on the day of a volcanic eruption. \u201cWhen you have thousands of events, you can\u2019t ponder each individual waveform,\u201d Lees says. \u201cYou have to develop a kind of a robot to go through the data and extract the relevant information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lees does this using a statistical platform called R. \u201cYou have to decide what you\u2019re looking for,\u201d he says. He writes programs to identify patterns. The software can run through the data quickly and make a decision about whether it was run right, and then do it again\u2014hundreds, or even thousands, of times.<\/p>\n

Over the last four or five years, Lees and his group have formalized their software development\u2014one of their platforms has over 30,000 downloads. \u201cMario came back here because he knows that we have this in common\u2014we\u2019re both interested in developing computing codes that can objectively analyze large amounts of data.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the basic measurements they collect is the peak to peak amplitude\u2014the size of the waveform generated on the seismograph. \u201cIt\u2019s the simplest thing, and we store that for each event\u2014so there might be 20,000 of those,\u201d Lees says.<\/p>\n

\"Mario
Mario Ruiz (right) and Jonathan Lees discuss acoustic waves recorded from their infrasound equipment.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

Ruiz and Lees will apply five or six parameters to each of those 20,000 figures, plot them in a line, and analyze how they change over time. \u201cSo we\u2019re looking for the patterns in space and time that show a progression towards the eruption,\u201d Lees says. \u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to find.\u201d<\/p>\n

Living in a real-world laboratory <\/strong><\/p>\n

In June, Ruiz will return to Quito to teach at the National Polytechnic School<\/a>, the institution that houses the Geophysical Institute.\u00a0 But his collaboration with Lees will continue. \u201cJonathan\u2019s expertise is very useful for monitoring active volcanoes,\u201d Ruiz says. \u201cThe whole country benefits from his research goals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Located on the border of the Nazca plate and the South American plate, Ecuador is one of the world\u2019s premiere locations to study not just volcanism but plate tectonics, mountain building processes, and earthquakes. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the critical localities on the planet to do earth science,\u201d Lees says. \u201cIt\u2019s like a laboratory for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

A laboratory that provides unique opportunities for students in the department of Geological Sciences. \u201cI\u2019m recruiting graduate students right now,\u201d Lees says. \u201cAnd one of the projects I can offer them is the opportunity to work in Ecuador.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to working on volcanoes near the country\u2019s capitol, like Tungurahua and Cotopaxi, Lees and Ruiz have colleagues and research interests across Ecuador, including the Gal\u00e1pagos Islands. Wherever they are, Ruiz notes they usually receive a warm welcome.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe population is very friendly to volcanologists,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reason for that\u2014Ecuador\u2019s people are at the heart of Ruiz\u2019s work. \u201cWe have a responsibility to the communities that live around our volcanoes\u2014to provide them with reliable monitoring,\u201d Ruiz says. \u201cOur dream is to one day be able to understand everything a volcano can do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Jonathan Less is the Chair of the Department of Geological Sciences.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mario Ruiz is a visiting lecturer in the Department of Geological Sciences.<\/em><\/p>\n

Story by Mary Lide Parker, Endeavors magazine<\/em> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As director of Ecuador\u2019s Geophysical Institute, Mario Ruiz has monitored some of the most active (and potentially destructive) volcanoes in South America. After earning his PhD at UNC 10 years ago, Ruiz has come back to Carolina to sift through data from the recent eruption of the Cotopaxi 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