Predicting eruptions more accurately - Volcanoes - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Dec, 2001

Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes are two of the most destructive forces on Earth. While scientists can do little more than guess when an earthquake will strike, tremendous strides have been made in forecasting deadly volcanic explosions. In 1991, for example, volcanologists accurately predicted the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, enabling the safe evacuation of tens of thousands of residents. The Pinatubo success came after an all-out emergency effort by Philippine and American scientists to monitor physical changes closely in and around the volcano. Today, many volcanologists are looking forward to the creation of a permanent, worldwide volcano early-warning network.

Advances in technology and communication could revolutionize the entire field of volcanology in the coming decade. "It's not so much that we expect one technical breakthrough," says Stanford (Calif.) University geophysicist Paul Segall. "There's a confluence of a lot of things going on that should improve our ability to make predictions in the next 10 years."

Tiny movements on the surface of a volcano often indicate the build-up of magma below. Segall and Howard A. Zebker, associate professor of electrical engineering and geophysics, speculate that, in the next decade, the Earth may be orbited by an array of specially equipped radar satellites capable of detecting millimeter-sized changes in the Earth's crust. "Improved satellite coverage will make it possible to collect these data over all of Earth's 600 potentially active volcanoes weekly or even daily," they predict, allowing researchers to forecast volcanic events "to a much greater degree than is currently possible"