Important points about volcanoes: location matters, explosiveness can be predicted to an extent, and fast-moving flows of volcanic materials (known as pyroclastic flows) are deadly.
A massive fast moving lava flow from Kilauea consumes everything in its path, as the flames from the remnants of one home burns on the left, while it approaches another on the right.
EPA/Bruce Omori/Paradise Helicopters
The current eruption of Kilauea on Hawai'is big island can tell us a lot about what is going on beneath the volcano and may provide lessons for future eruptions.
An ash plume rises from the Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island.
AAP Image/CrowdSpark/Jillian Marohnic Volcano Hideaways
It feels as if volcanoes in our region are going off at a high rate right now - but it’s reasonably normal activity for the “Ring of Fire” belt running around the Asia Pacific.
‘Volcano forensics’ involves a mixture of modern day monitoring and analysis of past eruptions. Geologists use volcanic rocks as a kind of time capsule to assess what happened previously.
Where there’s smoke, there will be lava?
U.S. Geological Survey via AP
Volcanologists study the formation and eruptions of volcanoes - surely one of the most interesting jobs around. However, it can also be very dangerous.
The incredible Blue Lake at Mount Gambier fills one of the craters from the last volcanic eruption just 5,000 years ago.
ian woolcock from www.shutterstock.com
Thirty five years after the devastating eruption of Mount St Helens, a volcanologist looks back on how it unfolded – and how it forever changed our understanding of how volcanoes work.
Spotting ancient volcanoes of Britain.
University of Bristol
A British volcanologist has won one of the most prestigious awards in science – the Vetlesen Prize, which is considered to be the earth sciences equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Stephen Sparks of the University…
Phreatic eruption: Mount Ontake.
EPA/Ministry of Land, Infrastructure
Mount Ontake, Japan’s second-highest volcano, erupted killing at least 31 people on September 27. Since then, there has been feverish speculation about why tourists were on an active volcano and why the…
The impressive scar-like rifts of the aptly-named Afar region.
Graham Dawes
In September 2014, the Natural Environment Research Council will launch a major five-year programme to study the volcanoes of Ethiopia’s Great Rift Valley. The project team contains core investigators…
The explosive eruption of Sarychev Volcano, on Russia’s Kuril Islands, northeast of Japan, seen from the International Space Station.
Flickr/NASA Goddard
You can learn a lot about volcanoes by studying explosions. The more we can learn about their explosive behaviour, the more chance we have of saving lives when they suddenly erupt. There are many volcanoes…
The huge caldera of Mount Tambora, Indonesia – still active today.
Jialiang Gao
Most have heard of the Battle of Waterloo, but who has heard of the volcano called Tambora? No school textbook I’ve seen mentions that only two months before Napoleon’s final defeat in Belgium on June…