Announcing the 2014 Kleinman Grants for Volcano Research
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Announcing the 2014 Kleinman Grants for Volcano Research
The Community Foundation for Southwest Washington announces that the following students have been awarded 2014 Kleinman Grants for Volcano Research. Jack Kleinman was a USGS employee at the David. A. Johnston Cascades Volcano Observatory who died in a kayaking accident in 1994. By supporting field-oriented research projects in volcanology, the Kleinman Grants memorialize Jack’s exuberance for fieldwork, volcanoes, and the natural world. During the past 19 years, the program has helped dozens of aspiring volcanologists who seek to learn more about volcanoes and how they work.
Amy Burzynski is an M.S. candidate at the University of Northern Colorado who will be working with Dr. Steven Anderson and staff members at the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) to develop a methodology to capture high-speed, high-resolution surface topography of an active lava lake at the summit of Kilauea Volcano. Amy and her coworkers will install a pair of digital cameras that have been modified to capture near-infrared stereo images of the lake surface. Experience has shown that near-infrared cameras are better able to “see” through a persistent fume cloud above the lake than are conventional cameras. The stereo pairs will be processed into a series of high resolution digital elevation models (DEMs). Field observations and video footage suggest that surface topography of the lava lake may be an important component of lava lake dynamics. The main objective of Amy’s project is to develop an effective and relatively inexpensive methodology to measure high-resolution surface topography of the lava lake over an extended period of time—a capability that does not currently exist at HVO.
Alexandra Iezzi is a senior undergraduate at Connecticut College and a student intern at the Alaska Volcano Observatory, where she will be working with Dr. Christopher Waythomas on lahar (volcanic mudflow) deposits in the Drift River Valley near Redoubt Volcano. Redoubt erupted in 1989-1990 and again in 2009, producing lahars and initiating changes in stream flow that exposed part of a buried pipeline that feeds the Drift River Oil Terminal, putting it at risk of being damaged or broken. The facility was partly inundated at least twice during the 2009 eruption. Alex and Chris will sample, describe, and map prehistoric lahar deposits that have been exhumed by erosion since the 2009 eruption. In addition to evaluating the origin of the deposits, they will attempt to relate them to other types of eruptive products from past eruptions. Their study will place the 1989-1990 and 2009 lahar deposits in a geologic context and help to determine the frequency and sizes of such events, focusing on the threat to the oil terminal.
Shelby Isom is a senior undergraduate at Boise State University, Idaho. With her research adviser, Dr. Brittany Brand, Shelby will be studying a class of deposits from the 1980 eruption at Mount St. Helens that were produced by secondary pyroclastic density currents (PDCs). PDCs are extremely hazardous ground-hugging mixtures of volcanic particles and gas that travel at high velocity down the slopes of erupting volcanoes. The processes, products, and destructive potential of primary PDCs have received considerable attention from volcanologists, but less effort has gone into understanding secondary PDC deposits. These can be produced, for example, by steam explosions when a primary PDC enters a body of water, or when boiling and pressurization of water trapped beneath primary PDC deposits results in an explosion. Both processes occurred during and after the May 18, 1980, eruption at Mount St. Helens. The objectives of Shelby’s project are to identify depositional characteristics of secondary PDCs that distinguish these deposits from primary PDCs and from each other. At three locations where secondary PDC deposits are known to occur, she will collect textural data with distance from source, including vertical and lateral facies changes, granulometry, and componentry. Results will be compared with published reports for similar deposits elsewhere in order to develop a framework that will enable accurate identification of deposits from secondary PDC phenomena.
Congratulations to this year’s Kleinman Grant recipients. We look forward to hearing about your results at scientific meetings and reading about them in the research literature.
Volcano Listserv is a collaborative venture among Arizona State University (ASU), Portland State University (PSU), the Global Volcanism Program (GVP) of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, and the International Association for Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI).
ASU - http://www.asu.edu/ PSU - http://pdx.edu/ GVP - http://www.volcano.si.edu/ IAVCEI - http://www.iavcei.org/
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