Las Manchas, Canary Islands, Dec. 2 (BUS): It comes with eagle-eyes drones and high-precision instruments. With the help of satellites, they analyze gas emissions and molten rock flows. On Earth, they collect everything from the smallest particles to watermelon-sized “lava bombs” that one of nature’s most powerful forces hurl as incandescent projectiles.
Scientists from around the world flock to La Palma, one of Spain’s Canary Islands in the Atlantic, to take advantage of a volcanic eruption occurring just an hour’s drive from an international airport and to be able to operate under a military escort. battalions. They are applying sophisticated techniques to screen rare volcanic eruptions from land, sea, air — and even space, the AP reports.
As in more than two dozen other major volcanic eruptions across the planet, from Hawaii to Indonesia, the ultimate goal at La Palma is to use a unique opportunity to better understand volcanic eruptions: how they form, develop, and most importantly, eruptions. Islanders, how and when they end.
But despite recent technological and scientific leaps, researchers can only do much to estimate what happens in the underworld where magma forms and melts any man-made equipment. The deepest humans have been able to drill into the planet’s crust was just over 12 kilometers (7.6 mi), a feat accomplished by Soviet scientists in 1989.
“There’s been a lot of progress in the last 30 or 40 years in understanding geological and evolutionary processes, but it’s still hard to know what’s going on at 40 to 80 kilometers (25 to 50 miles) depths,” he said. Pedro Hernandez, expert at the Institute of Volcanology of the Canary Islands, Involcan.
“Maybe we are starting to get to know the stars better from what is happening under our feet,” he said.
Volcanic eruptions are an event of one or two times in one generation at most in the Canary Islands archipelago, which is located 100 kilometers (62 miles) northwest of Africa. Some of the Canary Islands are still growing due to the accumulation of magma beneath them, and as happens in La Palma, by the formation of lava peninsulas off the coast.
The volcano’s last eruption, a decade ago on the southern island of El Hierro, occurred just off the coast, making it even more difficult for volcanologists trying to collect samples. The former wild volcano at La Palma erupted in 1971, the year Valentin Troll, a rock expert at Sweden’s Uppsala University and co-author of a geological study of the archipelago, was born.
“It was amazing, quite literally, to see this dynamic in action,” the geologist said. “We are learning a lot about how volcanoes work.”
However, trying to compare observations with previous eruptions involves delving into centuries-old records, some from a time when photography did not exist.
When magma began accumulating deep in the Cumbre Vieja Range in La Palma, scientists were measuring height at the Earth’s surface, concentrations of earthquakes known as seismic swarms and other signs of an impending eruption. They were unable to predict the exact time of the eruption, but their assessments prompted authorities to begin the first evacuations just hours before they occurred on September 19.
Although a man died in November when he fell from a surface while cleaning up volcanic ash, there were no deaths directly related to the eruption.
Much of that is due to new technologies in volcanology: everything from drones that allow scientists to peek into a volcanic cauldron to supercomputers that run prediction algorithms.
The European Union’s Copernicus satellite program has produced high-resolution images and mapping of the island to track deformations caused by the earthquake, resulting in near-real-time tracking of lava flows and ash accumulation. Its experts were also able to observe how large plumes of sulfur dioxide, a poisonous gas, traveled great distances across North Africa, the European mainland, and even the Caribbean.
At sea, Spanish research ships study the impact of the eruption on the marine ecosystem as lava fingers extend off the coast.
Troll, who believes that knowledge from those rovers could guide how to rebuild the tourism-dependent island, said the next big leap in volcanology is expected when robotic vehicles like those sent to the Moon or Mars can be used for volcanoes.
“We need to figure out how we can protect the population as well as the growing industry to build a sustainable society,” he said.
Despite its limited resources, Involcan has been producing daily reports that help La Palma civil protection authorities decide on evacuations or issue closures when gas concentrations become highly toxic. This means analyzing terabytes of data, whether from automatic detectors at strategic locations or from samples retrieved on field trips.
Much of the scientists’ work has focused on predicting the impact of volcano damage on a community that has already lost thousands of homes, farms, roads, irrigation canals and banana crops. But the question of when the eruption would end haunted them.
It will take at least two weeks of continued reduction in soil deformation, sulfur dioxide emissions and seismic activity to determine if the volcano’s activity is waning, Hernandez said.
Esteban Gazel, a geochemist at Cornell University in New York, said the Canary Islands are closely linked to activity that extends all the way to the Earth’s core, making predictions difficult.
“It’s like treating a patient,” he said. “You can watch how (the eruption) develops, but it’s very difficult to say exactly when it will die.”
At La Palma, Gazelle collected the smallest particles carried by wind over long distances as part of NASA-funded research that could be key to reducing risks if a catastrophic eruption worsens air quality and affects climate patterns. It also runs a parallel research program that investigates the volumes of gases that make a volcanic eruption more or less explosive.
Originally from Costa Rica, where he studied the effects of previous eruptions, Gazelle also conducted research at the active Kilauea volcano in Hawaii. But the La Palma eruption added a new dimension to his work, he said, due to the different rock formations and ease of access to the volcanic exclusion zone.
“The more eruptions we study, the more we understand how they behave,” he said.