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Scientists simplify things to help us laypeople understand volcanoes. The reality, of course, is more complicated.
Every volcano is unique. Volcanologists must learn each individual “personality” and history when they try to help people living nearby.
With limited resources, though, how do you choose which volcanoes to study? Here’s how.
When the United Nations made the 1990s its International Decade of Natural Hazard Reduction, volcanologists decided to focus on 16 volcanoes — two each from the US, Japan, and Italy; one each from 10 other countries.
One of these Decade Volcanoes — Taal, in the Philippines — is making headlines right now.
Number 16 Taal Volcano, Philippines
Taal made international news with its dramatic eruption in January 2020. The ongoing situation is still volatile, so let’s just look at it as a Decade Volcano.
Well over 20 million people live near Taal, located only 30 miles south of Manila, the nation’s capital.
Human risk alone made Taal a candidate for the Decade Volcano list in the 1990s.
But Taal also has been very active down through the centuries, as well as a couple eruptions in the distant past powerful enough to have left calderas — holes in the ground, basically — that eventually filled in with Lake Taal.
Communication is important in volcanology, too. Scientists and regional planners worked together as part of the Decade Volcano program to limit intensive development inside the caldera. This foresight has probably made the current crisis a little easier to manage.
Number 15 Avachinsky-Koryaksky, Russia
Population at risk: Over 200,000 people live within 62 miles (100 km) of these two volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East.
Last known eruption: Avachinsky, 2001; Koryaksky, 2009.
The flip side of living dangerously close to an active volcano? All the fun you can have during quiet spells!
The people in the video here, for instance, summited Avachinsky one sunny day and also got excellent views of nearby Koryaksky.
Avachinsky looks so solid there. It’s hard to believe that this volcano sometimes collapses. However, nearby Petropavlosk — the largest city in Kamchatka — was built on deposits left by one such prehistoric catastrophe.
Mud flows and lava are more likely hazards and can happen at either volcano.
Petropavlosk is so isolated that its residents will have to wait for aid to arrive by land and sea during a volcano emergency.
Number 14 Colima, Mexico
Population at risk: 1.5 million.
Last known eruption: 2019.
Colima, a complex volcanic center near the western coast of Mexico, presents multiple hazards, in addition to being a threat to population centers.
For one thing, it has frequent violent eruptions: like the one here in 2017, caught on monitoring cameras.
Almost all Decade Volcanoes are in subduction zones, which usually produce explosive volcanism.
Such explosions cause blast effects, ballistic rocks and lava bombs, and pyroclastic flows. As you can see, they even ignite wildfires.
And Colima does this over and over again. In past millennia, it has also had several large debris slides.
After making the Decade Volcano list, new hazard maps were made for Colima and its monitoring post was restructured.
Number 13 Etna, Italy
Population at risk: A quarter of Sicily’s entire population lives on Etna’s slopes.
Last eruption: 2020
Everyone knows this one!
Etna is a UNESCO site and has one of the longest historical eruption records of any active volcano, going back some 3,500 years.
One look at its spectacular lava flows will tell you why Etna was selected as a Decade Volcano.
The footage above was filmed in 2011 near the town of Zafferna, which only exists today because of coordinated efforts in 1992 that succeeded in damming and then diverting a lava flow that threatened to overwhelm the town.
That kind of success doesn’t happen very often during an eruption.
Lava and occasional hydrothermal blasts like this are the chief hazards at Etna. However, Sicily is heavily dependent on Etna tourism as well as on agricultural products grown on the volcano, so any increased activity would also have bad economic effects.
Number 12 Galeras, Colombia
Population at risk: Almost two million.
Last known eruption: 2014.
A tragedy happened at this flat-topped stratovolcano in 1993, when some tourists as well as six volcanologists, who were participating in a Decade Volcano workshop, were killed by an unexpected eruption.
Activity at Galeras before and during that risky field trip was heavily monitored, of course, but no one had ever before seen the seismic signals, called “tornillos,” that came just before the blast.
Now everyone knows that tornillos are warning signs of imminent explosive activity — a scientific discovery that carried a heavy cost.
Galeras is one of Colombia’s most active volcanoes. Above, its fireworks in 2008 light up the sky over the nearby city of Pasto.
Hazards include debris flows, large eruptions with heavy ash fall, and pyroclastic flows.