W5 Research Blog

Quentin Miller
15 Mar., 2018
Senior Project
W5 Research Blog

The Increasing Threat of Volcanoes in the United States on Human Populations

Volcanoes are powerful and significant forces of nature that impact the environment and earth’s human population in a variety of ways. Volcanoes play a vital role in geological changes and movements and are responsible for the circulation of rock and other elements of earth from the mantle onto the surface and into the atmosphere. Volcanic eruptions have and continue to be some of the most powerful forces in regulating the planet’s climate, especially with regard to particulate matter and other gases. Additionally, their eruptions often make drastic changes to the world’s topography and its soil. However, in the context of the planet’s human population, volcanoes pose a variety of risks and produce disasters that are often deadly. Volcanic eruptions often spew lava, ash, rocks, and other gases that can be deadly and highly destructive to large swaths of land and human populations for many miles in every direction. In many cases, ash fall from eruptions occur up to thousands of kilometres away from the volcano itself. Eruptions can kill people and animals, damage and/or bury houses, start forest fires, create violent lightning storms, create lakes, trigger flash floods and/or mudslides, emit noxious gases, ground flights, and much more.

In the past century, the world's population has swelled and continues to expand at rapid rates. This population increase means that more and more homes are being constructed and more land is being converted from natural landscapes to landscapes that centre around human dwelling or use. This trend is and has been visible in the US and in other nations around the world. In addition to wreaking havoc on the planet’s environment, this expansion, especially in terms of where people live, has put an increasing number of people at higher risks in terms of susceptibility to natural disasters; as the prime areas for dwellings become occupied, people construct homes and businesses in more dangerous areas. This trend is especially visible with the expansion of residential dwellings into volcanic risk zones. In recent history, more times than not, when a volcano erupts, more and more people's’ lives and homes are in danger, something that has and continues to mean that volcanic eruptions are more and more catastrophic for more people. This trend alone is problematic to say the least, but other problematic trends only compound with this underlying issue to illuminate the increasing danger of volcanoes to humans.

In the United States, the coincidental absence of many volcanic eruptions that have had large negative impacts on inhabitants has led people to become unaware of the danger of volcanoes and uneducated regarding the necessary response to an eruption. Few Americans would guess or even believe that, within the United States, there are about 170 active volcanoes and that over 500 million Americans live in volcanic risk zones. Were a nearby volcano to erupt, it is likely that many of people would not know how to respond or how to properly evacuate or prepare.

The absence of damaging volcanic events has also impacted research, studies, and monitoring of volcanoes as many of these fields and processes so vital to issue forewarnings about damaging eruptions have been left technologically underdeveloped and under funded. According to an article in the Atlantic, “almost half of the active volcanoes in the country don’t have adequate seismometers—tools used to track the earthquakes that often occur during volcanic eruptions”. Additionally, the article (as well as other sources) notes that “even at the sites that do have seismometers, many instruments—selected because they are cheaper and consume less power—are unable to take a complete record of the ground shaking around an eruption, meaning ‘the full amplitude of a seismogram may be ‘clipped’ during recording, rendering the data less useful for in-depth analyses’”. This information was based off of a 2009 report by the USGS, the government agency responsible for managing monitoring of volcanoes within the United States.

This lack of funding for an area of study that is essential to saving the lives of countless Americans (the number of Americans that an eruption could potentially harm is constantly increasing as more people live in close proximity to volcanoes) will be a death sentence to those living and/or working near volcanoes. It is important to note that, in order to adequately combat the trend of growing populations in volcanic risk areas, much more funding, effort, and attention must be dedicated, not only to maintaining and installing monitoring sensors and other technology, but also to educating the hundreds of millions of Americans whose lives are in danger.

Bibliography

AGI. “How Many Active Volcanoes Are There in the United States?” American Geosciences

Institute, American Geosciences Institute, 24 Apr. 2017, www.americangeosciences.org/critical-issues/faq/how-many-active-volcanoes-are-there-united-states.

LaFrance, Adrienne. “The Scary State of Volcano Monitoring in the United States.” The Atlantic,

Atlantic Media Company, 28 Feb. 2017, www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/the-scary-state-of-volcano-monitoring-in-the-united-states/518124/.

Raj, Ajai. “These 18 'Very High Threat' Volcanoes Could Wreak Havoc On The US.” Business

Insider, Business Insider, 10 Sept. 2014, www.businessinsider.com/americas-most-dangerous-volcanoes-2014-9#oregons-newberry-volcano-last-erupted-1300-years-ago-but-the-presence-of-hot-springs-and-relatively-recent-lava-flows-suggest-it-could-erupt-in-the-future-13.

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www.livescience.com/6435-mount-st-helens-destructive.html.