The internet makes it very easy to stalk your favorite volcano, as long as the volcano is widely studied.... in a populated area... and not one of those ones no one else has heard of (hipster)!
But seriously....
There are several tools online which you can use to keep up to date on many volcanoes. You can easily find the most up to date information on a specific volcano by looking up the volcano observatory that monitors it (if there is one that monitors it). These sites often have webcams, photos, seismic data, deformation data, and lots of other fun things. There are also Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and websites devoted to keeping you up to date on the worlds volcanoes. We are going to start with a few such websites, and then go through some of the social media tools that I personally use to keep up to date.
Smithsonian Institution - Global Volcanism Program
In general I find this a good place to start stalking different volcanoes. Not only will you find a page on that volcano, you will also find monthly and/or weekly updates if there is actually some activity at that volcano. Let's pick an example to walk through. Say your favorite volcano is Popo (Popocatépetl) in Mexico. When you navigate to its page this is what you will see:
Now since this is your favorite volcano, we can assume you know all of this already and just want to see what it has been up to! I personally find the weekly reports to be the most up to date.
From this page you can easily see that there has been recent activity!
Weekly Reports
If you want to just see whats up with the world's volcanoes the weekly report is also a very good place to look. This report comes out every Wednesday by "2300 UTC". The report can be found at http://www.volcano.si.edu/reports/usgs/ and I recommend it if you want to keep up to date on the happenings of the world's volcanoes.
My new favorite shiny toy!
I discovered this site TODAY and it actually sparked the idea for this blog post!
As you can see this is an AWESOME site! You pick the volcano you want to stalk in the upper left, and then a map of the region with currently active volcanoes highlighted pops up in the right, and the middle populates with webcams and other data that are publicly available!
This site is what it says it is, a list of worldwide volcano webcams, organized by region. This was put together by the Eruptions Blog and is another amazing resource for volcano stalking.
Example Region: The Pacific
For information on US volcanoes this is a good place to start! There is a map on the front page as well as links to the different US volcano observatories.
Observatories
I mentioned before that observatories are an amazing resource for information about a specific volcano. I am going to use the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) as an example.
This website is a wealth of information! What I love about it is that right up front are the currently active or restless volcanoes. I recommend taking some time to explore this website and all the amazing information that they have up on their volcanoes. (I am biased to all things Alaska)
As I write this the currently active volcanoes are Cleveland and Iliamna. Let's take a look at Cleveland's page! There is so much on this page I had to shrink it so it would fit in my screen capture!
Look at all the information at your fingertips! There are maps, and images, webcams, and seismic data, not to mention the activity notifications and ash trajectory forecasts! A girl could get lost in a page like this! (I have)
Social Media: Blogs, Twitter, and Facebook!
The possibilities here are endless! There is no way I am going to be able to cover all of the resources out there for social media, so I am just going to mention the ones I use.
Blogs
I know, I am a bad blogger, I don't actually read a lot of other blogs (or update much myself...) but here are some volcano themed blogs I enjoy. I know there are more out there, so please feel free to leave a comment and suggest more blogs so myself and others can discover them!
Eruptions Blog (mentioned above)
Volcanism Blog and their list of Volcano Observatories
Volcanoclast
Volcano Monitoring in North Pacific NEW
Twitter (a very incomplete list!)
First of all you can follow me @thrustacline
Here is a short list of volcano peeps that I am currently following. I am sure I am missing many! Please feel free to leave a comment and suggest people for this list!
@etnawalk Etna Walk - Awesome Etna photos!
@alaska_avo Alaska Volcano Observatory - updates from AVO
@eruptionsblog Eric K/Eruptions - author of the Eruptions Blog!
@VolcanoAlert Volcano Alert - articles about volcanoes in the media
@volcanoclast - Ian Saginor - author of another amazing volcanology blog
@volcanismblog The Volcanism Blog - tweets from the Volcanism Blog
@volcanofiles The Volcanofiles - lots of good links and volcano news!
@mvoms Montserrat Volcano Observatory (You can also like them on facebook!)
If you don't mind your Facebook newsfeed being full of amazing volcano stuff (and let's face it, who doesn't like that!?) then I recommend linking this page and joining this group!
Volcano page
Volcanoes Group
Now I know, I am missing pages, blogs, Twitters, and Facebooks and maybe I just don't know about them yet! If you know of some awesome online resource that I haven't listed please leave a comment so I and others can discover it and continue to stalk our favorite volcanoes all over the web!
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