Full moon and erupting volcano (Kluichevskoi)

I was over at Peter Webley's blog Volcanic Activity in the North Pacific and I clicked the link to get the most recent Kluichevskoi image from the Bezymianny webcam and....

current: http://www.emsd.ru/video/Bezymianny/img_1.jpg (downloaded ~7:30 pm UTC 10/17/2013)

All you can really say is WOW! And just for fun I have also included images from 2 other webcames.

current: http://www.kscnet.ru/ivs/kvert/video_camera/Klyuchevskoy2.html (downloaded ~7:30 pm UTC 10/17/2013)

current: http://www.kscnet.ru/ivs/video/Klyu.html (downloaded ~7:30 pm UTC 10/17/2013)

The internet makes amazing things possible! I love watching the moon over an erupting volcano in Russia, while sitting in Hawaii listening to the frogs. 

VOLCANO SPOON! But which volcano?

This amazing spoon features an image of a volcano in the spoon. This was found by my brother at an estate sale in California. What a good brother to pick this up for me! I have fallen in love with this spoon and very much wanted to share it with all of you.

See? Isn't it amazing!? 

detail of the volcano. 

Now, I have an idea about what volcano I think it is. I am curious what you all think! Which volcano do you think it is? 

How to be a Volcano Stalker

Have a volcano you just adore? Wish you could gaze lovingly at it 24/7? Can't spend forever on its flanks? Never fear, the internet is here!

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!

http://webcams.volcanodiscovery.com/

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! 

Volcano Webcams of the World on Wired.com

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

Volcano Hazards Program - USGS

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!)

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!

UPDATES GO HERE

Etna! Katmai! Volcanoes!

I shall call this another entry into the sporadic lunch time blogging series!

Etna, Etna, Etna....
I really just wanted to share with you an amazing, and BEAUTIFUL photo that popped up on the Volcano group on facebook.

I mean just look at that! WOW! That photo makes my heart melt. I really have nothing else to say about this other than LOOK AT THIS AWESOME PHOTO! I did take the time to look up the weekly activity report from the Global Volcanism Program and according to them, this paroxysm is the 25th since January 2011 and followed 11 days of quiescence. It took place on April 24, 2012 in the new SE Crater.

KATMAI!
June marks 100 years since the eruption at Katmai in Alaska. Tonight (April 25th) there is a lecture at UAF in Fairbanks. Here is a link to the flier  and here is the relevant information.

The Novarupta - Katmai Eruption of 1912 largest eruption

of the 20th century: A Centennial Perspective

Judy Fierstein, Research Geologist, U.S. Geological Survey

April 25, 2012 7:30 pm

Boyd room, 201 Reichardt Building, Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks

Free to the public

UAFs facebook page also posted this video 

and AVO has a ton of information about this eruption and the research done on it! 

I hope you will enjoy geeking out about this eruption as much as I will! However my lunch break is over and I must get back to work! Enjoy!

Chapter 1: Overview

I read chapter 1 of the Fundamentals of Physical Volcanology last night. Beer in hand, of course (what kind of geologist would I be if I didn't have a beer on a Friday!?). It was just chapter 1, so the overview. Now it is morning and I am blogging with coffee in hand and cat on leg.

A little bit about where/when/why I got this text book. In grad school I took a 600 level physical volcanology class; that was a few years ago, (already!) and I very much enjoyed the more in depth approach of this class. But, like all classes, it was too short and we did not get to cover nearly enough. I think the fact that this book was for a graduate level class, shows a little bit in the introduction. It assumes a basic knowledge about geology, and does not (like a lot of my text books) have the following image in chapter 1.

Yeah, the structure of the earth. I mean, I know it is good to just keep seeing it over and over and over so it sticks but... in grad school I was getting a little sick of the "hokay so here is the earth" and my reaction was always FOR FUCKS SAKE I KNOW! STOP WASTING TIME!!!

So I was happy it wasn't there. Now, on to what was there! I felt like the groundwork was set well for a discussion that goes beyond the basic "this is a volcano and this is what it does". I have read this book before so I know what some of the issues are that it brings up. I liked that it included an introduction to the idea that there are problems with the different ways eruptions are classified and that it can be a little fuzzy in the gray area between the well defined types. But I am not here to review text books.

This chapter made me excited. Why? Well after you have taken a few volcanology classes I feel like you spend enough time with the classic eruptions that you start to develop relationships with them. I see that wonderful painting of Mount Vesuvius next to a blurb about Pliny the Younger and it makes me smile. It is like seeing an old friend.

Also there was a sense of excitement because, unlike most classes, I do not have a time limit for reading this book. I don't have to cut anything short for the sake of the end of the semester. I always have felt that because, classes get behind with good discussions, things like diatremes, large igneous provinces and M.O.R. eruptions get less time than they deserve. Now I can go through the book and give them equal time.

So welcome to this crazy journey of a scatter brain to discover things I should have remembered but didn't as I reread my text book. (Volcanology edition)

Volcano porn

This blog has some amazing Iceland shots

This post has some amazing volcanic lightning shots

like this one!

tales of my awesome dorkiness

I bought a little charm at the craft store. well 2. They are little bottles. What am I going to put in them!? Redoubt ash! Oh yeah! I am thinking about seeing if I can get my hands on some Mt St Helens ash too for the other one!

Picture: little bottles and container of Redoubt Ash my friend in Anchorage collected and gave to me and the S.O.