About 10 percent of the world’s population (~360 million people) live on or near potentially dangerous volcanoes. Many of the processes that take place on active volcanoes are potentially hazardous to local populations. Emergence of volcanology as a modern multidisciplinary science was largely a result of volcanic catastrophes that occurred at Krakatau Volcano in Indonesia in 1883 and at three localities in the Carribean-Central American region in 1902 including Mont Pelee on Martinique, Soufriere on St. Vincent, and Santa Maria in Guatemala. A total of 72,980 fatalities resulted from these four eruptive events that occurred over a nineteen year period. Potentially hazardous geologic processes include eruption of lava flows and domes, pyroclastic density currents (including high-temperature pyroclastic flows and surges), cool base surges and directed blasts.
Other hazards include lahars and floods, structural collapse, tephra falls and ballistic projectiles, volcanic gases, volcanic earthquakes, atmospheric shock waves and tsunamis. In some cases, remobilization of tephra long after eruption can also give rise to significant volcanic hazards. In addition, explosive volcanism can pose significant hazards to commercial air traffic over many regions and particularly along circum-Pacific routes.
Dr. Charles Mandeville, a Senior Research Scientist in the Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences first came to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in July of 1997. Dr. Mandeville is a volcanologist and geochemist, though he has done previous research in tectonics, metamorphic petrology and structural geology. Dr. Mandeville holds a B.S. in geology from the University of Rhode Island and a M.S. in geology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Dr Mandeville obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography.
His dissertation research focused entirely on the catastrophic 1883 eruption of Krakatau volcano in Indonesia in collaboration with Dr. Steve Carey and Dr. Haraldur Sigurdsson. Charlie’s dissertation research was followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Brown University where he investigated the solubility of Cl in andesitic magmas (similar to that erupted at Krakatau) with Dr. Malcolm Rutherford and at the Geological Survey of Japan where he did stable isotopic measurements of sulfur and oxygen and infrared spectroscopy measurements of dissolved water and carbon dioxide in Krakatau 1883 samples.
Following his study of the 1883 eruption, Charlie initiated and completed a study of the sulfur and chlorine degassed during the 7700 year before present climactic eruption of Mt. Mazama, Crater Lake Oregon (an eruption ~ 3.5 times larger than Krakatau 1883, but remarkably similar in other important aspects) in collaboration with Dr. Charles Bacon of USGS, Menlo Park, and Dept. colleague Dr. James Webster, Chair of the Earth and Planetary Sciences Dept. at AMNH. Results indicate that the amount of sulfur degassed during the eruption of Mt. Mazama was comparable to that of the 1815 eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia and it’s impact on global climate may have been just as severe.
Other ongoing research here at AMNH includes measurement of dissolved H2O and CO2 in recently erupted November 2004 and January 2005 dome samples from Mt. St. Helens in collaboration with Dr. John Pallister and Dr. Carl Thornber of the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory. Charlie is also doing collaborative research on recently erupted (January 2006 - March 2006) samples from Mt. St. Augustine, Cook Inlet Alaska.
