A Volcano a Day keeps the Doctor at bay.

The old adage goes " an apple a day keeps the doctor away". For a PhD student struggling to write her thesis in experimental volcanology "A Volcano a Day keeps the Doctor at bay." Doctor being my supervisor who I have to send a new chapter to this month. At the rate of a page a day this thing is going to take forever to finish :S

I thought then that it would be appropriate to post a picture of my very first volcano - Stromboli. In 2000, when I was an undergrad at Dalhousie, I had the opportunity to travel to Italy with my graduating class. Each of us promising geologists wrote a chapter of the travel guide that we would use to navigate the many interesting volcanoes from Rome to Sicily. Stromboli was my pet project for the travel guide. It was the most exciting stop on the trip because Stromboli is the only place in the world where you can witness a volcanic eruption every 20 minutes!!

This photo of eruptions from Stromboli's multiple vents was taken at "Pizzo Sopra la Fossa", a spot about 200 meters higher than the craters. Stromboli is one of the nine Aeolian Islands, a volcanic arc north of Sicily. The eruptions are mildly explosive and produce tephra that typically glows red when leaving the vent, but its surface cools and assumes a dark to black color and may significantly solidify before impact. The tephra then accumulates in the vicinity of the vent, forming a cinder cone. The main vent on the left hand side of the photograph shows this feature. Eruptions of the same nature that occur at other volcanoes are then called Strombolian eruptions.

I will often incorporate photos from FLICKR and other online sources in my lectures. Sometimes that template lecture that the textbook supplies is lacking photos that clearly explain a process or land forms. Other times I go looking for photos to use in my Geology in the New updates. I find using photos most useful. After all, a picture says a thousand words.

FLICKR is easy to navigate and very user friendly. On of the major draw backs for me is that photography of volcanoes is a lucrative business, so most of the good shots of eruptions are copy right. Taking a good photograph of a volcanic eruption, like the one seen above, takes time and a high quality camera. It also involves a bit of luck. When you are taking a photo like this you have to set the aperture for a long exposure. Typically, a photo like this would have an exposure time of between 30 and 60 seconds. Fortunately, the person who took this spectacular photo included access to copy, distribute and transmit the work given that he/she gets the credit they deserve.


The photo above was taken by IBCbulk and can be found on FLICKR

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ibcbulk/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0