Take Two translates the day’s headlines for Southern California, making sense of the news and cultural events that affect our lives. Produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from October 2012 – June 2021. Hosted by A Martinez.
So Bogoslof is one of about 100 volcanoes that are being monitored actively from space and from the ground by the Alaskan volcano observatory. And it's one of the ones that are monitored from the ground, there's no instruments on the ground that would have told us by seismic signals or degassing or defamation that something is up so the surprise came because we were not looking.
Yesterday, we heard about a volcano erupting in the Bering Sea north of Alaska.
It happened way up in the Aleutian Islands and it's the first time the Bogoslof volcano has gone off since 1992.
Overnight, there was a second small eruption at Bogoslof. Things are bubbling up there, and it got us thinking about how volcanoes are monitored these days.
For a help with that, Take Two's Libby Denkmann spoke with Florian Schwandner, Geochemist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab who studies volcanoes.
On why this was an unexpected eruption
Bogoslof is one of about 100 volcanoes that are being monitored actively from space and from the ground by the Alaskan volcano observatory. And it's one of the ones that are not monitored from the ground, there are no instruments on the ground that would have told us by seismic signals or degassing or deformation that something is up - so the surprise came because we were not looking.
The other aspect is that the volcano observatory only has limited resources to monitor this large amount of volcanoes and the other is access. The Aleutian Islands are very remote. The most human activity that there usually is, is an airliner that is flying overhead.
On what volcanoes are in Southern California
The two that are most closely monitored by the USGS, the government agency that is officially tasked with monitoring the American volcanoes. The two that are most close to home are probably familiar to most people. When you go to Mammoth mountain and go skiing in Winter or hiking in Summer, that's actually an active volcano! There's gasses coming out, the USGS has seismometers on the ground and gas sensors and deformation sensors. They're keeping a close eye on it. And because volcanoes give off warning signals long before eruption if we are looking, which we didn't in the Bering sea for that particular volcano, we would probably have enough warning that something is changing.
The other volcano that is here in the direct vicinity is in the Salton Sea near Calipatria. In Imperial valley, there are these obsidian mounds called the Salton Buttes. The are there for a reason ... So there is volcanic activity there. And the USGS is looking at this and trying to increase the monitoring activity there.
Answers have been edited for clarity.
To hear the full conversation click the blue player above.
This post previously had misspelled Florian Schwandner's name. It has since been corrected. KPCC regrets the error.