Education

M.S. George Washington University (1983)
B.S. Western Washington University (1974)

Publications

Research Interests

The Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program (GVP) is devoted to documenting, analyzing, and disseminating information about the ~1500 active volcanoes on Earth and their eruptions over the past 10,000 years. In this systematic four-decade-long effort we seek to include both past and present eruptive activity on our planet, the large, destructive, and newsworthy eruptions, as well as the small ones that are easily overlooked and soon forgotten. We take two complementary approaches toward this goal: one that looks backward over the past 10,000 years, and the other that focuses on rapid reporting and dissemination of observations about on-going eruptions, on both monthly and weekly deadlines.

GVP data addresses such fundamental issues as the magnitude and frequency of volcanic eruptions, analysis of the global plate-tectonics context of volcanoes and regional patterns of volcanism, and the human impact of eruptions. Our compiled data are not only utilized internally for research, but are available through the frequently updated GVP website (www.volcano.si.edu) to the global community as well. GVP is the authoritative source for volcano and eruption data used by national and international organizations including the USGS, NOAA, NASA, the US Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, and the United Nations Disaster Program, as well as educational outreach in forums such as Google Earth, The World Almanac, Encyclopedia Britannica, and National Geographic Society.

My field projects focus primarily on large debris-avalanche deposits related to volcanic edifice collapse in locations such as Alaska, Indonesia, México, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Catastrophic volcano collapse, such as occurred at Mount St. Helens in 1980, produces extremely mobile debris avalanches that can travel at very high velocities many tens of kilometers beyond a volcano, inundating vast areas. This process, once considered rare, has now been documented at more than 400 volcanoes world-wide and is recognized to be a common process in the evolution of volcanoes.