Why is your course valid? A question I get asked repeatedly so will answer. Volcanology is a course you commonly find in the USA, mostly in Hawai'i and other nations like New Zealand, Iceland, and in some parts of Norway. But for Canadians, it's a subject that is extremely hard to find a college, nevermind a university for without the need to study other materials to keep you busy throughout the day and make attending either avenue worth your while.
Online courses are now a legal and valid source of schooling because, while the courses are cheaper and take less time, they are now more readily available to people who would otherwise need to leave their homes and in some cases, even their country, to attend such schools.
To upgrade my schooling in which I would get a USGS certified certificate of graduation, I would need to spend $400+ USD (roughly $539.56CAD) and this is per course, meaning any additional courses cost an added $400 (and as there's 3 other courses, this would amount to $1,600USD or $2158.22CAD).
These courses are also, in many cases, heavily sponsored by outside sources such as other online sites that help provide them at lower costs than the average college/university price but all courses provided are from validated Colleges/Universities such as Harvard University and even Kemptville College.
Can I use these courses to source a job? Yes! I can use my professors as references, can use the schools as references, and have already begun applying to varying geological surveys that keep up to date with seismically active zones of interest and have had alot of good replies back with an even higher rate of interest from the two big guns; USGS and CGS (United States Geological Survey/Canadian Geological Survey).
Can your knowledge save lives? I think the answer can often become painfully obvious. When a volcano erupts, FEMA and other rescue groups will first look to us to determine what the eruption will do next based largely on the volcano's eruptive past history. Everything we do then, going forward, is a mere educated guess. We're often asked the following;
- How long will the eruption last?
- What should we plan for? Ie. Lava, pyroclastic flows, more eruptions, etc.
- How many will be impacted by the eruption?
- What should we tell locals? Tourists? Etc.
The above questions are mere examples. In many eruptions, a volcano will erupt and have little to no impact on the surrounding communities and will often erupt for a few minutes to a few hours then end. But in the case of the Big Four; Yellowstone, Taupō, Long Valley, and Toba, these eruptions can last months and are largely determined by how much volcanic material is ejectable material versus non-ejectable material.
And the Big Four are the world's known largest super volcanic eruptions. Meaning, while rare, these eruptions are known to have devastating impacts on the world nevermind local communities.
So yes, the knowledge we volcanologists learn from both schooling and field studies can in fact, benefit the lives around us, both locally and internationally. Even if you live in Wales, if either of the Big Four were to erupt, you would be impacted in a highly negative manner.
In my thesis Yellowstone; Doomsday or a Survivable Event, I talk about how the current season could determine the impacts of a Yellowstone eruption in the modern era. I calculated an 8 week eruption with roughly 6 fissure zones opening up, creating a brand new Caldera ie; A Caldera forming eruption/event. I factor in that we had a good spring, a good summer, and fall harvests were not only plentiful, we were able to get second and even third harvests in. I then did some math (oh boy) and determined in one section of my thesis (which for this part alone is 18 pages), that a modern Yellowstone eruption could be survivable if we;
a. got our crops in
b. it was closer to winter anyways, thus the resulting 8 week eruption would simply see us with a prolonged winter (roughly 5 extra months of cool/cold/chilly/less than favorable planting season)
c. we were able to shut down the nuclear power plants safely and in a timely manner, circumventing a 'nuclear volcanic winter'.
BUT.
I also twisted this thesis on it's head and proclaimed that if the 8 week eruption turned into eight months, and less than favorable events unfolded, such as;
a. we failed to get the crops in, due to a less than favorable spring/summer/fall planting/germinating season
b. the eruption lasted eight months versus eight weeks
c. nuclear power plants couldn't be shut down in time/one was directly impacted by the eruption
In the above situation, the eruption happens in the dead of summer. This would, in any event, be catastrophic because our crops wouldn't be harvested in time. Many crops would fail within the first week of an eruption. Summer weather patterns would drastically change, resulting in poorer crop conditions. And depending on how much damage is done to a nuclear power plant (in many cases, anything impacted within a 1000 mile radius of a newly forming caldera would simply be vaporized and have no impact whatsoever), the impacts of multiple nuclear power plant reactors failing due to the loss of their cooling systems and overall power in general, and the man power needed to shut them down, could see devastating results long after an eruption has ended at Yellowstone.
This part of my thesis was twenty pages long and while it came under critical review by my peers, was found to have solid evidence of various, well thought out situations that could happen at any of the Big Four. In many cases, it's been determined that the next eruption at Yellowstone, is less likely to be Caldera forming but rather on the scale of Mount Saint Helens when she blew her top in 1980. However. This is still a highly dangerous volcano and we should never just go by what we think will happen, as, at the end of the day, Mother Nature will always have last say.
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