Global Volcanic Risk
There are thought to be about 500 million people living close enough to active volcanoes to be affected when they erupt. Casualties from volcanic eruptions have been modest (around 300,000 in the last 200 years) compared to other natural hazards, but economic losses and societal disruption can be considerable. The modest sized eruption of Eyjafalljokull volcano in Iceland in April and May 2010 did not kill anyone but disrupted the travel of millions of people and costs the airline industry billions of dollars. This emergency highlighted the increasing vulnerability of modern globalised societies. In the very short history of civilisation, a few thousand years, there have been comparably few very large volcanic events, which have global effects. Such events include very large lavas flow eruptions, such as Laki (Iceland) in 1783 and major caldera-forming explosive eruptions, such as Tambora in 1815 and Tianchi around 930 AD.
The modern globalised world is arguably uniquely vulnerable to very large volcanic events, making the study of their return periods, possible environmental effects and consequences a key goal of volcanology.
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Speaker
Professor Steve Sparks (University of Bristol)
Biography
Steve Sparks is research group leader of the Volcanology and Geological Fluid Dynamics Research Group in the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Bristol, United Kingdom. He is also the Director of the newly established Bristol Environmental Risk Research Centre (BRISK), which seeks to nurture interdisciplinary research across the University in risk and uncertainty science. His research interests include how magma chambers form, how volcanoes erupt, kimberlite geology, the movement of sediment gravity flows, assessment of volcanic hazards, the development of new methods to quantify risk and uncertainty in the assessment of natural hazards, and risk perception in relation to natural hazards and disasters.
His field research includes studies on the andesite and dacite volcanoes, including the Soufrière Hills Volcano (Montserrat), Lascar Volcano (Chile), Uturuncu (Bolivia), and research on the geology and petrology of kimberlites. He leads the international project VOGRIPA, which is developing a global database of volcanic hazards and risk.
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