Volcanoes are one of the great wonders of nature. Their power and reputation precede them, and the fact that no one really knows exactly when they will erupt adds to their mystery. The curiosity, and sometimes misinformation, about volcanoes is only increased with social media and the internet. Understanding what is factual and what isn’t is crucial as people respond to an eruption during a crisis situation.
Loyc Vanderkluysen, PhD, an associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, recently co-authored a paper in the Journal of Applied Volcanology to try to help volcanologists, journalists, decision-makers and the general public get the story straight when the next volcano erupts. He sat down with the Drexel News Blog to discuss some of his findings.
Q: What were your main reasons for performing this research?
We live in an era of rampant misinformation and AI-generated content. Starting this project, we realized how profoundly misunderstood volcanoes and their eruptions can be by the general public. The volcanic crisis of Mount Agung (Indonesia), starting in 2017, was a wake-up call for the volcanology community because of the discussion we observed between the public and scientists that unfolded on social media, particularly on Twitter. On one hand, scientists felt they had a unique pathway to inform the public about the unfolding crisis. On the other, we saw how quickly misinformation could spread, and how damaging it could be for mitigation efforts. What we wanted to do is provide an easily accessible list, a cheat sheet of sorts, of the most common misconceptions people have about volcanoes and their eruptions. We’re hoping it can serve as a reference guide for journalists, public officials and the public at large to correct some of these misconceptions.
Q: Why are people so fearful about supervolcanoes (meaning a massively powerful volcano with a center demonstrating a magnitude 8 eruption on the Volcanic Explosivity Index), and where did that fear come from?
Destructive natural phenomena can be fascinating, and the idea of natural events on a scale modern humans haven’t seen before triggers immense curiosity. It’s not restricted to volcanoes – meteor impacts, massive earthquakes, gamma ray bursts, tsunamis – there are dozens of documentaries dedicated to “the top ten ways the world will end.” I’m not sure people are truly afraid of these events. Rather, I think people find some satisfaction in titillating their curiosity about the end of the world, thinking about worst case scenarios in a relatively “safe” way, in the sense that these events are both destructive and extremely unlikely to occur within our lifetimes. I imagine it triggers a similar response as watching a jump-scare movie, or going on an intense roller-coaster: we play with our fears while staying safe. When scientists bring up the mundane reality – that volcanic “supereruptions” have never come close to causing extinction-level disasters – people’s reaction is often one of disappointment. A volcanic apocalypse is much more exciting to think about.
Q: What are some of the most commonly misunderstood topics about volcanoes?
Some of it is related to scale – for instance, when a volcano erupts in Hawai’i, people on the mainland might imagine that the whole state would need to be evacuated. In reality, if a volcano erupts near Hilo, and you live in Kona, you’d never know it. For Hawaiian volcanoes, the impact is restricted to maybe a few miles from the eruption site, sometimes much less than that. Some people might think that lava comes out in fast-flowing rivers and could rapidly invade a whole town; in reality, lava can typically be outpaced by someone walking briskly, and there have been very few documented fatalities from lava flows. Similarly, people imagine a supereruption from a volcano in the U.S., such as Yellowstone, could wipe out humanity altogether. While there could very well be global effects on weather patterns, for instance, the vast majority of the destruction would be confined to neighboring states.
Others are more closely linked to misunderstandings due to jargon and terminology. The public might describe a volcano as “smoking,” which volcanologists wouldn’t. For us, smoking implies combustion, and thus burning of organic matter, which is not how volcanoes vent gases. Another comes from the term “volcanic ash,” which we use to describe the fine material produced by volcanoes. For the public, “ash” implies the burning of organic matter, coming from a coal grill or campfire. Volcanic ash, however, is not organic, but rather represent tiny fragments of rock crystals and shards of material akin to glass.
Q: What are the biggest risks that volcanoes pose to the general population?
It depends how close you live to one, and what type of volcano it is. For Philadelphians, the risk is practically non-existent. We live over 1,500 miles from the nearest active volcano. Some volcanoes, such as those active in Hawai‘i, primarily produce lava flows. There, volcanoes could primarily cause the destruction of property and infrastructure and exposure to noxious gases. More explosive volcanoes expose nearby populations to avalanches of hot rocks and gases, which we call pyroclastic density currents. These can be extremely destructive and have been a primary source of fatalities, historically. When ashy volcanic deposits mix with rainwater, surface water, or glacial melt, the resulting mudflows can also cause destruction and loss of life. Historically, this has also been a major source of fatalities on volcanoes and can occur months or years after a volcano last erupted. More globally, volcanic ash suspended in the atmosphere can impact air travel. The effects of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in Iceland in 2010 that grounded air traffic in Europe for weeks caused one of the largest economic losses from a natural disaster, ever.
Q: What are some of the causes of the misinformation that has emerged in the past and what are some of the ways to get the correct information to the public?
In the past several decades, most of the misinformation has come from a type of unscrupulous, sensationalizing tabloid press, but the situation worsened because of how easily we’ve observed these catastrophizing tabloid headlines can spread with the rise of social media. In the last five years, things have only worsened because of the rise of AI-generated content and fake images. We hope that providing freely accessible content, curated by scientists, can help combat misinformation. Ultimately, we need social media companies to take a proactive role in moderating the content they put out and help us combat misinformation.
Q: When you are asked if and when we will see the extremely large eruption that so many people fear, what do you tell them?
A common saying in geology is that “it’s never a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.” If they’re scared of Yellowstone specifically, I remind them that the last 80 or so eruptions at Yellowstone were not the massive eruptions the volcano is famous for, but only produced small lava flows – it’s a much better use of resources to prepare for the most-likely scenario than the worst-case scenario. If they’re scared of the monumental eruptions that I study specifically, I tell them to wait for another 20 million years to let me know what they look like. It’s good to remind people of the time scales we deal with as geologists!
Reporters interested in speaking with Vanderkluysen should contact Mike Tuberosa, assistant director, News & Media Relations, at mt85@drexel.edu or 215.895.2705.
