Question: How will your work help the environmnet?

David Pyle answered on 11 Mar 2011:

My work as a geologist is about trying to work out how the environment (around volcanoes) forms – through processes of eruption, erosion, weathering and so on; and also how volcanic activity can change, or be influenced by, the environment.

Here’s just one example – a few years ago we started looking at how much of the toxic metal, mercury, is emitted from volcanoes as a gas. When we started, no-one had a very good idea of how much mercury gas was released from volcanoes – or how it compared to man-made emissions. Now, we have a better idea of the quantities (they are pretty small; about 100 tonnes per year) – but we also realise how little we know about how mercury behaves in the environment (when it is deposited to the ground, eaten by bacteria, taken up by plants, and so on). As a by-product of this work, we have started to look for ways in which we can help to improve policies on man-made mercury emissions, and mercury waste disposal.

As a volcanologist, I have seen how eruptions can have dramatic impacts on the environment. We still have a lot to learn – but seeing the response of different habitats and environments to being covered in volcanic ash, or poisoned by volcanic gas, might do a little bit to help us understand the complicated feedbacks that happen in nature.