• Question: What new knowledge will your work give us?

    Asked by chlochlosheep to David on 14 Mar 2011 in Categories: . This question was also asked by ribena.
    • Photo: David Pyle

      David Pyle answered on 14 Mar 2011:

      I’ll try and keep this short!

      What I want to do in my research is to help understand why volcanoes behave in the way that they do. The sorts of volcanoes that I work on tend to have explosive eruptions – and in the past, it’s these sorts of eruptions that have caused the most damage (with hot ‘pyroclastic’ flows; ash fallout, mudflows and so on). Most volcanoes have typical behaviour patterns; so if you can work out what they did in the past, you can be prepared for what they might do in the future.

      My work uses studies on individual volcanoes to answer both specific questions (what happened during the last eruption of this volcano? what is the probability of another eruption of this volcano?); and also to answer general questions (how do we work out how ‘big’ an eruption is?). Some of my research is already being used by scientists in volcano observatories; and other parts of my research are helping in areas as different as toxic waste disposal and archaeology..

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