Short Wave - Eavesdropping On A Volcano

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

Volcanoes are "talking" to us all the time. Scientists say the sooner we learn to interpret their normal chatter, the quicker we'll know when something unusual — and potentially dangerous — is happening. But volcanoes often sit on protected land, so that detection work sometimes brings scientists into conflict with conservationists. Today, the tug-of-war over a sleeping giant in the Pacific Northwest. This episode is part of our series about the science happening on public lands, dropping every Friday the rest of the summer.--------As we continue our road trip, we also want to hear where in the world you are — especially if you're at a national park! To be featured in an episode, send us a recording saying your name, location and "You're listening to Short Wave — from NPR." Our email is [e-mail]. We'd love to hear from you! See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, my name is Hannah and I'm currently in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, getting ready to visit Wisconsin's High Cliffs State Park. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Shortwavers, Emily Kwong here. Today we're joined by Gabriel Spitzer, our senior editor based out in Seattle. Hello, Gabriel. Hey, Emily. I have a little game for us today. I've brought some sound and I want you to try and guess what it is.

Okay. Whoa. That's kind of cool. It's like raindrops playing the drums, you know, landing on like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, like an army is coming. I like it. To me it sounds like a kind of like a choochew, but it's actually neither of those things. What you're hearing is a bunch of little earthquakes that are happening underneath a volcano. And in this case, it's Mount St. Helens in Washington State.

It's not what you would hear if you were there and put your ear to the ground. It's seismic data that's collected from these seismometers. and then you can take those seismic waves and speed them up to the frequencies where human beings can hear them. So that's what this is. It's like 15 minutes of data, squish down to about seven seconds. That's cool. Wanting another one? Yeah.

Okay, this one's my favorite. It's like a banshee. Oh, it sounds like a balloon just got into a car crash. The researchers call this a volcanic scream. This happened at Mount Redoubt in a lot of. Alaska in 2009. And again, it's just a swarm of little earthquakes preceding a big eruption. So are scientists just out there making sounds for fun, making mixed tracks? What is this? It is kind of for fun. I mean, the audible version of this is mostly for non-scientists, but the data

itself that it's based on is really, really important. So I talked to this volcanologist named John Major. He is the chief scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey Cascades Volcano Observatory here in Washington. and he said that this is like the language of the volcanoes. And if you want to know what they're going to do, you need to learn to speak it. They're chattering all the time. That's just typical background, normal activity. Then when we can get our earliest possible detection of things that are abnormal, then that allows us to prevent volcanic eruptions from really becoming volcanic disasters.

So more data is better, but there's a catch in this case. And that's that a lot of the volcanoes in the U.S. are on protected lands. And that can sometimes bring the scientists into conflict with conservationists. We're doing a bunch of stories this summer on science in public lands. And today, the tug of war over a particular sleeping giant in the Pacific Northwest. I'm Emily Kwong. I'm Gabriel Spitzer. And you're listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR.

All right, Gabriel, you live in Seattle and you're kind of in, Volcano territory. There's a ton in your area, right? Yeah, there's a whole string of them that go from Northern California up through Canada. And I can actually see the tallest one in the lower 48 from the end of my block. It's Mount Rainier, and it's potentially one of the most dangerous. Does living near all these active volcanoes ever concern you? It's not like a huge worry for a lot of folks out here, especially in Seattle. We're far enough away that it wouldn't necessarily be a direct threat.

but it's a real hazard for a lot of communities around here. And that's something that we saw in spades in 1980. That's when Mount St. Helens erupted and killed 57 people. John Major, that volcanologist we heard a minute ago, he actually started working in this region at Mount St. Helens in the early 80s just a little bit after the eruption. In the blink of an eye, in the span of two or three minutes, that something like 200 square miles was just instantly,

knocked over. And the whole landscape had been scoured right down to the bedrock. The soil was gone. The trees were gone. Yeah, life can change in an instant when you live close to a volcano. And it's just a stark reminder of how powerful they are. Yeah, exactly. And so after that Mount St. Helens eruption, you know, the scientists, they really stepped up their research and their monitoring and they started putting monitoring stations at some of the most potentially hazardous volcanoes, including Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens and others. And they've made a ton of progress on a lot of these volcanoes, but not quite on all of them.

Right now, there's only one-sizmometer on Glacier Peak. It has a history of explosive eruptions. There are communities downstream, potentially at threat. And with one-sizemometer, it doesn't give us enough capability to be able to detect the earliest possible signs of unrest at that volcano. Tell me about Glacier Peak. I don't know if I've ever heard of it. Yeah, Glacier Peak is this 10,500 foot tall mountain that, to me, just kind of looks like a big scoop of vanilla ice cream, kind of plopped into the middle of the North Cascade Mountains.

It's pretty remote, but there are some small communities out there. Sounds stunning to look at, but probably a little scary to live near. If it did erupt, what would happen? One of the biggest hazards from the Cascades volcanoes are something called Lahars. And that comes from these volcanoes being covered in glacier ice and snow. And when an eruption happens, that stuff can liquefy almost instantaneously. And it brings down tons of mud and boulders and rocks and stuff. And like funnels down into the river valleys below the mountain.

And so any community that's living on one of those rivers is potentially at risk. So Glacier Peak has not done this in like 300 years, but it's still one of the most active volcanoes in the cascades. So if it's so active, why is there only one monitoring station? The USGS applied in 2018 to put four more of them out there and to renovate the one that's there now, but the trick is that the national forest land that this mountain is sitting on is protected wilderness. Ah. Wilderness, it's a legal term.

It's these tracks of land that have been protected since the 1964 Wilderness Act, and there's lots of rules for what you can do there. Exactly. There's lots of things that you are not allowed to do there. You can't put any permanent buildings there. You can't bring machinery into the wilderness area to the point where people, like, clearing trail, they have to use handsaws. They can't even bring chainsaws in.

And these seismic stations, they're not huge, but they do. You have a shack, a 10 by 10 shack and big solar panels, and all that stuff has to be airdropped in from a helicopter. Both activities, the permanent installations and the helicopter use are prohibited by the 1964 Wilderness Act. That's Kevin Precial. He's a conservation director for the nonprofit Wilderness Advocacy Group Wilderness Watch, and they filed objections to the USGS plans to put more monitors on Glacier Peak. And he says that would violate the letter of the law. Congress set aside wilderness areas to be in contrast with other public lands. In other words, to be wild undeveloped, unmotorized, and having these new installations will just degrade the wild character of the wilderness area.

Okay, I hear the concern. Is there any other way we can keep an eye on these volcanoes? Yeah, Wilderness Watch argues that there are ways to do that, that you can use things like ground penetrating radar and that you could put seismic stations just outside the wilderness boundaries. But the scientists say that that isn't enough. It wouldn't let them get the earliest possible warning. And then as far as the helicopters go, I mean, it could be really disruptive to somebody who's trying to enjoy the solitude of the wilderness. And Kevin says, when you do need to haul an equipment, you really just need to hike it in. To put up one of these stations.

So how much stuff are we talking? Well, I had the same question. I called up somebody who does this work. Rebecca Kramer is a geophysicist with the Cascades Volcano Observatory, and she described field work like this. There are stinging nettles. There are tripping hazards. There are just all sorts of things that want to break your ankle. And the batteries that we use for these sites weigh about 70 pounds apiece. And those 70 pound batteries, there can be like 10 of them per station. Each station can have as much as 2,000 pounds of gear. And it's like a two-day hike to get to the site. So it's just, it's not practical to hike them in. All right. I see some of the drawbacks to putting up one of these stations. Can one suffice just having one on Glacier Peak? Well, it's a really good question, and that's one of the

points that the conservationists make. But I mean, the scientists say it's not enough. It's not high enough resolution because you're looking for something in three-dimensional space. You're looking for where these earthquakes are underneath the mountain, where they're moving, that kind of stuff. And to get a really good picture of what's happening under the earth, you kind of need an array of these things. If you and I are standing on opposite flanks of a volcano and there's an earthquake, say you feel it two seconds later. And you give me a call and you're like, hey, there's an earthquake. Maybe I don't feel it till 10 seconds later. So knowing that it took 10 seconds to get to me, you can start to say, okay, well, it couldn't have come from here, here.

we start to narrow down the location. And, you know, we can get a lot of information with three, but four is really what we consider our minimum. So the Wilderness Act does have some provisions for protecting public safety. And honestly, this is just like a tension that happens all over the place on protected lands, this tradeoff between science and conservation. And so in this case, it comes down to whether the data about what's happening underground is worth the marks that you leave up above ground. And John Major, that volcanologist, says those marks are pretty light. We're very sensitive to the fact that we're putting some of this instrumentation in areas that people consider sacred. But the impact that we have on the wilderness is really very small.

So they kind of won their case because just this summer, the Forest Service finally approved the application to add these four monitors to Glacier Peak. So next summer, they'll hike in still. The choppers just bring gear and they'll get to work. And it sounds like they stand to learn a lot. Just going back to the volcano chatter you mentioned at the beginning, I love that metaphor, how each volcano kind of has its own way of speaking. This is going to be like one big wiretap on Glacier Peaks gossip. Yeah, totally, totally. And how does this affect how you feel about Mount Rainier, just knowing this science is in motion?

You know, it does comfort me in some way that these things aren't just like black boxes that are totally unpredictable. I mean, I like to think about, you know, learning their language. Rebecca Kramer, the field scientist that I talked to, she said that for her there's just something visceral about these gigantic forces that are at work just below the surface. How just massive compared to anything we can comprehend. And yet we have tools that let us start to get a picture of it. And so we get these windows into this huge planet under our feet and all its crazy processes. and it becomes less terrifying and more beautiful. Gabriel, thank you so much for bringing us this reporting

and telling us about the volcanoes in your backyard. Very much, my pleasure, Emily. And for you, Shortweaver, keep checking your feed every Friday this summer for more stories about science and public lands. And you can see pictures of Glacier Peak from this episode at our website at npr.org. This volcanic explosion was produced by Burley McCoy,

edited by Rebecca Ramirez and fact-checked by Rachel Carlson. The audio engineer was Natasha Branch. Giselle Grayson is our senior supervising editor. Beth Donovan is our senior director, and Anya Grundman is our senior vice president of programming. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to Shortwave. The Daily Science Podcast from NPR.