Virtual Volcanology - Exploring volcanoes in Google Earth

Google Tech Talks December, 18 2007 Volcanoes are some of the most dynamic and visually spectacular natural features on the Earth's surface. In Alaska, volcanoes are an intrinsic part of the landscape and culture, with over 70 volcanoes and volcanic fields that have been active in historic time. Monitoring of these volcanoes is undertaken by the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) using a suite of methods and tools in the fields of remote sensing, seismology, geodesy and geology that produce large volumes of geospatial data. The evolution in the capabilities of Google Earth and KML has provided a user-friendly interface and information-rich context in which these data can be displayed simultaneously and dynamically, offering new possibilities for communications with other scientists, emergency managers and the general public. I will present an overview of AVO's operations, and demonstrate our, and the wider volcanological community's use of Google Earth. Speaker: John E. Bailey John E. Bailey, Alaska Volcano Observatory & Arctic Region Supercomputing Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks John Bailey majored in Physics and Space Science at the University of Kent at Canterbury, England. After a year spent working and traveling around the world he attended the University of Hawaii, obtaining a MS and PhD in Geology and Geophysics, focusing on physical and remote sensing volcanology. He is currently a postdoc with the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center involved in operations and research at the Alaska Volcano Observatory in Fairbanks, Alaska. His current interests include the development of KML as a visualization tool for volcano and other scientific datasets.