University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: May 11, 2006

By JESSICA KELTZ
Reporter Contributor

It might seem strange for a university in New York State to house a volcanology research group. But the newest member of this UB group, Eliza Calder, assistant professor of geology, says it shouldn't be.

Eliza Calder holds a sample of mixed pumice from the Villarrica volcano in southern Chile. Calder has extensive experience observing and monitoring the active lava lake in the crater of Villarrica.
PHOTO: NANCY J. PARISI

"In the field of volcanology, it's not particularly uncommon to have an established volcanology group where there aren't actually volcanoes," says Calder, who was attracted to UB because of the volcanology group's international reputation.

Calder's work centers around two active volcanoes, one in Chile and one in the Caribbean. While in graduate school, she served intermittently on the staff of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, run by the British Geological Survey. Montserrat, a small island in the Caribbean southeast of Puerto Rico, hosts the Soufriere Hills Volcano, whose activity and lava dome Calder has been studying.

In particular, she studies flows or avalanches of volcanic ash and rocks that are produced regularly from the Soufriere Hills Volcano, as well as other volcanoes, and constitute one of the most serious volcanic hazards. These are studied in order to determine where and when they occur so that researchers can attempt to forecast this type of activity.

This summer, Calder hopes to return to Montserrat, where she will look at seismic signals produced by the avalanches as they travel over the ground surface. Using seismology, researchers can detect the part of the lava dome from which the avalanches are generated and—when the activity cannot be observed directly—which valleys the flows travel down.

"These earthquakes are very gentle," she says, "but we can track the source of the seismic signal moving, like a bow of a boat plowing through the water." Calder also has extensive experience observing and monitoring the active lava lake in the crater of Villarrica, a volcano in southern Chile. Located in a highly populated tourist area, Villarrica poses a tremendous hazard due to its frequent eruptions and the potential for melting of its summit glacier. It normally displays mild "Strombolian" activity in which large gas pockets rise up through the fluid magma and rupture at the lava lake surface, causing small but regular explosions. Local authorities continuously monitor the seismic activity, but characteristically, these types of volcanoes can generate much larger eruptions with very little warning.

"I am working on improving the understanding of how the magma moves between the surface lava lake and the magma chamber," she says. "Specifically at Villarrica, this work should help the volcano observatory better interpret the monitoring data it collects and may in the future provide key information for effective risk mitigation."

Calder says she became interested in volcanoes while working on her bachelor's degree at the University of Bristol, where she was inspired by one of the professors. She then went on to earn a doctoral degree from the same department.

A native of Scotland, Calder and her family—her husband, Joaquin Cortes, a lecturer in the Department of Geology, and two young children—arrived in Buffalo shortly before the spring semester began.

"We both had to begin teaching a few days after we stepped off the plane, and so we've been completely immersed in trying to put our respective classes together," she says. "This summer we will take some time to settle in properly."

So far, Calder says getting used to Buffalo has not been as difficult as one may think, considering that she has never lived in the United States—except for two months in the distinctly un-Buffalo-like state of Hawaii, where she worked at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.

"I anticipated it was going to be different from the U.K., but it hasn't really been a huge culture shock," she says. Her children are enrolled in the UB Child Care Center. "The kids like it there," she says. "If you get up in the morning and they're happy to go to the nursery, that makes a huge difference to your whole day."

Calder's last position was as a research fellow at the Open University, a university near London that offers mainly correspondence degrees. "I've missed students," she says, explaining that at the Open University, only faculty members and researchers are based on campus. "I enjoy being part of conventional universities where students are the principal part of what it's all about. In other respects, UB in general doesn't seem dissimilar to a big university in the U.K."

She taught nine graduate students this past semester in a course about exploring volcanoes, and will take on her own graduate students in the fall.

"It was much easier than it would be if I had a class of 50 or 100 students to teach," she says of her class this semester. "And it's nice because it's my area of expertise as well."