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“With over 500 million people living near active volcanoes there is the potential for a really large-scale disaster and this is a strong motivation to improve understanding of how volcanoes work.”
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Volcanism is the most spectacular
manifestation of a dynamic planet. Like most volcanologists, my
research is motivated both by the beauty and power of nature as well
as the curiosity to understand fundamental igneous processes that have
shaped the Earth. Since my involvement in the volcanic crisis at the
Soufriere Hills Volcano on Montserrat I have become more aware of the
human tragedies that inevitably happen when a volcano erupts. With
over 500 million people living near active volcanoes there is the
potential for a really large-scale disaster and this is a strong
motivation to improve understanding of how volcanoes work. Volcanoes
are complex systems and understanding their dynamics requires the
integration of many disciplines and skills, which are impossible to
find in a single individual. Teamwork and collaboration are therefore
essential. My research has involved integration of observations,
theory, and experimental studies and has been widely cited, I think,
because the focus has largely been on fundamental issues and because I
have been fortunate to collaborate with colleagues who contribute
complementary skills. I have been fortunate to work with very talented
colleagues like Herbert Huppert, Claude Jaupart, Oleg Melnik, Barry
Voight, Chuck Connor, Willy Aspinall, and Andy Woods, as well as some
outstandingly able young postdoctoral and postgraduate scientists who
have passed through Bristol and Cambridge over the last 25 years or
so.
My own contribution I would place in terms of some observational
skill, largely developed due to the superb training by my Ph.D.
supervisor George Walker, and some ability to think intuitively about
physical processes and thus be able to communicate with colleagues
much more able than I in mathematics to develop models which have
helped advance understanding. I also have learnt the power of simple
experiments from Herbert Huppert and Stewart Turner. Volcanology is,
however, at its heart an observational science. The more volcanic
rocks and erupting volcanoes one sees and studies the more likely it
is that general principles can be extracted.
Volcanology is advancing for many reasons. Technical advances in
instrumentation to monitor volcanoes, new analytical techniques to
date rocks and extract time information about volcanic processes, and
increased computer power provide good examples. However, I believe
that the most significant advances have come from outstanding teamwork
and integration of disciplines during major volcanic crises, such as
Mount St. Helens, Pinatubo, Mount Unzen, and Soufriere Hills. Such
eruptions provide the key observations and data that drive the
development of the science, and much is owed by the community to the
dedicated men and women who are at the front line of monitoring and
gathering the data, often in difficult circumstances where the
priority has to be the safety of people near the volcano. Forecasting
the future of research is probably as problematic as forecasting
eruptions. Further integration of disciplines and cooperation are
essential, an objective not always easy to reconcile with the highly
competitive contemporary research funding arrangements. Volcanology
will need more sophisticated models than it has now; volcanic systems
are stochastic and commonly highly non-linear, so the task of
understanding their behaviour remains a formidable challenge.
Professor Stephen Sparks, FRS
University of Bristol
Bristol, UK
ccording
to our Special Topics analysis of volcano research over the
past decade, the most-cited author in this field is Professor
Stephen Sparks, with 54 papers cited a total of 667 times. In
the 
Web product, Professor Sparks has 66 papers cited a total of
997 times to date in the field of Geosciences. Professor
Sparks is the NERC Research Professor and Director of the
Centre for Environmental and Geophysical Flows at the
University of Bristol in the UK. In the essay below, he talks
about his highly cited work on volcanoes.