Seismic Activity as an Early Warning for Volcano Eruption

Imagine

Our teacher presented us with a world map where all active volcanoes are depicted.

http://earth.rice.edu/mtpe/geo/geosphere/hot/volcanoes/volcanoes_b2.html

We made a copy of the areas in the world where volcanoes are situated on a transparent piece of paper that we adjusted on the map.

We were then presented with a map of earthquakes in the world.

We discussed about the different color representations on the map and their interpretation.

http://themobclan.org/map-world-earthquakes/hi-quakes-map-852-map-world-earthquakes/

We were asked to look carefully at the two maps and compare them and discus if we see any pattern

We placed the piece of paper that we drew from the first map upon the second and discussed our findings.
As an alternative, we were presented with  https://mapmaker.nationalgeographic.org/ where we pinpointed the location of volcanoes (using one marker) and the location of earthquakes (using a different marker).

Finally we were presented with a joint map of the tectonic plates, volcanoes and earthquakes https://pubs.usgs.gov/imap/2800/TDPfront.pdf and compared our findings.

What we realized was that the two phenomena take place in exactly the same regions.

We discussed with our teacher about the common causal background of earthquakes and volcanoes and learned more about the anatomy of a volcano as well as the volcano generation mechanisms.

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We decided to investigate this Research Question:

- Can we use information from one phenomenon to help us predict the other?

We divided in 4 or 5 groups. Each group was presented with a folder with information about a specific active volcano. The folder contained:

-geographical information about the volcano

-detailed information about its most recent eruption

-seismological data in the form of a catalog. The catalog contained the details of each and every  earthquake that took place in the vicinity of the volcano before, during and after the volcano's eruption. Among the information given in the catalog were the date and time of the event (earthquake), its duration and magnitude, its exact epicenter.

Using the above information each group was called to:

a) locate the volcano in the world map and find historical information about its eruptions in the past. We used the following database https://volcano.si.edu/search_eruption.cfm

b) mark the epicenters of the earthquakes that preceded the volcano's eruption we used the National Geographic Map Maker https://mapmaker.nationalgeographic.org/

c) We plotted a graph with the number of earthquakes in the region (y-axis) that took place some days before the eruption  and until the actual date of eruption (x-axis).

Finally, we presented our results in the classroom.

This image shows the increase of seismic activity before a volcano eruption.

We discussed the fact that an increase in seismic activity often presages an eruption. Therefore earthquakes can be used as an early warning sign that something is going on underground with a volcano.

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We wondered:

-How can we use this information to protect people from the damage in livestock and human lives that an eruption can cause?

Monitoring the seismic activity of a region, through a school network of seismographs in Azores, Nisyros, Santorini, Sicily and our school will be able to spot any unusual increase in the earthquakes taking place in the neighborhood of these regions and warn the local authorities as well as the local community for the likelihood of a volcano eruption.

We presented our results and conclusions to our school.

Seismographer installed in Greek school

As a next step we decided to  communicate our knowledge to the students of the four schools in the volcanic islands Azores, Nisyros, Santorini and Sicily where seismographs are already or are about to be installed.