Disturbance in the Geological Forces

Volcanoes are powerful forces of creation and destruction. They can cause new islands to appear and old islands to disappear. Perhaps not due to a volcano, but for some geological reason that is unclear, this blog has been changed from an "isle of the sea" to an "island or atoll"--at least according the geologists over at LDS Blogs.org. Hopefully their measurements don't indicate a trend predicting that this blog is heading toward the sea floor.

Back to volcanoes:

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The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) today released the first ever comprehensive and systematic review of the 169 U.S. volcanoes and established a framework for a National Volcano Early Warning System (NVEWS) which calls for a 24-hour seven-day-a-week Volcano Watch Office and enhanced instrumentation and monitoring at targeted volcanoes...

According to the USGS report, since 1980, 45 eruptions and 15 cases of notable volcanic unrest have occurred at 33 U.S. volcanoes. About half of the most threatening U.S. volcanoes are monitored at a basic level and a few are well monitored with a suite of modern instruments. However, the report cautions, monitoring capabilities at many hazardous volcanoes are sparse or antiquated, and some hazardous volcanoes have no ground-based monitoring whatsoever. This poses a threat to people on the ground and in the air. Flying into an ash cloud can cripple a jet aircraft in flight. Tens of thousands of people fly over U.S. volcanic regions every day. (Source link)

I'm an east-coast guy, so I didn't realize that we have that many volcanoes. Apparently volcanoes are pretty predictable when monitored correctly--much more so than earthquakes. From news@Nature.com, here are the top ten priority volcanoes:

America's 10 most hazardous volcanoes

The score shown below is arrived at by looking at both the destructive capacity of each volcano, along with the people and property at risk.

1. Kilauea, Hawaii erupting now
2. St Helens, Washington erupting now
3. Rainier, Washington
4. Hood, Oregon
5. Shasta, California
6. South Sister, Oregon
7. Lassen Volcanic Center, California
8. Mauna Loa, Hawaii signs of unrest
9. Redoubt, Alaska
10. Crater Lake, Oregon

By the way, how would you like the job of monitoring a volcano? Seems kind of boring to me, but it might be offset by the fact that you could call yourself a volcanologist [vul'-can-ologist].