UAF scientist available for Augustine eruption interviews

Submitted by Marmian Grimes
Phone: (907) 474-7902
01/30/06

University of Alaska Fairbanks volcanologist John Eichelberger, coordinating scientist for the Alaska Volcano Observatory, is available for interviews on the eruption of Augustine Volcano in Cook Inlet, Alaska.

After months of elevated seismic activity, Augustine began erupting in early January. The Alaska Volcano Observatory recorded the first two eruptions at 4:44 and 5:13 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 11. The volcano erupted nine times between Jan. 11 and Jan. 17 and then quieted until Jan. 27, when the most recent series of eruptions began. Since Jan. 28, Augustine has been in continuous eruptive state.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory is a cooperative program of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

Eichelberger has been a researcher and teacher with UAF’s Geophysical Institute and the College of Natural Science and Mathematics since 1991. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1974. He was a staff member at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M. from 1974-1979 and worked at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. from 1979-1991. He then came to UAF, where he has served as chair of the Department of Geology and Geophysics since 2003 and as coordinating scientist of the Alaska Volcano Observatory since 1992.

Eichelberger’s research on active volcanoes such as Alaska’s Katmai and Japan’s Unzen has led to paradigm shifts on the cause of chemically-zoned eruptions and why volcanoes sometimes erupt explosively and at other times produce lava flows. In July 2004, he and his team were able to successfully drill into the conduit of an active volcano, Unzen; the first time this had been done.

CONTACT: UAF professor and AVO coordinating scientist John EIchelberger at (907) 474-5530 or via e-mail at eich@gi.alaska.edu. UAF Public Information Officer Marmian Grimes at (907) 474-7902 or via e-mail at marmian.grimes@uaf.edu