Saturday, November 6, 2010

The volcano Gatekeeper

One of the sad - but not unexpected - stories to come from the eruption at Mount Merapi concerns the death of the "Gatekeeper" of the volcano, Mbah Marijan. Marijan was mentioned in a 2008 National Geographic article, "The Gods Must Be Restless", that I blogged about a long time ago - and that has turned out to be depressingly prophetic...

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Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Support volcano monitoring and future volcanologists

Santiaguito Volcano Observatory Fundraiser

It's been a while since I wrote about this, and it's definitely time for an update. If you're new to Magma Cum Laude, or just haven't visited the site for a while, you'll notice that there's a "Donate to Santiaguito" tab on the top of the page. Clicking there will help you learn a bit more about a fundraising effort I helped start earlier this year for the Santiaguito Volcano Observatory in Guatemala. For my field research, I spent most of my time either at the Observatory or working with its staff, and realized that although they're in a prime location to collect valuable data about an active volcano, they have very little of the resources and equipment they need...

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