The biggest bang for your buck

Happy New Year! Having finally beaten the latest installment of the common cold, I'm back to blogging as I get ready for the new semester.


Recently there's been a bit of amusement among the geobloggers about an Paddy Power, an Irish betting website that's will take wagers on which volcano will erupt next with a VEI 3 or greater magnitude eruption. That in itself is amusing (and it would be an interesting way for grad students to fund their research, although I'm not sure it's legal). 

Doubtless, however, the folks running (and looking at) this website don't know a whole lot about the VEI system that they're basing the bets on. VEI stands for Volcanic Explosivity Index, and it's a scale that was introduced by Christopher Newhall and Stephen Self in 1982. It was originally meant to be a way to estimate the explosive magnitude of past volcanic eruptions, and combines a number of criteria:

• Volume of material erupted (also called ejecta or tephra)
• Height of the eruptive column
• Qualitative descriptions (i.e., "effusive", "explosive", "paroxysmal")
• Classification (Hawaiian, Strombolian, Vulcanian, Plinian, Ultraplinian)
• Duration in hours
• The most explosive type of activity observed
• Tropospheric (up to ~10 km) and stratospheric (~10-50 km) injection of material (i.e., did the eruption column reach these atmospheric levels?

Including both quantitative and qualitative criteria allows volcanologists to evaluate eruptions that may not have been well-monitored or were only observed by non-scientists. The scale is logarithmic with respect to eruption volume; this means that a VEI 5 eruption (the size of the 1991 Pinatubo eruption, for instance) is 10 times stronger than a VEI 4 eruption (the size of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption). 


The VEI scale, however, is more a convenient way to describe the size of an eruption; it doesn't tell you much about the specific hazards at a volcano, because these are dependent on lots of other variables. A VEI 3 eruption at an Alaskan volcano like Redoubt is going to be a lot less hazardous than one at Mount Vesuvius, simply because Redoubt is located in such an isolated, unpopulated area and Vesuvius sits over a city of 3 million people.


(The image above is taken from the USGS Volcano Hazards Program Photo Glossary.)


Eruption forecasting in general is a tricky business. Even volcanoes that have been monitored for decades can behave in unexpected ways; if you look at things on a geologic timescale, those decades are only a blip in the volcano's history. The VEI is a great way to describe past eruptions, but the fact that a volcano has erupted with a certain magnitude doesn't necessarily mean it will do the same thing in the future. 


Of course, you're all wondering what I would place my bets on. I certainly wouldn't rank Santa Maria along with Yellowstone; while the 1902 eruption was one of the largest in the 20th century, the only activity there now is at the Santiaguito lava dome complex, and it's a little hard to compare some little Vulcanian puffs with a potential caldera eruption. I'd probably have to go with Galeras, considering the activity that's been going on there lately, but don't take my word for it. (And tempting as it would be to fund some research by betting on an eruption, I wouldn't waste my money!)


Resources:


USGS Volcano Hazards Program Photo Glossary
Ready, Steady, Blow! Volcano Betting Erupts! (Paddy Power website)
Newhall, C. and Self, S., 1982, The Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI): An Estimate of Explosive Magnitude for Historical Volcanism. Journal of Geophysical Research, v. 87, no. C2, p. 1231-1238.

Looking for something to do for Earth Science Week?

Even if you can't give your time to sponsor an event for Earth Science Week this year, you can help people realize the importance of Earth science by giving a little bit of your money. (For instance, I'm swamped with coursework and research and totally unlikely to pull together any event bigger than a Facebook post, but at least this way I can help someone else with an Earth science project!)

Every year, ScienceBlogs sponsors a donation drive with DonorsChoose.org to help bring science to classrooms in financially struggling US schools. This year, Kim Hannula of All of My Faults Are Stress Related, Anne Jefferson of Highly Allocthonous, and Erik Klemetti of Eruptions have put together a geoscience-related donations page where you can sponsor a school project for students around the country to learn about the Earth. There are a number of different projects to choose from, ranging from soil science to weather to hydrology to seismology. (In particular, there's a group in Washington that needs to raise money for soil testing kits to go with a guest speaker's presentation, and they only have ten days left!)

This is a great way to make sure that Earth science outreach and learning happen in schools that are struggling to make ends meet. I'm definitely going to donate what I can, and I hope that all of you will think about doing the same!

Funding resources for geology graduate students

I have a bit of a plea for the geoblogosphere this week. I've volunteered to do some website work for the geology graduate student association here at UB, and one page is going to be dedicated to useful resources. I'm compiling a list of Earth science-related scholarships, grants and fellowships, and I want to make sure that I don't miss anything.

Can everyone have a look at what I've come up with so far, and tell me what I can add to it?

Here's the rundown (I've left off a bunch of the organization names to save space):

AAPG Grants-in-Aid
AASP Student Scholarships
AAUW American Fellowships (Dissertations)
AAUW Career Development Grants
AEG Foundation Research Fund
AEG Tilford Fund/Scholarship
AGU Mineral and Rock Physics Outstanding Student Research Award
AGU Student Travel Grants
ASPRS Awards & Scholarships
AWG Chrysalis Scholarship
AWG Winifred Goldring Award
AWIS Educational Foundation Predoctoral Awards
Clay Minerals Society Student Research Grants
Clay Minerals Society Student Travel Awards
Department of Energy Co-Op Jobs
EPA GRO Graduate Fellowship
EPA STAR Graduate Fellowship
Farouk El-Baz Student Research Award
Fred L. Scarf Award
Graduate Fellowships in the Physical Sciences
GSA Graduate Student Research Grants
Horton Research Grants
Lemke Scholarship Fund
Marliave Fund/Scholarship
Martin L. Stout Scholarship
MSA Grant for Research in Crystallography, Mineral Physics, Mineral Chemistry, and Mineralogy
MSA Grant for Student Research in Mineralogy and Petrology
NASA Graduate Student Researchers Program
National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship
NOAA Educational Partnership Program
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program
Paleontological Society Student Research Grants
Patterson Memorial Grant for Field Work
Science, Mathematics And Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship
SEG Foundation Scholarship Program
SEG Student Research Grants
Sigma Delta Epsilon Graduate Women in Science Fellowships
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Graduate Student Fellowships
Spackman Award
WAIMME Scholarships

Suggestions? Advice? Shameless plugs for something you're involved in?

PS - I'm setting this up for students at SUNY Buffalo, so anything that's limited to a particular school, or a state or country that isn't New York or the US is no good.

Strumpeting

In the process of applying for extra funding for my graduate studies, I'm finding myself again stuck writing a "personal statement" essay, and I can't say that I'm fond of it. Oh, I have plenty of motivation to write the thing - what grad student doesn't want to, say, earn an NSF fellowship and not have to worry about their funding for the next three years? But I'm never comfortable writing an essay that basically demands that I trumpet how wonderful I am. (Dave Barry calls it "strumpeting", which he usually uses to describe what he does in a book tour, but it's basically the same thing.)

I don't mind writing about what I've done in terms of research, or my education, or my nonprofit work last year - that's basically just stating facts. But when it comes time to say, "I'm a wonderful scientist, and I can do better than everyone else I'm competing with, and my project will change the world"...well, I don't really like that. I'm not saying I won't do it - how else would I have gotten a job last year? - but it makes me really uncomfortable. It feels like hubris.

It's possible that this feeling stems from a need for more self-confidence. I'm constantly second-guessing myself on things, even when I'm reasonably sure that I'm right, and being able to write about myself in a confident way doesn't always come easily. I had a hard time with my grad school applications when it came to this, although judging by the responses I got, I must have been doing something right. I honestly don't know where this whole thing comes from, though. I never experienced any discouragement from my family or teachers when I let them know that I wanted to be a scientist - just the opposite, in fact. And when I got to college, I didn't come up against a single instance of anyone trying to discourage me because of my habits or gender or otherwise.

So I'm left wondering where I developed this minor phobia. I love to write, and I obviously love to write about what I do, or I wouldn't be blogging. But I don't like singing my own praises - maybe I feel that my work should be able to do that better than I can. At any rate, I'll sit here and write the damn essay, and it will be great, and hopefully it'll help earn me the fellowship. It's necessary, and it does get results, and as much as I complain about it, I'll still get the thing done. But I won't enjoy it.

(Then again, this could just be a "this is the weekend and I don't wanna work" sort of thing. But seeing as I've been putting off this part of the application for a while now, I'm betting it's more than that. Eh.)