What are the most significant things we've learned about volcanoes since the eruption or as the result of research at Mount St. Helens?
rocky Lance Robertson

Hi Lance,
The eruption of Mt. St. Helens ended a long period of relatively minor volcanic activity all around the world. Although there had been a variety of locally important eruptions before 1980, the last large eruptions were in 1932 (Cerro Azul, Chile) and especially in 1912 (Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, Alaska) and 1902 (Mt. Pelee, Martinique, Soufriere, St. Vincent and Santa Maria, Guatemala). Since 1980 there have large and tragic eruptions in 1982 (El Chichon, Mexico and Galunggung, Indonesia), 1985 (Ruiz, Colombia) and two more in 1991 (Cerro Hudson, Chile and Pinatubo, Philippines).

The most important thing learned from the 1980 Mount. St. Helens eruption is that we can still be completely surprised by unexpected activity from even closely monitored volcanoes. That is, volcanologists had never before observed such a giant doming on the side of a volcano, and the resulting collapse and sideways explosion was also completely unanticipated.

A second thing we have learned is how stratovolcanoes work. Previously, the best instrumented volcano in the world was the shield volcano of Kilauea on the island of Hawaii. Volcanologists at the USGS Hawaii Volcano Observatory were able to monitor and generally predict when a lava flow would erupt on Kilauea. But stratovolcanoes like Mt. St. Helens are very different in nearly all characteristics from shields. The experience monitoring MSH allowed all of the later eruptions there to be forecast accurately, and permitted USGS scientists to successfully warn residents near Pinatubo of the impending major eruption, so that they could evacuate. The Pinatubo eruption was one of the largest this century, but the loss of life was minimized due to the management of the crisis by volcanologists; it was their finest hour!

A third important discovery has been that active volcanoes occur not just on the Earth, but also on Jupiter's moon Io, Neptune's moon Triton and probably on the planet Venus. The conditions of volcanism on these alien worlds are greatly different than on Earth, but the same physical processes seem to work through out the solar system.

A fourth major development has been the use of remote sensing to investigate volcanic activity on Earth. Satellites such as Landsat have been widely used to study volcanoes and their eruptions. In fact, it has been demonstrated that satellite sensors can detect warming of volcanoes before they erupt; unfortunately, the high cost of satellite data means that these new techniques can be used only sparingly. This may change near the end of this century when the first of an international fleet of Earth-observing satellites will be launched. One of the targets of this orbiting armada will be volcanoes. Within the next few years near real time satellite data on volcanic activity may be available over the Internet - Chuck Wood, University of North Dakota. 

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