Although we have no such interesting things, like a volcano, I spent five weeks of my holidays to see one of the permanent emitting ones in Italy, namely Stromboli and Volcano. I am a student of the Technical University, Vienna, Austria and was so fascinated about this natural experience, that I did my final work, called "Diplomarbeit" by searching about the exhalation of volcanic gases by INAA. Perhaps you have already heard of this theme, being presented at your last Conference at Hawaii by one of my teachers. I will go on working with nature and I am of course interested of your present methods of searching of volcanic gases. I am also interested in simulation programs, perhaps it is possible to get more information about this them.

rocky Karin Poljanc - Vienna

Hi Karin,

It sounds like you had a really wonderful vacation. I have never seen either Vulcano or Stromboli so I am jealous.

There are a number of ways to sample gases. The most obvious is to stick a tube down a vent and pump the gas into a gas analyzer or a collection bottle. This has a number of obvious problems, mainly that these are usually dangerous places where it is hard to breathe. You can also station your gas collection devices downwind of the vent or even out of the crater altogether. In these instances the main problem is that you also collect a lot of atmosphere as well. Some new remote techniques (such as COSPEC) allow you to be a long way from a gas plume and still measure some useful information. A COSPEC compares the sunlight coming through a gas plume to the sunlight coming through clear sky, and by looking at the differences is able to calculate how much of particular gases there is in the plume. There are also some techniques that are being developed that let you measure gas amounts from satellite images.

Probably the best volcano simulation program that I have seen is called "erupt". Unfortunately as far as I know it has not been made available to the public, but if you are interested in trying to get a copy, you should contact: 
	Larry Malincolinco
	Department of Geology
	Lafayette College
	Easton, PA  18042-1768
	USA
Good luck in your science career!

Sincerely,

Scott Rowland, University of Hawaii 

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