Page 10 - Fundamentals of Physical Volcanology

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Preface

Our knowledge of the physics of how volcanoes easy to focus on the minute details and hard to see
work has expanded enormously over the past 40 the fundamental principles underlying all the com-
years, as have our methods of studying volcanic plex behaviours that we observe. In this book we
processes. In the late 1960s, George Walker con- have attempted to step back from the details, and to
ducted experiments into the fall-out of volcanic view volcanoes as systems governed by some basic
particles from eruption clouds by using stop- physical principles. Our approach is to consider
watches to time the fall of pieces of tephra dropped the physical processes that control the formation,
down a stairwell at Imperial College, London. Now, movement and eruption of magma, starting in the
technology exists which uses RADAR interferome- source region and following the magma upwards.
try from satellites to monitor tiny changes in the Our intention is to show that, for all the apparent
shape of volcanoes, and broadband seismometers complexity of volcanoes, a little basic physics can
can detect the “heartbeat” (and “indigestion”) of go a long way in explaining how they work, and
volcanoes as magma moves around deep inside that often eruptions that may at first sight look
them. Sometimes, however, as we gain increasingly remarkably different from one another are, in fact,
in-depth knowledge of a subject, it becomes all too physically much the same.