From May 13, 2005 Tech
Topics
As
an expert on the dangers of volcanoes, Bill Rose has done pretty
well. He's a go-to guy for the likes of National Geographic and
the top PBS science series Nova. He no longer worries about getting
the next big grant or making the next big discovery.
With the scramble
to establish himself long past, he has found a way to keep a research
program he loves while bypassing the usual frenzy involved in an
active academic career.
"I have
an appointment that's ideal for a senior professor," says Rose,
a professor in the Department of Geological and Mining Engineering
and Sciences. "This is such a good deal, I don't know why more
of us don't do it."
Rose works only
one semester a year on campus. In the spring, he's out in the field,
traveling to volcanic hot spots or visiting colleagues at universities
and institutes around the world. It amounts to an unpaid sabbatical
every year.
"I'm doing
what I want to do, and it's good for my department," he says.
"They get half my salary back."
Grants make
up some of his lost salary, but not all of it. That's just fine
with Rose, who points out that with the kids out of college and
the mortgage paid off, he doesn't need as much money as he used
to, either.
Also, he notes
candidly, while wisdom may accompany age, energy may not. "This
is good for my health," says Rose. "I don't have the same
faculties as I did when I was young, and a professor should be at
the cutting edge."
That said, Rose's
new career tack has made him a pioneer in a nearly empty field.
"I call it social geology," he says.
It came about
when he and his fellow geologists tried to warn populations living
in the shadow of volcanos. "We'd work hard and make these elegant
communications with the latest technology," he recalls. "We'd
have maps with red areas generated by fancy computerized methods
and based on the best scientific models of volcano behaviors.
"We'd think
these things were wonderful, but we found out that the people living
on the volcano didn't think they were wonderful at all. They didn't
believe them."
What the scientists
and the people had was a failure to communicate. Social geology
is an attempt to remedy that failure.
"We need
to listen to what those people say about the volcano and develop
information with them, so they'll believe us and benefit from it,"
says Rose. This is not rhetorical exercise. Disbelieving geologists'
warnings about volcanic behavior can have serious consequences.
To address the
issue, Rose is taking on a project he never would have considered
as an assistant professor. He has developed the nation's first Peace
Corps Master's International Program in Mitigation of Natural Geological
Hazards.
"I've worked
on volcanos for 40 years with numbers of grad students. They go
to the site for two or four weeks and then come home. Now we'll
have students there for the long term, and they won't just do geology.
They'll also work with the people in the community."
"This is
pretty neat," he adds. "I couldn't have done it when I
was a young guy building a resume. NSF is supporting it for one
year; they think social geology is where geology should be."
Popular skepticism
about science is not limited to farmers tilling mountainsides in
Indonesia. "A big problem we have in this country is that most
people don't believe the things we in academia take for granted,"
Rose says. "People don't think the earth is four billion years
old. They don't think evolution or global warming exist.
"If people
are skeptical about stuff like that, how skeptical will they be
when they ask 'Should I build my house here? Will it be safe for
50 years?' and we can't give them an answer."
On another front,
Rose continues to investigate a virtually unknown (and potentially
deadly) volcanic
hazard: clouds of ash that float 35,000 to 50,000 feet up in
the atmosphere.
"Volcanos
are a serious threat to jets," he explains. "When they
erupt explosively, they put lots of ash into the atmosphere. And
if it happens at night, you can't see it. Jets fly into it and their
engines can stop."
The ash melts
inside the turbines, causing them to seize up. "Nobody's crashed
yet," Rose notes. "But several have lost all their engines
before they were able to restart and make emergency landings."
Ironically,
if there were a crash, Rose and the handful of scientists doing
volcanic cloud mitigation research would probably reap the benefits.
"The dark
side of hazard work is that there isn't much money to fund it till
there's a disaster," he says. "We say that if we had the
money before the disaster, it would make more sense."
Sometimes a
near-miss is enough. In December 1989, a KLM jet flew through a
volcanic cloud while attempting to land in Anchorage. "The
pilot lost all four engines," Rose remembers. Though she did
manage to land safely, the aircraft sustained $80 million in damage
and the airport had to be closed.
For hazard mitigation
experts, the timing couldn't have been better. A number of Alaska
politicians were flying home from Washington, DC, for Christmas
and got stranded in Seattle. Suddenly, there was lots of funding
to study volcanic clouds.
"It's good
that the money comes in, but it's bad that it comes in such a herky-jerky
fashion," Rose sighs.
For example,
it took him five years to study a mother lode of data on volcanic
clouds that's just been sitting there in a hard-to-find place.
Back in February
2000, a plane fully outfitted to collect pollution samples in the
Arctic inadvertently flew through an ash cloud. Pilots are loathe
to fly through ash clouds on purpose, what with the risk of catastrophe
and all, so the odds that an aircraft would fly into a cloud are
pretty slim.
Add to that
the chance that the plane would be on a scientific mission with
all its sampling instruments running, and the probability is so
low as to inspire awe. But indeed, that is what happened.
"It was
a bonanza," says Rose. Unfortunately, the scientists who design
and operate all the air pollution instruments weren’t funded
to study volcanic clouds, so those data have sat lifeless in a computer
for years.
This summer,
however, on his own time, and with the help of a dozen colleagues
all over the world, Rose has finally worked up an analysis of those
numbers. So the work proceeds, albeit in the usual sporadic fashion.
That's far better than nothing. As Rose observes, "You never
know where the next eruptions will be."
Volcanic
Clouds Research Group
More
on 'Volcanic Ash Clouds and Aircraft Safety'
Why
You Need to Know About Volcanic Ash and Aircraft Safety
Peace
Corps Master's International Program in Mitigation of Natural Geological
Hazards |