It's the most
Northwestern University and the mainland US.
And it sits right under the
nose of a major mystery.
We have these active volcanoes
right in our backyard.
Western Washington University hosts a
program dedicated to discovering what
makes up some of the most dangerous
volcanoes in the United States.
It's like a mystery,
right? Right. Totally.
Yeah. You look at that.
You look at that volcano and.
Right, it just looks like
a mountain with snow on it.
But, you know, I think when the four
of us in this room look at that,
we're envisioning what's happening
like 20 kilometers beneath the surface.
Professor of geology doctor Susan
Dibari, an associate professor,
doctor Christina Wolowski,
are obsessed with volcanoes.
Sodas are bottled under pressure.
And so when you release the cork,
they start to release their gases a little
bit. The Mentos is going to represent our
gas. Let's see how this gas changes the
personality of this Diet Coke. OK 123.
The obsession was a driving
force for how they ended up in
the Pacific Northwest. It was
one of the most exciting pieces for me,
being hired here 25 years ago at
Western Washington University.
I just like, absolutely fell in love
with not only going to these places,
but learning how they formed
and what they're like,
why they look the way they do. And
the pair, along with the professor from
Central Washington University, are mapping
out the inner workings of volcanoes.
And about an hour drive from campus is
the team's current news.
Mount Baker. Why is comic Pulsion different
and how it is its personality different?
They use Mount Baker's native name,
comma colschen, out of respect
for the Native American tribes
that call this land home.
Volcanoes are creatures of habit,
and so if we know what happened in the past,
then we can use that information to
be prepared for the future. Their
goal is to figure out the story of
comic cushion, when, how and why it
last erupted an unveiling. That mystery
takes them to the field.
You need a nice heavy
hammer. This is a good sledge.
Rocks are pretty hard.
Deberry and Wallowski,
with graduate student Amanda Florian Tow,
approached a rock face they
discovered as the most recent massive
eruption from this volcano. This
is a 10 kilometer long lava flow
who's who ends up in Baker Lake. It's
broad swings, dirty hands and
heavy lifting that bring them the
pieces of the puzzle. They need.
There you go. These were gas
bubbles that were trapped inside
the lava while it was flowing.
What you and I might see
is just a typical Rockwall.
These geologists see a story from 10,000
years ago that they bring to the
surface with a hammer and a microscope.
Back on Western Washington University's
campus, Flori inspects the samples
collected from comic Kulshan. So
we're looking at this crystal
here that's like, you know,
roughly a millimeter.
But then we can go over here and
look at all of the teeny tiny
little crystals that you can't
even see with the naked eye.
And we can look at those in a much
bigger scale through this microscope.
An electron microscope reveals
rings on the crystals, giving the
scientists a clue with the chemicals,
temperature and pressure that formed it.
So this is telling the
story of growth from the
very core out to the edge.
They use this data to build a
conceptual model of what the volcano
looks like beneath the surface.
They look at the volcano
as a plumbing system.
The part where it erupts would
be the faucet and below,
a system of pipes.
Our goal is to build these conceptual.
Models of how any individual volcano works.
So what is the plumbing system
beneath it look like and how is
that going to affect the eruption
that may occur
in the future? Yeah,
every rock has a story.
Graduate student Zenya side
singer hopes to take what she's
learned from this project and
turn it into helping communities.
Sitting in the shadow of
volcanoes like Bellingham,
home to Western Washington University,
so they can plan and prepare
for when an eruption happens.
Oh yeah, that's a nice green one,
actually, having volcanoes in your backyard.
It's just really cool to know that
the the research that we're doing is
directly like, impacting or important.
To the community that I've
now come to be a part of,
I think that's really cool.
Like, I I have the opportunity
to tell the story of this volcano.
With the presence ever looming
over the Pacific Northwest,
the danger that lies beneath
will no longer be a mystery.