[ti:Island Turns into Open-Air Lab for Volcanologists]
[by:www.21voa.com]
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[00:00.04]Scientists from around the world are going to La Palma
[00:05.80]to see a volcanic eruption, where melted rock and gas
[00:11.40]is released from the earth.
[00:14.72]La Palma is one of Spain’s Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean.
[00:22.60]They are using advanced technologies
[00:25.80]to study the eruption from land, sea, air, and even space.
[00:33.08]The goal of the study is to better understand volcanic eruptions:
[00:39.12]how they form, develop, as well as how and when they end.
[00:45.64]Even with recent advances in technology and science,
[00:51.04]the researchers can only estimate what happens underground.
[00:56.72]The magma melts any human made equipment.
[01:02.00]Pedro Hernández is an expert
[01:05.56]with the Canary Island’s volcanology institute, Involcan.
[01:12.28]He said there has been a lot of progress
[01:15.84]in understanding how the Earth works in the last 30 to 40 years,
[01:21.96]“but it’s still difficult to know for sure
[01:25.68]what happens at 40 to 80 kilometers of depth.”
[01:31.36]“We are probably beginning to know the stars
[01:34.64]better than what happens under our feet,” he said.
[01:39.80]Volcanic eruptions happen in the Canary Islands once,
[01:44.80]or at most, twice in a person’s life.
[01:49.52]Some of the Canary Islands
[01:51.72]are still increasing their land area from this activity.
[01:57.72]When signs of growing amounts of magma happened,
[02:02.20]scientists began looking for signs, like earthquakes,
[02:07.16]of an upcoming eruption.
[02:10.68]They did not know the exact time of the eruption.
[02:14.88]But their studies permitted officials to begin
[02:18.88]the first evacuations just hours
[02:22.60]before the eruption took place on September 19.
[02:27.92]One man died in November when he fell while cleaning volcanic ash,
[02:34.00]but there have been no deaths directly linked to the eruption.
[02:40.40]Much of that is due to new technologies in volcanology.
[02:46.56]Involcan has been producing daily reports
[02:50.48]that help officials on La Palma decide to order an evacuation
[02:57.08]or issue lockdowns when the air becomes unbreathable.
[03:02.68]This means studying extremely large amounts of information
[03:07.52]from important locations.
[03:11.16]Most of the scientists’ work has been predicting the effects
[03:15.84]of the volcano’s damage to the community.
[03:20.12]It has already lost thousands of farms, roads, houses, and crops.
[03:28.12]But the question of when the eruption will end has been ongoing.
[03:34.12]Hernández said it would take two weeks of steady studying
[03:39.32]to establish if the volcano’s activity is slowing.
[03:44.36]Esteban Gazel is a geochemist with Cornell University in New York.
[03:52.08]He said the Canary Islands are closely connected
[03:56.04]to activity going all the way to the center of the earth.
[04:01.28]It makes it even more difficult to make predictions.
[04:06.60]“It’s like treating a patient,” he said.
[04:09.80]“You can monitor how the eruption evolves,
[04:14.00]but saying exactly when it will die is extremely difficult.”
[04:20.16]I’m Gregory Stachel. 更多听力请访问21VOA.COM