Dr. Swanson’s talk will be followed by the presentation of the 2018 Johns Hopkins Distinguished Alumni Award. In his own words “I am a volcanologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and have studied active volcanoes for much of my career. My talk today will briefly describe two eruptions that involved volcanoes becoming severely disrupted by eruptions—Mount St. Helens in 1980 and Kīlauea (Hawai‘i) this year.”
The title of his talk is “Volcanoes Falling Apart: Observations During Eruptions of Mount St. Helens (1980) and Kilauea (2018).”
The venue is Olin Hall 305. A Pre-lecture Reception will take place from 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM, after which the talk will begin.
The Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences is pleased and honored to host the awarding of the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association Award to Dr. Donald C. Swanson (Ph.D. , 1964), on October 12, 2018. A recipient of the 2016 Distinguished Geologic Career Award from the Geological Society of America, Dr. Swanson enjoyed a distinguished career including stints as the director of both the US Geological Survey’s Hawaii Volcano Observatory and Cascades Volcano Observatory. His studies of Kilauea and Mount St. Helens both provided fundamental insights into how these very different volcanic systems operate. They were also vital in the development of predictive capacity for both volcanoes-particularly our ability to track changes in the filling and emptying of deep subsurface reservoirs. For his work at making volcanology accessible to the general public he was awarded the 2015 Eugene Shoemaker Award for Excellence in Scientific Communication by the US. Geological Survey. Dr. Swanson also has done important work on the Columbia River flood basalts- deepening our insights into the large volcanic events in Earth History which have been associated with climate change and mass extinctions. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science part of the of the ceremony,