Skip to content

Assessing lava flow hazards in distributed volcanic fields using a lava library: Example from the Eastern Snake River Plain volcanic field (Idaho, USA)

Laura Connor1, Chuck Connor2,  Jacob A. Richardson3, Mark S. Bebbington4, Matthew B. Connor1, Mikel Diez5, William R. Hackett6, Scot S. Hughes7, Shannon E. Kobs Nawotniak7, Michael Ort8, and M. Elise Rumpf9

  • Affiliations: 1Desperate Measures International, LLC, Tampa Florida, USA; 2School of Geosciences, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA; 3National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA; 4School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand; 5Diez Consulting, Bilbao, Spain; 6WRH Consulting, Ogden, UT, USA, 7Department of Geosciences, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID, USA; 8Department of Geology, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland; 9Astrogeology Science Center, U. S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

  • Presentation type: Poster

  • Presentation time: Tuesday 16:30 - 18:30, Room Poster Hall

  • Poster Board Number: 52

  • Programme No: 6.3.11

  • Theme 6 > Session 3

Abstract

We propose a strategy to efficiently evaluate lava flow hazards to people and infrastructure arising from the eruption of lava flows from new vents in volcanic fields. This type of hazard assessment requires (1) a fast and reliable model to simulate lava flows, (2) a method of identifying regions of a volcanic field from which lavas may erupt that can impact an area of interest, and (3) a library of simulation results that can be used to assess hazards from a broad range of source vents and a broad range of statistical models, particularly as these data and statistical models change with time. The utility of a lava library of simulation output is demonstrated using MOLASSES. The library is constructed to help forecast lava flow hazards on the eastern Snake River Plain, a vast and active distributed volcanic field. More than 300,000 simulations are conducted using cloud computing resources.  The advantages of creating a lava library are: (1) it can be used with a variety of statistical models of the spatial density and eruption source parameters of lava flows, without re-running simulations when these models change; (2) the library can be used to consider a variety of deterministic scenarios; and (3) the lava library documents the model input and output used to construct the hazard assessment;. We suggest the lava library concept is generally applicable to distributed volcanic fields, can be used to help guide further investigations and can be used to raise awareness of lava flow hazards.