Keeping an Eye on Eruptions Around the World
23:48 minutes
While volcanic activity in Iceland, Papua New Guinea, and Hawaii may have caught the public’s attention in recent weeks, such phenomena aren’t that unusual. In fact, there may be as many as 75 volcanoes erupting on land every year, and thousands more on the seafloor. Geophysicist Cynthia Ebinger and Elizabeth Cottrell, director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program, talk about the world’s volcanoes and what’s known about the processes that drive them, deep beneath the planet’s surface.
Segment Guests
Elizabeth Cottrell
Dr. Elizabeth Cottrell is chair of the Department of Mineral Sciences at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.
Cynthia Ebinger
Cynthia Ebinger is a geophysics professor in the earth and environmental sciences department at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York.
Meet the Producer
About Charles Bergquist
@cbquistAs Science Friday’s director and senior producer, Charles Bergquist channels the chaos of a live production studio into something sounding like a radio program. Favorite topics include planetary sciences, chemistry, materials, and shiny things with blinking lights.