40-3 The Obstacles Behind Compiling a Critical Repository of Volcano Activity Reports for the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program

Abstract:

The Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program (GVP) has been accumulating, archiving, and summarizing information about global volcanic activity for scientists and the public since 1968. One of GVP’s products, the Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network (BGVN), is a comprehensive narrative covering 4-6 months of activity. This project focuses on volcano activity data collection and archival from official volcano observatory websites in order to maintain the primary source data and add events to the eruption chronology. Original activity reports were organized in File Explorer, and other report formats were copied and pasted into Microsoft Word documents to maintain authenticity. Notable data include alert level changes, ash plume heights, pyroclastic flows, lahars, lava flows, and sulfur dioxide flux. Each volcano presents its own challenges when collecting data, with unique hazard events (e.g. seismic tremor, pyroclastic flows, lava flows, etc.), and different primary sources that vary in accessibility. More specifically, plumes may not be defined, images are not always captioned or contain a scale, the time zone is not defined, and current activity can be mixed with forecasted reports. Despite the challenges associated with inconsistent reporting methods, data preservation hosted from a single resource is valuable when accurately informing the public about global volcanic activity and maintaining a complete eruption history archive.

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