Volcanoes Revisited Part 2 - Dr. Andrew Calvert
[00:00:00] Dr. Jesse Reimink:
[00:00:02] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Welcome to Planet Go, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
[00:00:14] Chris Bolhuis: Hey doc, [00:00:15] what's going on?
[00:00:16] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Hey Christopher. What's up man?
[00:00:18] Chris Bolhuis: Why you laughing at me? I I don't understand
[00:00:22] Dr. Jesse Reimink: I don't know. Uh, you just,
[00:00:24] Chris Bolhuis: Alright. I need more respect. Okay. Can we just lay that down? I need a little bit more
[00:00:29] Dr. Jesse Reimink: I [00:00:30] mean, I, I do respect you. I respect you. You know this, Chris, I respect the hell out of you. Uh, but I don't necessarily need to respect the way you look on Zoom all the time. do I.
[00:00:39] Chris Bolhuis: Why I, I think, oh, wait a minute. Hold on.
[00:00:42] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, there
[00:00:42] Chris Bolhuis: you're looking at my chin there.
[00:00:44] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Your camera[00:00:45]
[00:00:45] Chris Bolhuis: I didn't even realize. Alright, I
[00:00:46] Dr. Jesse Reimink: know, you know what it looked like. It's like, you know when somebody opens up their laptop and the laptop's only partially open so they can see the screen, but you're like looking at like the bottom half of their mouth and then they're double chin and then they're
[00:00:58] Chris Bolhuis: And only old people do that. [00:01:00] Right. And so I just looked at it. I'm like, wait a minute, what am I doing? That's funny. And it's pointed at my chin.
[00:01:07] Dr. Jesse Reimink: you look worthy of respect now, Chris. All right.
[00:01:09] Chris Bolhuis: Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. All right. Hey Jesse. Dr. Reimink, what are we doing?[00:01:15]
[00:01:15] Dr. Jesse Reimink: We are part two of our vulcanology re-release. We are re-releasing an episode, an interview really, that we did with Dr. Andy Culvert, which man, this was a really cool interview. He is the scientist in charge of the California Volcano Observatory, also known as Calvo. And [00:01:30] so he leads about 35 geologists, geophysicists, and hydrologists that study volcanoes, specifically in California. Right Chris? And these are volcanoes you are very familiar with. You've climbed a lot of them and hiked around the.
[00:01:43] Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, I found this interview to be [00:01:45] one of the best that we've ever done, and that is a high bar. Andy and I are kindred spirits, I think. Anyway,
[00:01:51] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, you totally are. You both got into geology because of Mount St. Helens, like, uh, yeah, it was, you guys really were kind of vibing together in this interview.
[00:01:59] Chris Bolhuis: We did, [00:02:00] but actually, You know, I dunno. A couple months after the interview that we did, Jenny and I were actually on our way out to California to go, um, to Yosemite and climb Mount Shasta, which is, you know, Andy's thing, right? That's what he's spent so much time doing and [00:02:15] published a lot of papers on. And so we, uh, we got together in San Francisco with, , and Dina's wife and Jenny and I, yeah. We had a, just a great time. I, And it lived up. It, it didn't disappoint. He is, we're like-minded in a lot of different [00:02:30] ways and He hooked us up with one of the climbing rangers there and it just a very cool
[00:02:36] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Wow. Totally cool. That's awesome. What a guy also, what an interesting interview, talks about a lot of really cool stuff and, talks about how the Volcano Disaster [00:02:45] Assistance program kind of actually works and, and gave a lot of insight into how. These government funded vulcanology research centers and, and research observation posts actually work. And it was really, really interesting to hear. So this is part two of four, we are [00:03:00] on a break and, uh, we'll come back in, uh, a couple weeks here with some new content. But right now, This is an interview with Dr. Andrew Culvert coming at you. Before we get to it, check out Camp Geo, the first link in the bottom of the page. You can follow us on all the social medias [00:03:15] at Planet Geo Cast. Send us an email, planet geo cast gmail.com and you can go to our website, planet geo cast.com. There you can learn about us, listen to old episodes. we got some sort of pseudo blog posts. Those transcripts are there, so you can read through that and you can support us [00:03:30] there as well. So hit that up and, uh, let us know what you.
[00:03:33] Chris Bolhuis: sit back. Enjoy.
[00:03:34] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Cheers.
[00:03:34] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Dr. Culvert, welcome to Planet Geo and, uh, thanks for joining us.
[00:03:43] Dr. Jesse Reimink: We're really happy to have you here.
[00:03:44] Dr. Andy Calvert: [00:03:45] Thanks. I'm excited to be here. This is, this is great. I've listened to a few of your podcasts and, and, uh, boy, it's fantastic. I. Really
[00:03:52] Dr. Jesse Reimink: appreciate your efforts. Oh, wow. We, we really appreciate that. We appreciate you giving us the time. So, you know, we have a, a ton of, I mean, a ton [00:04:00] of questions.
[00:04:00] Dr. Jesse Reimink: This is gonna be a super exciting and interesting conversation, but we kind of like to always kind of start out what got you into geoscience. Was there sort of this aha moment at any point? Or how, how'd you make your path into, you know, your current position?
[00:04:14] Dr. Andy Calvert: Yeah, my, [00:04:15] my aha moment really came in college.
[00:04:17] Dr. Andy Calvert: Um, but the seeds really got planted a lot earlier. I grew up in northern Idaho and it's on the Columbia River assaults and the the Palouse, which are these sort of dirt dunes on top of it. [00:04:30] And, and I always kinda grew up thinking rocks were really ugly. They're just these brown scummy. Oh man. And then we'd go, Camping in these beautiful places, like in the belt rocks up in, um, Northern Idaho, and then in [00:04:45] Montana we'd go to Vancouver Island and, and man out there, the rocks were beautiful.
[00:04:49] Dr. Andy Calvert: You know, they, they'd be shiny, they'd flash at you. And, and I, I remember seeing that and, and thinking, huh, that's really interesting. And, and so we were just out there and, you know, kind [00:05:00] of just interested in the earth. Um, curious about the earth. One of the things that happened regularly, we, we go over and visit family in the Willamette Valley, uh, in Oregon, is we drive down the Columbia River Gorge and there you're driving through [00:05:15] these Columbia Rols.
[00:05:16] Dr. Andy Calvert: It's very dramatic topography and really, really interesting and. And on a clear day, you'd look to the north and you'd see, well, on the way you'd see several volcanoes, but one in particular, there was this conal volcano, Mount St. [00:05:30] Helens, it's, it's up north of Portland and, and I remember several times seeing it just beautiful snow covered.
[00:05:37] Dr. Andy Calvert: It was the Mount Fuji of the Cascades and, and. Then, uh, [00:05:45] in spring of 1980, I, uh, I was in seventh grade and there was, um, an earthquake at Mount St. Helens, uh, and then a bunch of other earthquakes and then a lot of defamation on the north side. And, and we were really [00:06:00] interested. The newspapers covered it really well, and, and we, we talked about it in school.
[00:06:04] Dr. Andy Calvert: I was actually in an earth science class in, in seventh grade. It was a geology class. We talked about it there. And it was pretty cool, you know, just to have something [00:06:15] deforming. And that was sort of when, when I realized that the earth wasn't static and, and that it was, it could be dynamic and, um, you know, continued on for a couple of months.
[00:06:26] Dr. Andy Calvert: So from March, April, and into May. [00:06:30] And then on, um, May 18th,
[00:06:32] Dr. Jesse Reimink: 1980. So this was in a time before Twitter and all this kind of stuff. No kidding you, you weren't getting alerts on your cell
[00:06:37] Dr. Andy Calvert: phone? No, I didn't have, yeah, we didn't have phones. We didn't have, we didn't have anything. And, and, and so seeing this come [00:06:45] across and then it, it blocked out the sun and it just started getting dark.
[00:06:48] Dr. Andy Calvert: And, and by the time we got home, it was darker than the darkest night. And I remember my mom had this green cardigan. She went across and [00:07:00] checked on her neighbor and came back and she got back in. She said, huh, these little gray flex on her, on her, you know, it was incredible. It was really, really interesting.
[00:07:11] Dr. Andy Calvert: We'd look out, you could see the ash coming down and, and [00:07:15] landing on the street. and they came on the, the radio and they, they said, well, you know, there's not gonna be a school tomorrow. No school tomorrow. School's cancel. . Yes. Celebrate . It was a big deal to get out a day of school. Right. [00:07:30] We, we'd had snow days.
[00:07:31] Dr. Andy Calvert: We, we had a bear day once there was a bear in the neighborhood. Wow, that's awesome too. And yeah, just, but, but have a volcano day. Yeah,
[00:07:39] Chris Bolhuis: volcano day. That's great.
[00:07:41] Dr. Andy Calvert: Is pretty cool. Pretty cool. So, so next day we [00:07:45] get up. You know, we had about a half an inch ash and it was like a white snowfall. It was a calm, beautiful day again.
[00:07:52] Dr. Andy Calvert: And we didn't go outside cuz we were told it wasn't really safe. And somehow we got ahold of some N 95 [00:08:00] masks, or the equivalent of 95 masks. And, and I still remember, you know, when we start, we wear these masks all the time and every time I put one on it has the same smell. It has that, that kinda manufacturing.
[00:08:12] Dr. Andy Calvert: Solvent smell of a mask. [00:08:15] I remember that vividly from, from that time that afternoon they came on the radio and they said no school for the rest of the year. Oh, wow. It was pretty shocking. But yeah, I got cheated out at seventh, you know, three weeks of seventh grade [00:08:30] and I. I've been cheated.
[00:08:31] Chris Bolhuis: I don't know
[00:08:32] Dr. Andy Calvert: about that.
[00:08:33] Dr. Andy Calvert: I've been paying the earth back.
[00:08:34] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Paying the earth back kids. That's, yeah. That's great. Well, I mean, you must associate volcanoes with like fun times, you know, based on this experience. That's, that's a really, uh, that's a
[00:08:44] Dr. Andy Calvert: great [00:08:45] story. Yeah. And then kind of the, to the aha moment, I. I didn't really know about geology then until college.
[00:08:52] Dr. Andy Calvert: And, and I, I went in kind thinking pre-med, you know, I dunno what I'm gonna do. And, and my friend told me, uh, she took a geology [00:09:00] class, she gotta take this class. So it was at eight o'clock in the morning. Um, it was winter quarter and I thought, ugh, alright. I took it and it was like falling in love. It was, uh, taught by a guy named [00:09:15] Dennis Bird.
[00:09:15] Dr. Andy Calvert: This is at Stanford.
[00:09:18] Dr. Jesse Reimink: I know Dennis Bird, really dynamic guy. Really
[00:09:20] Dr. Andy Calvert: dynamic guy. He's fantastic. And it was the first undergrad class he'd ever. And he just poured his heart into it. And, you know, he told us stories [00:09:30] about intentional slides from, from Greenland, fieldwork in Greenland and, and in, uh, Antarctica and, and all over the place and, and just told these great stories.
[00:09:40] Dr. Andy Calvert: And it was, it was, it really was like falling in love. I, I was at every eight [00:09:45] o'clock lecture and, and it was great. And so, so you were sold right there, huh? I was sold. You know, I thought, you know, is this just a great class? And so I, I open up the courses for the next quarter and I look and see what the [00:10:00] next class is, and it's geology 80 and it's called Rocks and Minerals.
[00:10:04] Dr. Andy Calvert: Well, now that is the most boring class I can imagine. Rocks and minerals. If that's good, I'll be a geology major. And it was taught by, This guy, Bob Coleman, who was a famous U S G [00:10:15] S geologist, worked all over the world. It was, it was an incredible class too. Also at eight o'clock, all about plate tectonics and, and just taught me how to look at a rock and, and the, the labs were out on the, out on the lawn.
[00:10:29] Dr. Andy Calvert: And you, you [00:10:30] just used the sun and your hand lands and he would say, visit the surface of the rock. And, and you just look at the textures and, and, and kind of learn how rocks tell a story. You can use, um, to [00:10:45] understand here. I
[00:10:45] Dr. Jesse Reimink: mean, is that how you do labs at Stanford? Is just go out in the sun and look at the rocks?
[00:10:50] Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, that sounds that
[00:10:52] Dr. Andy Calvert: everything's easy at Stanford. .
[00:10:55] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, that's awesome. Well, you're, you're destined to be a ologist then .
[00:10:59] Chris Bolhuis: So, [00:11:00] yeah. Andy, let's pivot then to, to this. You are the scientist in charge of the California Volcano Observ. Otherwise known as Calvo. Um, what does Calvo do specifically?
[00:11:12] Dr. Andy Calvert: Yeah, so we're responsible [00:11:15] for, for studying and monitoring the California and Nevada volcanoes.
[00:11:20] Dr. Andy Calvert: And, and that involves, um, communicating the hazard and potentially responding to an eruption. So if there is an eruption at, at, [00:11:30] say, last peak, I'm on the hook to run the response for, for that eruption. And there are about 35 of us here, employees, uh, plus another dozen retired folks, Mari, that, that work just as [00:11:45] hard as the, the paid people.
[00:11:47] Dr. Andy Calvert: And, um, We we're, we're part of a larger group, the Volcano Science Center. So it's a, it's a division of the US Geological Survey that, that focuses on volcanoes. So
[00:11:59] Dr. Jesse Reimink: this is all [00:12:00] federally funded institutes? Yep.
[00:12:01] Dr. Andy Calvert: So I'm, I'm working for you and, and our mission is to really protect the US from volcanic eruptions.
[00:12:09] Dr. Andy Calvert: Wow. No
[00:12:10] Dr. Jesse Reimink: pressure .
[00:12:11] Dr. Andy Calvert: Yeah. Wow.
[00:12:12] Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's all good.
[00:12:12] Dr. Andy Calvert: Right. Uh, there [00:12:15] are five Observator. Uh, there's the Alaska Volcano Observatory centered in Anchorage, Hawaii. Volcano Observatory centered in Hilo, Hawaii, uh, cascades Observatory in Vancouver, Washington. The Yellow Stone Volcano [00:12:30] Observator is also centered at cbo at at the Cascades Volcano Observatory.
[00:12:35] Dr. Andy Calvert: So it's, it's a smaller group that works out there, and then there's us, cba and, uh, we, so we're, yeah, responsible for California and Nevada [00:12:45] volcanoes. We also have a, a group, um, called V dap. It's the Volcano Disaster Assistance Program. And, and they're state Department funded, but they're, they. They're also at CBO in Vancouver and they work all over the world.
[00:12:59] Dr. Andy Calvert: They're designed [00:13:00] to kind of help developing countries, manage and respond to volcanic eruptions. So we, okay. We, you know, most of our work is domestic, but, um, feed app works, uh, overseas and, um, [00:13:15] you know, you can think into observatory as, um, you can take a medical analogy. That you, you go into the ER and they, what's the first thing they do?
[00:13:25] Dr. Andy Calvert: They take your pulse and your temperature. They, they take your, your vital signs and [00:13:30] we do that. That's the sort of monitoring aspects where we're looking at the volcano, uh, from satellites to try to see if it's deforming. We're listening. We have seismometers seismic arrays around volcanoes when [00:13:45] magna's moving through.
[00:13:47] Dr. Andy Calvert: Up to the surface, it breaks a lot of rock and that causes little earthquake. By gps, we measure the defamation and then we monitor their gases. There are a couple of continuous stations, but usually that's a kind of a survey mode. In the [00:14:00] summertime, you go out and you take a gas sample from from summit of Mount Shasta and bring it back and, and look and see if it's the same as previous years or it's somehow
[00:14:09] Chris Bolhuis: different.
[00:14:10] Chris Bolhuis: Okay. So you have, are you constantly monitoring these volcanoes? [00:14:15] With seismometers and so on, is that
[00:14:17] Dr. Andy Calvert: Yes, yes. And so, and, and we, yeah. So we're, we're, we have a duty scientist, uh, rotation in our office. There are six people that take a week at a time. And, and, um, you know, my phone will [00:14:30] ding if there's an earthquake somewhere, and we watch the seismic records.
[00:14:33] Dr. Andy Calvert: That's our principle tool really is, is the seismicity for kinda listening to see whether it's coming. So that's the, the real kind of monitoring aspect. But then we also have. You know, [00:14:45] the next question they ask you is, what's your family history? You know, have you been sick before? What did your parents die for something?
[00:14:51] Dr. Andy Calvert: And you wanna understand the history and, and that's the eruptive history at Beach Volcano. And that's actually what I do. So I go [00:15:00] out and I make a geologic maps. You map out the old deposits that have come out of a particular volcano and you figure out the composition, how explosive it was. When it happened.
[00:15:14] Dr. Andy Calvert: That's [00:15:15] something I work on a lot is, is the timing and you sort of develop a personality profile for each volcano. You see, whether it's a, it's a bad player, it's one that erupts constantly, or it can sit for five or 10,000 years. I really
[00:15:29] Dr. Jesse Reimink: like that [00:15:30] analogy. That's a good medical analogy. That's a great one.
[00:15:32] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. So Andy,
[00:15:33] Chris Bolhuis: that ties into my next question, which I thought of it today. So, Really quickly, what are some of the other notable volcanoes in California? We're gonna talk about Shasta a little bit later, and I love Mount Shasta. [00:15:45] So what are some of the other notable volcanoes? Yeah, so
[00:15:48] Dr. Andy Calvert: we have six that we really keep track of the largest, uh, and what we worry about the most really well.
[00:15:56] Dr. Andy Calvert: Mount Shasta, we, we worry about a lot, but there's Long Valley Calera. [00:16:00] So Calera is a depressed area in the middle of a volcanic system. And it's depressed because there was such a big eruption. So much material came out of that hole that the roof collapsed. And so things like Crater Lake is a perfect [00:16:15] example or, um, Yellow Stone and, and Long Valley Calera is a, is a large calera.
[00:16:20] Dr. Andy Calvert: It had a huge eruption, 750,000 years and since then there have been eruptions. So we, we keep a good eye on Long Valley [00:16:30] Calera and then it's neighbor to the North serve into Moto Lake. There's some, these moto craters, so that's one of our, one of the ones we watch then. Then there are a couple of Cascade volcanoes, so there's Lassen Peak.[00:16:45]
[00:16:45] Dr. Andy Calvert: And Shasta and Medicine Lake. So three of 'em that are in northernmost, California. Those are Cascade arc, straddle volcanoes. And if you want me to describe that, I can, I can in a minute. . Uh, then another one is, uh, the Clear Lake [00:17:00] volcanic field. It's just north of San Francisco. There's a lake with a, a number of, uh, domes and Mars, which are sub eruptions.
[00:17:10] Dr. Andy Calvert: And, uh, it's a, it's a place that hasn't erupted for quite a while, but we're [00:17:15] actually restarting some, some studies that. And then there are two other fields that are down south. So, so one right down near the Mexican border, Salton Buttes, right on the San Andrea asphalt, uh, at the very beginning of the San Andrea Asphalt, [00:17:30] and those erupted a couple thousand years ago.
[00:17:31] Dr. Andy Calvert: And then another set of domes called coso, and that's on a naval. Uh, reservation in Eastern California.
[00:17:39] Chris Bolhuis: Andy, what's the mechanism for those volcanoes to the south? Um, you said you have the [00:17:45] Cascadia ones, but what's the mechanism for the ones in Central and Southern California?
[00:17:50] Dr. Andy Calvert: Yeah, so there are a few different ways to make volcanoes, and one way is to take hot rocks and move them closer to the surface.
[00:17:59] Dr. Andy Calvert: [00:18:00] And as they move closer to the surface, they turn from a solid to a little bit liquid and they can erupt and, and we have those sorts of. Volcanoes along the mid ocean ridges, say out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean or, or in the Pacific. There [00:18:15] are also some in basin range province, which is the area of the west that is, is spreading the, you know, the distance between Reno, Nevada and Salt Lake City.
[00:18:27] Dr. Andy Calvert: It's doubled in the last 20 million years. [00:18:30] It's twice as far and as you spread things out, you can imagine the, the crust thinning. You can imagine hot rocks getting closer to the surface. So that's one way to make a volcano is you move hot rocks closer to the surface. And that's what we have at Long Valley.[00:18:45]
[00:18:45] Dr. Andy Calvert: In Eastern California, you're, you're right on the edge of the Sierra Nevada, and you're on one of these extensional falls and you're, you're moving hot rods up close to the surface. So those are extensional regime sorts of, that's, that's sort of what you have at the Salton [00:19:00] Buttes done by the Mexican border too.
[00:19:01] Dr. Andy Calvert: So, Andy,
[00:19:02] Dr. Jesse Reimink: there, there's been, uh, a couple of fairly prolific, at least in the media and like on, you know, science, Twitter and stuff like this, things that are prolific. A couple recent volcanic eruptions on Iceland and at La Suri. In the, an [00:19:15] tillies, I think I pronounced that right. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
[00:19:17] Dr. Andy Calvert: Yeah. You're French is about as good as mine. It sounds like .
[00:19:22] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yes. Which means it's horrible. That's terrible. Terrible French. So can you give us like a, a [00:19:30] short, you know, elevator pitch to why Ologists are excited about these two
[00:19:35] Dr. Andy Calvert: eruptions? A lot of it is that they're really accessible. You know, they're in places that people.
[00:19:41] Dr. Andy Calvert: Live. So there are societal effects and if you're, if you look at [00:19:45] La Su air, it's, those are explosive eruptions happening on an island that has tens of thousands of people on it. And so it matters to those people. And so we really wanna, wanna figure out how to keep them safe and, and those sorts of [00:20:00] eruptions happen a lot, especially in the developing world, say down.
[00:20:04] Dr. Andy Calvert: Indonesia, they're, they're pretty common, but when they happen in somewhat more developed places, we hear about them a little bit. Okay. You know, the Los Suri air just kind [00:20:15] of start. Uh, it's an instrumented volcano. And
[00:20:19] Dr. Jesse Reimink: meaning what does that mean as far as there are instruments like constantly monitoring the
[00:20:23] Dr. Andy Calvert: volcanoes that mean Yeah.
[00:20:24] Dr. Andy Calvert: Yeah. I actually don't know if that's true, but I think there, there were seismometers that were [00:20:30] installed from the beginning and there certainly are seismometers that have been installed since there was some activity. And there are a lot of people there. There are a lot of people that live on. The flanks of that volcano and live on deposits from [00:20:45] it.
[00:20:45] Dr. Andy Calvert: And when something like that happens, you wanna be able to snap your fingers and say, you know, get outta the way. But evacuating people's really hard and it's something that, um, You know, whether you're in the developed world or the developing world, people [00:21:00] are, people are willing to leave their homes for a disaster for a few days or for a couple weeks or something, not for a really long, long period of time.
[00:21:11] Dr. Andy Calvert: And some of these eruptions, like what's happening at los, or [00:21:15] it's happening in Barra, they can go on for years. And so it's a really tough problem and you know, especially in the developing world where say you're in Indonesia and you have farmland and you people living on the flanks of these volcanoes until it gets too sleep, [00:21:30] too steep to live on.
[00:21:31] Dr. Andy Calvert: You know, that's their livelihoods. And, and so there's sort of a, an understanding that you can evacuate people for say, a few days before they kind of start returning home. And so you really wanna get the timing right, [00:21:45] you know, at the ah, yeah. So right when it starts, you know, it's, it's scary and you wonder, you know, we wanna get people out of the way.
[00:21:52] Dr. Andy Calvert: But a lot of the art of, especially the v Dap group, they're, they're masters at this and saying, no, we're not gonna evacuate yet. But [00:22:00] really getting that timing right is really tricky. And, and so that's what they're facing at, at lost career is, um, how many people should we evacuate? What is the red zone?
[00:22:09] Dr. Andy Calvert: What's the exclusion zone? What's sort of eruption? Do we expect, if you go back and [00:22:15] look at the old deposits from any of these eruptions, you know, sometimes you just get a little skiff of ash and you might have one little dome and then it's over, or, or sometimes you have an earthquake swarm and the magma doesn't make it to the surface.
[00:22:29] Dr. Andy Calvert: We [00:22:30] call those failed eruptions, and it's common, you know, it. Jesse, you work on, you know, intrusive rocks to some, or at least you've seen dykes out in the field. Yeah. There are volcanic rocks that didn't make it to the surface. And the, the cool, you know, you, you want to be able to try to predict [00:22:45] what's going to happen.
[00:22:46] Dr. Andy Calvert: And it's, it's tricky.
[00:22:47] Chris Bolhuis: What a tremendous amount of pressure, Andy, because you know, you, you have to get the timing right because you can't evacuate people and then come back later when they've moved back in and say, um, now you really have to [00:23:00] go. Yeah. You know that they're not gonna.
[00:23:02] Dr. Andy Calvert: Yeah. And that's one of the great things about having the speed app and, and who go out to the world and they sort of keep the tools sharp and, and get that decision making down to an art.
[00:23:12] Dr. Andy Calvert: And then when, when we have an eruption in [00:23:15] California where we do have people on the flax as well, when there's an eruption somewhere in our purview, we all are rushed to help each other. Say there was the Russian on EA in 2018, we all went over there and cycled through and helped them out. [00:23:30] You, you kind of keep the tools sharp for when it's gonna happen in your, in your backyard.
[00:23:34] Dr. Andy Calvert: But it is, it's sobering trying to think about how you're gonna manage it.
[00:23:39] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. That's a weighty job. So, real quick question that, uh, sort of a bit of a side tangent. Is there any role that kewell plays [00:23:45] in, uh, let's say preemptive, uh, evacuations where like saying, oh, you can't build a development here because this is a dangerous deposit.
[00:23:53] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Do you have any sort of kind of insurance or, or regulatory
[00:23:57] Dr. Andy Calvert: role? The s g s [00:24:00] doesn't manage land, but we work with our partners, our stakeholders, and we, and those are the state or the towns. And one thing we do is, is we develop these hazard assessments and we, we [00:24:15] make maps of where lava flows are likely to go or where ASH is likely to go or these, these areas of elevated concern.
[00:24:26] Dr. Andy Calvert: And then we give those to the local land managers and, and they [00:24:30] make the decisions and we don't evacuate anybody. We advise the sheriff on when to evacuate people or we advise the forest Service on how to manage this, this crisis. And, and
[00:24:42] Chris Bolhuis: so they can, they can choose to not listen [00:24:45] then. Well,
[00:24:45] Dr. Andy Calvert: yeah. I mean it's, it's um, it's like a Hollywood
[00:24:48] Chris Bolhuis: script right here.
[00:24:49] Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. Your job. You've been featured in a lot of movies, Andy feel that you're Pierce Broner
[00:24:55] Dr. Jesse Reimink: climbing up inside the volcano here. That
[00:24:58] Dr. Andy Calvert: is a fantastic, [00:25:00] yeah, yeah, that's, that's really something. Um, yeah. And so you're, we're, we, um, you know, we try to develop relationships and trust with our stakeholders, our partners.
[00:25:11] Dr. Andy Calvert: And, and try to work with them. And when there's unrest, they're pretty [00:25:15] excited to have us to talk to too because, you know, we, we can really gauge what they should be doing and we try to be more and more proactive. You know, this all started in Mount St. Helen's days before we really had observatories that were, were functioning.
[00:25:29] Dr. Andy Calvert: [00:25:30] So we learned so much from that. The Alaska Volcano Observatory really kicked into high gear when 7 47 ran into a mash blue. It was this close. A few hundred people die. That's the sort of thing that, that stimulates formation of our [00:25:45] group and, and we're always struggling to make better ties and make better maps and advise communities and try to keep them safe.
[00:25:55] Dr. Jesse Reimink: One in interesting jobs. I just wanna belabor this point because it really highlights the importance of [00:26:00] geoscience. I mean, you're making out there making maps of the rock. They're used by all sorts of different stakeholders that are around these hazards. It's incredible. This is really, really interesting.
[00:26:09] Dr. Jesse Reimink: It really is. I honestly did not know this about volcano observatories. This is very cool.
[00:26:14] Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. [00:26:15] Andy, um, has there been a recent finding or discovery in your field regarding Vology? That is super. I.
[00:26:23] Dr. Andy Calvert: Yeah, so I, in, in my particular field, so, so trying to understand, say, histories of [00:26:30] volcanoes. The thing that's most interesting to me right now and, and the thing that we're, we're working on is that volcanoes are up episodically.
[00:26:38] Dr. Andy Calvert: You have this volcano that's grown over half a million years, and some of them are up [00:26:45] regularly. They're just kind of always, always doing their thing. But most will have these, these periods that they just go crazy. They're erupting all the time. Different compositions of lavas or [00:27:00] explosive materials coming out constantly or over the period of tens of years or hundreds of years, or thousands of years.
[00:27:06] Dr. Andy Calvert: And then there are these times where it just seems to sit for for 5,000 years. And I focus a lot of energy on that and [00:27:15] trying to understand. The acidity and how, how bad a player one volcano is versus the other. And you know, one of the important things obviously, is to figure out how old the materials are and, and see if they came out at the same time.
[00:27:29] Dr. Andy Calvert: But we also [00:27:30] use other things like paleo magnetics, you guys talked about. Paleomagnetic, I think in one of the, yeah, briefly
[00:27:36] Dr. Jesse Reimink: in our, in our plate tectonics episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but I think, you know, brief introduction is that rocks record the magnetic field of earth. Right. So how are you using it in [00:27:45] this
[00:27:45] Dr. Andy Calvert: context?
[00:27:45] Dr. Andy Calvert: So the magnetic field is, you know, if, if you look at a map, your, your compass doesn't quite point at true north, right? There is a true north spin access to the Earth. That magnetic north pole is somewhere in. [00:28:00] And it actually moves over time and it's moving pretty constantly. And, uh, right now in fact, the magnetic north is moving across.
[00:28:10] Dr. Andy Calvert: It was in Baffin Bay, I think, when I was a kid. And, and it's, it's now [00:28:15] streaking across head to Siberia. Well, when a volcano erupts, it has a lot of iron. You know, it has a lot of iron in it. And as it comes to rest, and as it cools, those iron particles with minerals align [00:28:30] and they align in that magnetic field.
[00:28:32] Dr. Andy Calvert: And so if you take a, a core of a lava flow, bring it back to the lab, put it in a cryogenic magnetometer, you can figure. The direction that [00:28:45] North was when that lava flow came us. And so my colleague Dwayne Champion, he's in, he's in our group, in in, we're kind of besties in the, in the scientific sense because he can tell me when a whole [00:29:00] bunch of different lava flows or pyroclastic rocks if they erupted at the same time.
[00:29:04] Dr. Andy Calvert: He can go out and drill everything, and it's pretty easy and pretty cheap to do that. And if he has six different things that all have the same direction, he [00:29:15] says. I got, I got these six eruptions. They're all, they came out at the same time because they all have the same direction. Pick whichever one you want and we'll have dated that event.
[00:29:25] Dr. Andy Calvert: Right? And so I can go out and find the best rock to date [00:29:30] and bring it back to my lab and date it. And what I do is, um, relatively expensive and time consuming. And a little, maybe
[00:29:39] Chris Bolhuis: I gotta interrupt you. Yeah. So you're telling me. The precision of the [00:29:45] magnetic record in these rocks. You can tell when they erupted based upon where they point.
[00:29:51] Dr. Andy Calvert: We can't tell when, but we can tell the direction of that they erupted
[00:29:57] Chris Bolhuis: at the same time then.
[00:29:58] Dr. Andy Calvert: Right. And so we use it as [00:30:00] a correlation tool. What we're doing in the field all the time is we're, we're looking at these old deposits and we're saying, okay, that's on top of, that's on top of that is on top of that there was.
[00:30:12] Dr. Andy Calvert: Glacier that came down and took a chunk out of [00:30:15] this, and then this lava flow came in and filled on that, or a river or something. So we're doing a relative dating in our, in our heads.
[00:30:22] Chris Bolhuis: Would you be able to differentiate between 500 years?
[00:30:25] Dr. Andy Calvert: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh my
[00:30:26] Chris Bolhuis: gosh. Are you serious? Yeah. So
[00:30:28] Dr. Andy Calvert: the, um, that's amazing.
[00:30:29] Dr. Andy Calvert: [00:30:30] Yeah. The, the magnetic field generally kind of in its normal time will move such that you can differentiate about a hundred. And so, so if it's, if it's measurably different, so you, you, if you take good cores, you can kind of get [00:30:45] plus or minus five degrees. And five degrees is a pretty typical amount that the field will move in a hundred years.
[00:30:52] Chris Bolhuis: That's amazing, Andy. Jesse, that's a really cool factoid
[00:30:56] Dr. Jesse Reimink: right there. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. I didn't know that the, uh, magnets were precise [00:31:00] enough to, to, you know, I mean, we're talking about declinations or the offsets depending on where you are on the planet of a few, few degrees. So, um, that, that's really cool.
[00:31:08] Dr. Jesse Reimink: That is, we'll
[00:31:09] Dr. Andy Calvert: talk, we'll talk about Shasta a little more later, but there's, there's a little volcano that's next [00:31:15] to Shasta. When I go out and make a map, are you talking about lassen or No, this is, this is one that's right behind it, so it's called Ash Creek Butte. It's just a, it's just another lump in the cascade range.
[00:31:28] Dr. Andy Calvert: When you make a map of it, you [00:31:30] don't see time breaks. You see lava flows on top of lava flows and things, so it looks like something that came out in an afternoon or maybe 20 years, or 50 years or a hundred years, hard to know. And so one of the things we're working on right [00:31:45] now is, so I've dated, I've dated a few different times and I can't, the errors on my dates are, Between one and 3000 years typically.
[00:31:54] Dr. Andy Calvert: So I can't see the difference from the first stuff that came out to the last stuff that came out. But [00:32:00] my friend Tony, who's another paleo magician, as we call him, the paleo mag guys, , uh, came out and he's, he's drilling it and, and initial results indicate he's, he's guessing. Yeah, it's. Definitely less than a hundred years, but we see a [00:32:15] little bit of variation, so maybe 20 or 30 years.
[00:32:17] Dr. Andy Calvert: And, and that's actually really useful for the hazards piece, right? Because if something like this comes up in some farmer's backyard, we can say, yeah, it's probably going to, this is gonna probably go on for 20 years. [00:32:30] You know, it's, it's, we, we really wanna sort out that time, that sort of, um, societal time.
[00:32:38] Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, that's very, very cool. Um, I learned a ton right there, . That was a cool segment. I really
[00:32:44] Dr. Jesse Reimink: appreciate [00:32:45] Extremely. I'm serious. All right, so I am Aeron, I'm a endocrinologist like yourself. I use different technique. I wanna, we have a little bit of a rivalry between our techniques here. I would say maybe, I think Ergon uranium led the method that [00:33:00] I choose has like, provided the most information about our planet, but it doesn't work very well.
[00:33:06] Dr. Jesse Reimink: You know, the modern stuff, the type of rocks you're working with, it just does not work for various reasons. But you do this really cool method that is equally important, I [00:33:15] think, which is you use these gases in minerals effectively, gases, I suppose, maybe you'll frame it better than that, but gases in minerals to date them.
[00:33:22] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Can you kind of describe a little bit of the idiosyncrasies of the, the argon technique that you. And maybe how [00:33:30] you go about getting an actual date from the rock.
[00:33:32] Chris Bolhuis: Hold on. Before you begin though, I have to warn the listener. We have two endocrinologists now that are about ready to engage in a conversation.
[00:33:39] Chris Bolhuis: So you know, like if you want to push pause on the podcast [00:33:45] and pull up a really cool picture of Mount Shasta, now would be the time to do that . Cause Mount Shasta's super cool and you know, I think everybody should like, Gaze at that. Maybe while you're
[00:33:57] Dr. Jesse Reimink: listening. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Using, using geology [00:34:00] to understand our earth is not interesting at all, Chris, right?
[00:34:03] Chris Bolhuis: Geez. I have no idea what's about to, to
[00:34:05] Dr. Andy Calvert: happen here. . So. Well, you know, as much as Jesse is baiting me into an argument about, uh, why argon is better than name, but I'm not gonna [00:34:15] fight, I, uh, you're not gonna bite.
[00:34:18] Chris Bolhuis: Put him
[00:34:19] Dr. Jesse Reimink: in his place and let him have it. I was hoping to be smacked down. .
[00:34:24] Dr. Andy Calvert: I think it, it really depends on the question that you're, you're asking.
[00:34:29] Dr. Andy Calvert: Uranium [00:34:30] led eron is, is really great if you wanna know when that little eron, crystal groom, right. Which I don't really care about and, and nobody
[00:34:41] Chris Bolhuis: else does either, Andy. So there we go. Now we're talking. [00:34:45]
[00:34:45] Dr. Andy Calvert: Now we're talking. Yeah. But, and what Jesse has to do is then tie that crystal. To an event, right? So he is gotta, he's gotta make all sorts of arguments about, about why that Crystal's date.
[00:34:59] Dr. Andy Calvert: When [00:35:00] informed why that matters and is it even related to the mountain that it's in. So it's, it's very useful for that and it's, it's tremendously useful for lots of, you're being too
[00:35:09] Chris Bolhuis: nice right now
[00:35:10] Dr. Andy Calvert: telling me, you know, some of my, some of my best friends work on ER [00:35:15] and we, we, we actually, we do a bit of that ourselves, but, you know, argon is a, is a really handy tool.
[00:35:23] Dr. Andy Calvert: Telling you when an eruption happens, if you have a a r at Laflow that comes out, you can date the Zurich on, [00:35:30] and it might be the age of the eruption. But it might have also grown a couple hundred thousand years before down in the mag chamber. And that's interesting, don't get me wrong, but, cause it might
[00:35:41] Chris Bolhuis: not have melted,
[00:35:42] Dr. Andy Calvert: right?
[00:35:42] Dr. Andy Calvert: Yeah. Or it just might have been an early [00:35:45] crystallizing phase and it gets locked in and then it sits down there and stews for a long time and then, and then gets, its barked out later on. If you only date the er, you don't actually know how old the law before was necessarily it. It can. [00:36:00] Argon is, is quite good at telling you when the eruption happens.
[00:36:04] Dr. Andy Calvert: So, so let me just describe the technique. All
[00:36:07] Chris Bolhuis: right, now, Andy, let's try to keep this on a level that my mom could understand. So bingo, giving us the potassium to
[00:36:14] Dr. Andy Calvert: [00:36:15] argon. Okay, so fortunately you guys spent some time talking about endocrinology and, and, and radioactive decay, right? And so Jesse works on the decay of uranium.
[00:36:26] Dr. Andy Calvert: Isotopes to different lead [00:36:30] isotopes and, and it's actually a very complicated, convoluted process. It takes 10 or 15 steps to get from one to the other. Um, and I work on a different radioactive decay system. So potassium, the same [00:36:45] potassium that you have in your bananas and your potatoes. Uh, it has three isotopes and, and two of those isotopes are stable.
[00:36:52] Dr. Andy Calvert: They're, they're not gonna change at all. And, and those have, uh, atomic weights of, of 39 and 41. [00:37:00] Potassium 40, which is a very minor isotope of potassium, is radioactive. It's slightly radioactive. It decays to two different things. Most of it decays to calcium 40, but a little bit of it [00:37:15] decays to argon. and it does that with, wait a minute.
[00:37:18] Dr. Andy Calvert: Okay.
[00:37:18] Chris Bolhuis: So Andy, I did not know this. All right, Jesse, did you know this? You. Oh, I'm
[00:37:24] Dr. Jesse Reimink: sorry. Well,
[00:37:24] Chris Bolhuis: but no, I'm not the PhD in the room, so No, it's,
[00:37:27] Dr. Jesse Reimink: it's a, I didn't know it until, I [00:37:30] think, embarrassingly late in graduate school to be honest, that it was a dual to case system. Yeah.
[00:37:34] Chris Bolhuis: Andy, I'm sorry to interrupt the flow, but I just, that, that threw me for a loop.
[00:37:38] Chris Bolhuis: Okay. So you were talking and you can continue, you were talking about going the small amount, going from potassium to argon.
[00:37:44] Dr. Andy Calvert: Right? So [00:37:45] it's a, it's a very minor isotope, potassium that's radioactive and it dec. Mostly to calcium, but a little bit to argon. The potassium to calcium dating is kind of impossible because there's already so much calcium in rocks and calcium 40.
[00:37:59] Dr. Andy Calvert: You [00:38:00] could possibly differentiate the stuff that came from potassium from the regular garden variety. Calcium, but argon is, is special. You can actually, um, measure that. You can measure the amount of potassium and you can [00:38:15] measure not the ar, the amount of argon quite. And our gun's. Neat cuz uh, well, we're breathing about 1% argon.
[00:38:23] Dr. Andy Calvert: It's a noble gas, so it, it doesn't want to be chemically attached to anything. It's, it's just [00:38:30] perfectly happy. It's like helium or neon bar's, another one of these noble gases and we, we can measure it using a mass spectrometer. Like Jesse. We use, it's a different source, a different way to ionize the gas.
[00:38:44] Dr. Andy Calvert: We'll take [00:38:45] crystals and. Heat them up and liberate their argon and measure their their argon isotopes. The reality is we, we, we do do what we call conventional k ar dating potassium argon dating, where we, we take a [00:39:00] sample and we divide it into two little, uh, piles, and we measure the potassium on one pile and we measure the bargain on the other, and then we add it back up.
[00:39:12] Dr. Andy Calvert: What I actually use is, Is a [00:39:15] slightly more complicated method of potassium argon dating called Argon 40 39 dating. To do that, we take the, we, we do our separate, we, we take either our, our rock that [00:39:30] has minerals, that have potassium, or we take crystals that are loaded with potassium and we send 'em to a, a nuclear.
[00:39:38] Dr. Andy Calvert: A small research grade nuclear reactor. U S G S has one in Denver and it converts [00:39:45] a portion of the stable potassium 39 to radioactive argon 39, and. So why would you do that? Why would you complicate your life by having to separate the stuff, put it in a reactor, bring it back. But the [00:40:00] advantage is
[00:40:00] Dr. Jesse Reimink: that this is, this is one of the coolest technical developments.
[00:40:03] Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, well, here we go, with the ability to do chronologist now. Yeah, yeah. Is so cool. Like what a, what a amazing idea to be like, oh, I don't wanna measure the potassium in this rock. So instead, I'll just convert the potassium to argon and then [00:40:15] measure that. Uh, it's very cool. It's
[00:40:17] Dr. Andy Calvert: very cool and because the, the stuff that we make in the reactor is Argon 39, and the stuff that is naturally occurring is Argon 40.
[00:40:25] Dr. Andy Calvert: We just have to measure different isotopes of the same gas, and [00:40:30] it's easy. It's just, it's dead easy.
[00:40:33] Chris Bolhuis: So you're, because you're doing this, you don't have to account for initial, do isotope present? Is that what you're saying? That's, that's,
[00:40:41] Dr. Andy Calvert: that's part of it. So we, we, there are a lot of complications, [00:40:45] of course.
[00:40:45] Dr. Andy Calvert: You know, we're, we're breathing all this argon and so we have to subtract the argon that's in room. We have to get rid of that. Um, but, but the, the really nice thing, instead of having to measure the absolute amount of [00:41:00] potass. 40 and the absolute amount of Argon 40. So we can compare them. We just have to measure a ratio.
[00:41:07] Dr. Andy Calvert: So we, we create that Argon 39, and then we have standards, things of known age. We run those to know how much of a dose it [00:41:15] got. And then all we have to do is measure the relative amount of argon. And, and that's easy. And Jess will tell you this too, when you're, when you have two things that are the same, you're just measuring the ratio.
[00:41:26] Dr. Andy Calvert: It's much easier than measuring the absolute abundance. [00:41:30]
[00:41:30] Chris Bolhuis: Okay, so Andy is part of this because argon is a gas, and then in lava it resets the clock.
[00:41:37] Dr. Andy Calvert: Exactly.
[00:41:39] Chris Bolhuis: Right. And so is that the beauty of using potassium to argon in this, with this [00:41:45] application?
[00:41:45] Dr. Andy Calvert: Right. That's incredibly handy that there is no initial argon 40 in the, in the rock or in the mineral.
[00:41:54] Dr. Andy Calvert: That's an assumption. It's not always true. We have to disprove it. We have to, we have to prove it every time. [00:42:00] We have ways that we think we can do that. But the, the really nice thing is this, this solid comes back from the reactor and all I have to do is put it on an extraction line, heat it up with a laser, clean up the gas a little bit, let it into a spectrometer.
[00:42:13] Dr. Andy Calvert: You get the age up the other [00:42:15] end. It's um, so what's the
[00:42:16] Chris Bolhuis: half life of potassium?
[00:42:17] Dr. Andy Calvert: 41.25 billion years. One in a quarter. What's your margin of error? Billion. The margin of error. It scales with the age, but typically the best stuff for like a [00:42:30] hundred billion year old rocks is, is about a 10th of a percent.
[00:42:34] Dr. Andy Calvert: And Oh my gosh. And, and so
[00:42:35] Dr. Jesse Reimink: you, Jesse, did you know that? Yeah, that's, it's, it's really good.
[00:42:39] Dr. Andy Calvert: Really good. Yeah. It's, it's, it's outstanding. It's, it's actually pretty similar, similar to uranium [00:42:45] lead. Uh, the errors are actually a little bit smaller on uranium. But
[00:42:50] Dr. Jesse Reimink: let's, let's convert that to, you know, in raw ages.
[00:42:53] Dr. Jesse Reimink: So if we're measuring a million year old rock, what's the, the age, uh, uncertainty that we would get out of that
[00:42:58] Dr. Andy Calvert: date? So it'd be about [00:43:00] 10,000
[00:43:00] Dr. Jesse Reimink: years. Okay. And if we scale that down to your 10,000 year old, you know, Shaina Rock or whatever, you're getting uncertainties on that age that are.
[00:43:10] Dr. Andy Calvert: Well, we run into some problems when we get really young, okay.
[00:43:12] Dr. Andy Calvert: Because there's [00:43:15] so little radiogenic, argon, and so much atmospheric argon that contaminates everything that, that we kind of bottom out and, and the best stuff on a rock. Kinda like on a Shasta rock, I can usually get plus or minus about a thousand years, okay? [00:43:30] If we, if we work really hard. This is a great story.
[00:43:32] Dr. Andy Calvert: Actually. My predecessor started this and when I started, we, I helped him finish. Decided he wanted to date the, the 79 80 eruption of the Seus. So we know when that happened. It was [00:43:45] August 79 ad plenty. The younger was standing in Naples looking across at the Seus. His uncle was, uh, plenty. The elder was trying to rescue people from, from Pompe and, [00:44:00] and plenty of the younger.
[00:44:01] Dr. Andy Calvert: This was
[00:44:01] Dr. Jesse Reimink: 7 90 80, is that what you said? The date?
[00:44:04] Dr. Andy Calvert: 79 79. 79 80. So almost 2000 years. Okay, gotcha. And he drew this picture of this mushroom cloud. And, and that's why we call it a [00:44:15] plenty of eruption. It's because plenty the younger drew this, this mushroom cloud. Okay. That was above theus. So we, we went over there and collected rocks, hummus from that eruption.
[00:44:27] Dr. Andy Calvert: And we separated out a, a very [00:44:30] potassium rich mineral called sanity. And we dated it and we, we spent about. Three weeks dating, and we did it multiple times over and over and over, and we would get essentially the right number, plus or minus about [00:44:45] 200 years. But we did it so many times that we knocked the errors down until we got plus or minus 90 years.
[00:44:52] Dr. Andy Calvert: Wow. So we got the right year. We, we also stopped when we got the right year. Right. So it was, it was, we were, you know, a little bit too [00:45:00] old. They'd average themselves out. Little too old, little too young. And then when we stopped, we knew it was time to stop.
[00:45:05] Chris Bolhuis: Okay. So that's a really cool story. Does that have application to things that are much, much older than what you learned from doing this?
[00:45:12] Dr. Andy Calvert: Well, it, it does a few things. Sorry, [00:45:15] let me,
[00:45:15] Dr. Jesse Reimink: let me interrupt. I wanna, I wanna kind of describe, you know, visually what you just described there because I think we need to kind of visualize this. This is not an easy thing to visualize. So you're saying we have this point in time, 79 ad that we know this eruption happened and you're getting a, an age [00:45:30] measure.
[00:45:30] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Like, what is the first number you get in? Are you getting like 200 ad plus or minus 90 years? And that's the, that's the range. Is that like something on that scale
[00:45:39] Dr. Andy Calvert: perhaps? Um, the first time we did it, we would get zero ad or, or kind of the [00:45:45] birth of Christ, right? Plus or minus 200 years. And then the next time maybe we would get 30 years ab plus or minus 200 years.
[00:45:53] Dr. Andy Calvert: And then we get a few that are too young. So maybe they happen to 120. [00:46:00] 120 common error with with that error. And if you do things a whole bunch of times, you can sum them statistically and reduce your error, re reduce that error envelope. So you
[00:46:13] Chris Bolhuis: got down below [00:46:15] 200 plus or minus 200 years.
[00:46:17] Dr. Andy Calvert: Statistically, we.
[00:46:21] Dr. Andy Calvert: An age that was the right year, or you know, with error the right year. Yeah, with an with an error, an analytical error. An [00:46:30] uncertainty of 90 years. Wow.
[00:46:33] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Wow, that's really cool. So, the way to visualize this, I just wanna paint, paint this picture and go back to it. If you visualize this with like, you know, a time chart, we know the age, there's like a spike in the ground of the age 79 ad we're getting like [00:46:45] this uncertainty around it.
[00:46:46] Dr. Jesse Reimink: So we're getting this kind of squishy gray band in that age time. But if you stack up a whole bunch of those squishy gray bands that are offset from no one another a little bit, the average of all these measurements becomes actually more precise. So the more numbers you have, the more n [00:47:00] the more precise.
[00:47:01] Dr. Jesse Reimink: This thing actually gets, so you're kind of decreasing your uncertainties or increasing your precision by getting more data. Right. And driving this down. Yeah.
[00:47:11] Chris Bolhuis: So I am feeling a little left out because I don't have a lab. [00:47:15] You don't just use a lab. Andy is a lab. Chris does not have a lab. Um,
[00:47:20] Dr. Jesse Reimink: support crash.
[00:47:22] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, you don't date your rocks. You don't date your own rocks in your lab. I do not date my own
[00:47:26] Chris Bolhuis: rocks. Um, so Andy, we always ask [00:47:30] this question. It's one of my favorite things to ask. Um, I think we all have one. What has been your best day as a geoscientist?
[00:47:40] Dr. Andy Calvert: That's a tough question. There have been a lot of best days and you know, it [00:47:45] really.
[00:47:46] Dr. Andy Calvert: I, I love my job. You know, I, I, I love the, the laboratory work. I, I like looking at rocks in the lab, and I love being in the field. So I, I've, I've, I've done a lot of field work in [00:48:00] Alaska and scattered places, um, around the world. But my favorite day is, um, it's on Mount Sha. And we, we went up the north side and we were, we were headed up [00:48:15] to the summit and I was with, I, I've had the great fortune to, um, work with the, the US Forest Service, uh, climbing rangers.
[00:48:24] Dr. Andy Calvert: They're the guys that keep people safe on the mountain, and it, it's a hard job and they rescue [00:48:30] people. They carry people who died down off the. And that's a delightful bunch of people, um, men and women, and they help me when I need help. Uh, so. If there's a particularly [00:48:45] hazardous place I need to get to to sample the right rock, I call up the lead climbing ranger and either he goes with me or sends one of his people up with me and they take care of the safety.
[00:48:56] Dr. Andy Calvert: And it's just, it's dreamy because I don't have to worry [00:49:00] about, all I have to do is, is, you know, make sure I don't fall down and, and. Yeah, protected. I'm protected. And, and they've got radios and, and the works. And, and so there was a day when I was, um, climbing the north side, the Hott bull route with, um, two of these rangers for [00:49:15] Coots and Nick Myers and, uh, uh, a wonderful woman who, who worked for us, uh, named Heather Blake and the four of us, uh, camped out at 10,000 feet and then got an early start and, and headed up the hot bowl.
[00:49:27] Dr. Andy Calvert: And it was a spectacular day. It was beautiful. [00:49:30] And we went up and there's a, a nice step at. It's about 12,000. Yeah, a little over 12,000 feet. And we stopped and, and had a candy bar and relaxed a little bit. There was a, a [00:49:45] dome, uh, it's the head wall of the hot lung glacier. The, so I call it the hot head wall.
[00:49:51] Dr. Andy Calvert: It's an old dome that sticks up. And I said, oh, you know, I really wanna get a sample of that someday, but, you know, we gotta figure out the, the timing. And, [00:50:00] and Nick Myers turns to me and. I was over there the other day and it looks like the bridge is in place. It looks, it just looks, it looks great. Let's go give it a shot and hauled out the rope.
[00:50:13] Dr. Andy Calvert: And so he [00:50:15] believe me out onto the glacier, I was down at the bottom of the head. Well, and I got a beautiful sample. We're, we're looking for a pretty specialized type of material. Really dense. Doesn't have. Vesicles these gas pockets and it's very hard to date glass. It's [00:50:30] much easier to date crystal and material, and I got a beautiful sample and.
[00:50:35] Dr. Andy Calvert: It was, um, the, the snow was perfect, the conditions were perfect, and I felt so safe because, you know, the climb rangers on the other end of the rope and it was [00:50:45] almost like I was floating. You know, usually in that sort of place, I'm, I'm scared outta my mind, or, you know, you just sort of, you don't wanna rock to fall on you.
[00:50:52] Dr. Andy Calvert: But I just remember it was like I was floating out there. I got the rock and I floated back and I will never forget that [00:51:00] feeling. And I got this fantastic sample. It was, it's, it's old, it's 10 well old for the hot lump cone, the youngest part of Shasta, 10,000 year old rock. And um, it is great. Then we trot it up [00:51:15] to the top, collected some samples.
[00:51:17] Dr. Andy Calvert: And failed out. You
[00:51:18] Chris Bolhuis: didn't trot up to the top, Andy, come on now. I know. Better .
[00:51:23] Dr. Andy Calvert: It's, it's a tough climb. It's, it's really, it's
[00:51:26] Chris Bolhuis: a tough, it's awful. You know, one of the things I love about it is the bags that [00:51:30] you're supposed to, to go to the bathroom in, they have the bullseye on 'em, you know, and it's just, it's, I've never seen anything like it anywhere else.
[00:51:37] Chris Bolhuis: Yeah.
[00:51:38] Dr. Andy Calvert: So it's a locally sourced, locally designed bag to take a dump in. Oh.
[00:51:44] Dr. Jesse Reimink: There you go. It
[00:51:44] Chris Bolhuis: [00:51:45] is, it is so clever. It's got lime in it and all that. It's good to
[00:51:48] Dr. Jesse Reimink: go, man. That, that sounds like such a good story though. I mean, apart from the bag, these bags that you're taking dumped in, I mean it
[00:51:54] Chris Bolhuis: Well, you gotta pack it out with you and
[00:51:56] Dr. Jesse Reimink: it's, yeah.
[00:51:57] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay. Fair enough. But the perfect sample, perfect day. I [00:52:00] mean, that's a great best day as a, as a geoscientist story that
[00:52:04] Dr. Andy Calvert: that was really great. That was a.
[00:52:06] Chris Bolhuis: I really, really appreciate you talking to us, Andy.
[00:52:09] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Um, yeah, this has been great. Thank you very much for the time, and I
[00:52:13] Chris Bolhuis: feel like you're a bit of a kindred
[00:52:14] Dr. Andy Calvert: [00:52:15] spirit, to be honest with you.
[00:52:16] Dr. Andy Calvert: Well, likewise. You know, I, I really, I, um, and I really got that, that comes across in your podcast. You guys are exactly like you sound, you know, just, just genuine and nature loving are, are kind of earth loving people. And then [00:52:30] teaching and, and you know, the motivating Jesse to. Turn this into a career is that's, that's a great origin story for, for a geologist really, is to have a great seventh grade class or whatever it was.
[00:52:41] Dr. Andy Calvert: A, and it's really true that it does get short [00:52:45] SHR in, it does middle school and, and whenever
[00:52:49] Chris Bolhuis: we fight it, I'm at the high school and we're still, we're fighting the battle all the time. Well,
[00:52:54] Dr. Andy Calvert: just the, the ridiculous here. You listen to Elon Musk and talk about, you know, we've [00:53:00] gotta make Mars. Habitable, habitable.
[00:53:04] Dr. Andy Calvert: It's ridiculous. I it's 85 billion times easier to just take care of what we have. That's exactly,
[00:53:10] Chris Bolhuis: you know, I teach astronomy and, uh, you know, one of my students, uh, who's a, [00:53:15] one of the brightest students I've ever had, she presented on that and, and then her conclusion was, why are we doing this? You know, why are we talking about, you know, inhabiting Mars when we have this planet that is good to go.[00:53:30]
[00:53:30] Chris Bolhuis: We need to take care of the one we have. Yeah.
[00:53:33] Dr. Andy Calvert: Yeah. And actually working on volcanoes has been interesting too, because you kind of have to become a glaciologist too because there's, there's such an interplay between the ice and the eruptions. And you [00:53:45] know, I've been places in Alaska that are, Um, devoid of ice now, but you look at the air photos and the maps from the 1950s and it was glacier, you know, and, and these are maritime glaciers where, you know, you are under 30, you know, 20 meters [00:54:00] of ice there and, and you're now on just this spic and span clean surface.
[00:54:04] Dr. Andy Calvert: It's, it's, it's terrifying really. I
[00:54:08] Chris Bolhuis: really, really
[00:54:09] Dr. Jesse Reimink: appreciate talking to you. Yeah, it'd be great to hang out, you know, in person. Really appreciate the time. Andy, this has been awesome. [00:54:15]
[00:54:15] Dr. Andy Calvert: Likewise. Thanks for doing this. This is really, Well done. Well, you guys are great. Thank you.
[00:54:21] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Hey, that's a wrap on our re-release interview with Dr. Andrew Culvert. We are still on a break and next week we're gonna have more re-release vulcanology [00:54:30] content for you you can follow us on all the social medias at Planet Geo Cast. Send us an email, planet Geo cast@gmail.com and go to our website, planet geo cast.com. There you can support us. Look at all the episodes, learn about us, and also check out our Camp [00:54:45] Geo, the conversational textbook for geology, we are uploading new. All the time, and actually our volcanoes chapter is probably up now. So check that out. You can learn all about volcanoes like you would in a college level. [00:55:00] to geology class. So check that out and let us know what you think.
[00:55:03] Dr. Jesse Reimink: Cheers
