Fieldwork Grants – latest report
The Society supports geological fieldwork at home or abroad with grants from the Clough and Mykura Funds. We are always pleased to hear back about how the fieldwork went, and were delighted to receive a thorough and fascinating account from Bob Gooday about his visit to Alaska in 2017. Bob took part in the International Volcanological Summer School in Katmai National Park, Alaska. This involved staying in the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes for ten days, looking at volcanic features in the Valley and the surrounding Katmai Cluster of volcanoes. The Katmai-Novarupta eruption in 1912 was the largest on Earth in the twentieth century, and completely filled a nearby valley with pyroclastic deposits. These deposits sustained intense fumarolic activity for several years, giving the valley its name. Bob notes that observation of the caldera formed during the Katmai eruption, and discussion of the processes at work have helped with his PhD work on a similar-sized, but much older, caldera system on Arran, western Scotland. So that’s at least one thing that Alaska and Arran have in common …