volcanology Archives - State of the Planet

einat lev headshot

Faculty Spotlight: Einat Lev, Volcanologist and Lava-Chaser

When she’s not visiting active volcano sites or working in her “plumber’s shop” of a lab, Lev is teaching the “Sustainability in the Face of Natural Disasters” for the Sustainability Science program.

by Frederique Fyhr |April 21, 2023

Water Content Controls the Depth of Magma Storage Under Many Volcanoes, Says Study

Research into volcanoes in the Aleutian Islands and elsewhere overturns the conventional understanding of what controls the depth at which rising magma is stored.

by |March 10, 2022
Yves Moussallam sampling volcanic emissions

Volcanologist Yves Moussallam Honored With Rolex Award for Enterprise

He treks to remote volcanoes to measure their gas and aerosol emissions, in order to improve climate change predictions.

by |November 29, 2019

On a Remote Island, a Lost Part of the World Is Found

On a small volcanic island in the Indian Ocean lies a geologic enigma—a mass of pure white quartzite sandstone apparently formed on a faraway continent long ago. How did it get there?

by |February 12, 2019

Peering into Volcanoes: a Talk with Einat Lev

What do the scientists and researchers around the Earth Institute do? In this second in a series, Einat Lev from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory talks about her work on volcanoes what she’d like people to know about it, and what inspired her to go into the field.

by |March 2, 2017

Accounting for Volcanoes Using Tools of Economics

Climate scientists teamed up with an econometrics expert to develop an innovative new method for picking out past volcanic eruptions in temperature reconstructions going back millennia and gauging their impact on the climate.

Looking into the volcanic vent of Quizapu

Peering into Chile’s Quizapu Volcano

In their quest to unravel the physical and chemical processes controlling volcanic eruptions, Einat Lev and colleagues headed to South America and the volcanoes of Chile.

by |March 3, 2016

American Geophysical Union 2015: Key Earth Institute Events

Scientists at Columbia University’s Earth Institute will present important findings at the American Geophysical Union fall 2015 meeting, Dec. 14-18–the world’s largest gathering of earth and space scientists.

by |December 3, 2015
An aerial photo shows the edge of the Holuhraun lava flow (blue line), where the lava went over a combination of sand and bedrock. Two types of lava appear on either side of the red line: smooth pahoehoe on the right and rubbly a’a on the left.

From the Field: Mapping Lava Flows in Iceland

Lamont’s Einat Lev and Elise Rumpf write about their expedition to the lava fields of Iceland, where the two volcanologists and a drone named Buzz studied how lava flows and what happens to rivers, rocks and old lava in its path.

by |September 9, 2015

Vetlesen Science Prize Celebrated at Columbia Gala

Stephen Sparks, one of the world’s foremost experts on volcanoes, received the Vetlesen Prize for his groundbreaking scientific work at a ceremony held June 24 at Columbia University. Two-hundred-fifty people attended the formal gathering in the Low Library Rotunda.

by |June 30, 2015