Imminent eruption of Mount Merapi

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. -- One of my major concerns is societal collapse following natural disaster. The global landscape is littered with the ruins of societies that have disappeared as a result of environmental calamity – whether caused by extreme drought, major flood, massive storm, devastating earthquake, or catastrophic volcanic eruption.

The world watches the volcanic activity on Mount Merapi, about 30 kilometers north of Yogyakarta, a city of about 400,000 in south-central Java, in Indonesia. Merapi is the most active volcano in Indonesia, which in turn has more active volcanoes than any other nation.

Locals have long recognized the volcanic hazard from Merapi – the name means “mountain of fire.” It is a stratovolcano, a tall (more than 2,960 meters), steep-sided mountain capable of explosive eruptions, ash falls, lava flows, lahars, and nuée ardents – glowing clouds – the type of hazard that destroyed the Caribbean city of St. Pierre in 1902.

Tens of thousands live in the danger zone in the densely populated area around Merapi. It poses a threat to two provincial capitals, Yogyakarta to the south and Semarang, on the coast of the Java Sea to the North. About 1,370 persons were killed in an eruption of the volcano in 1930; 66 were killed in another eruption in 1960. The volcano averaged about five eruptions a century from the 1500s to the 1700s; it erupted more than 20 times in the 1800s and more than 25 times last century (Volcano World; http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/current_volcs/merapi/).

Exactly one thousand years ago, Merapi may have contributed to more than the destruction of a city – it may have triggered a shift in power between the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms which had held sway over much of Java to Muslim kingdoms that asserted dominance over the island afterward.

The late Dutch geologist, Reinout Willem van Bemmelen, in his 1949 book, “The Geology of Indonesia,” claimed that an eruption of Merapi blanketed much of Central Java with ash. The destruction allegedly forced the Kingdom of Mataram, which had been based in the region of what is now Yogyakarta but was being pressed from the west by the Srivijayan kingdom of southern Sumatra, to relocate to the eastern portion of Java.

The vacuum left by the evacuation of the Mataram dynasty paved the way for Muslim domination of central Java.

According to the Global Volcanism Program of the Smithsonian Institution (http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/), the 1006 eruption has been discredited. Nevertheless, the volcano had erupted several times during the time that the Mataram dynasty resided in the area. Indonesians are hosting an international conference, the Volcano International Gathering 2006, in Yogyakarta in September. The conference will commemorate the 1,000 anniversary of the alleged eruption, despite what the Smithsonian says.

And if discussion of the downfall of the Mataram kingdom wears thin, it is almost certain that Merapi will have given the world’s vulcanologists much more immediate events to discuss in the meantime.

-- 30 --

Link

Welcome to my blog

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. -- Welcome to Notes from the Abyss.

Before you read anything sinister into the title of the blog, it refers to my book, Upheaval from the Abyss, which recounts the story of some pioneers of oceanic exploration and how their work fueled the development of two revolutionary scientific theories -- continental drift and plate tectonics.

My book was classified as history of science for the marketers, and it was, but it was first and foremost a narrative: of the sea, of science, of war, and especially of people who fought against one obstacle after another to learn about the world in which we live.

This blog will be an attempt to continue in that tradition.

When suitably inspired -- I hope at least once a week -- I will write something, maybe about a breaking story in science, maybe about my career as a scientist (specifically, a biogeographer). I may wage war against the forces of ignorance from the dubious bully pulpit of this blog. Or I may just tell some war story from my past in which I should have ended up dead as a result of my own stupidity.

In other words, I don't have a damn clue about what I will write.

I know you can read my profile, but the profile format is a bit limited in providing readers a feel for what drives me to this intersection of science and journalism. I'm not always sure myself -- for much of my adult life I have lived as both, often switching from one career track to the other when misfortune necessisitated a change.

I grew up interested in science, and wanting to become a scientist, but I grew up in a newspaper family. My father, George M. Lawrence, decided to become a journalist in his early 30s, and in 1970 began working toward a journalism degree at Louisiana State University in Shreveport. Before long, he was working at the local morning paper, then known as The Shreveport Times. He would take me to LSU-S with him, and he would take me to The Times with him.

It was a wonderful time to witness journalism -- with Watergate on the national scale, and massive city corruption on the local scale -- and I learned early on the potential of the press to inform and empower.

Still, I never planned to become a journalist, but I always needed money in college, and -- after beginning my own newpaper career as a copyboy -- I was always able to find work in a newsroom. I tried to keep the two careers separate, but in the early 1990s I thought it might be worthwhile to combine them.

So, here I am: a journalist, covering everything from sports to science; an author in search of another book project; and a scientist trying to do research when I'm not reporting, writing, or teaching courses in biology, geography, and meteorology at colleges and universities in the Richmond, Va., metropolitan area.

Our journey begins. I hope you, the reader, and I, the writer, find it worthwhile.

-- 30 --