The Center for the Study of Active Volcanoes (CSAV) has returned to Hawaii for its annual International Training Course in Volcano Hazards Monitoring, with 12 participants attending the program this year, the first program since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to a United States Geological Survey (USGS) news release, the annual summer training course is organized CSAV, this year’s event marks the 30th session since its inception in 1990. The course was paused three years as a result of the pandemic, the release stated.
“CSAV international course is the best experience that every volcanologist wants to have,” Juan José Idárraga, a Columbian geologist, participant in CSAV International Training Course in volcano hazards monitoring at CSAV, said in the news release. “I’ve been waiting for the course for some years and it is absolutely worth it. We have seen and learned amazing things just in a week. This course gives us the opportunity to learn from the best scientists and in the best natural laboratory: Hawaiian Volcanoes.”
The USGS Volcano Disaster Assistance Program (VDAP), USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO), and University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa have partnered to stage the course for scientists from across the globe, with participants in this year’s event coming from El Salvador, Costa Rica, Chile, Peru, Philippines, Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Colombia, and are working in countries with at-risk populated areas due to active volcanoes.
“After three years of waiting I’m finally here, directly from Coyhaique from Chilean Patagonia, happy to learn from the instructors and my colleagues,” Andrea Aguillar, a geophysicist from Chile, said in the news release.
Aguillar said in the news release the program will prove to be a boon of information that will prove useful when he returns home.
Everything I learn here will be useful for what we do as a country, and without a doubt this experience will be the most enriching that I will have in my training as a professional and it will be worth being away from my son for so many weeks,’ he said in the news release.
According to the USGS news release, the program kicks off on the island of Hawai’i where attendees will witness the workings of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO), though the volcanoes they will see in their home countries likely would be more powerful than the volcanoes in Hawaii.
Following six weeks in Hawaii, they will travel to the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory (CVO) in Washington for an additional two weeks of study at Mount St. Helens and some volcanoes that are historically more explosive.
