So you want to help scientists understand geological blowtorches? Good news: you don’t need a PhD in geophysics or a tolerance for sulfur dioxide that could kill a horse.
When Your Smartphone Becomes a Seismometer Because Science Got Weird
Download an app called MyShake, developed by UC Berkeley in 2016, and suddenly your phone transforms into a seismic detector. The concept sounds absurd—like using a toaster to measure earthquakes—but here’s the thing: it actually works. When enough people install it, researchers can triangulate volcanic tremors before they escalate into full-blown eruptions. The app has detected quakes as small as magnitude 2.5, which is roughly equivalent to a garbage truck hitting a pothole, except underground and made of magma.
Over 1.5 million people have already turned their devices into scientific instruments.
The Volcanic Ash Society That Nobody Knows Exists But Probably Should
Meanwhile, in Iceland—a country that treats volcanic eruptions the way Florida treats hurricanes—citizens photograph ash clouds and upload images to a database that volcanologists actually use. During the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption (yes, that’s the real spelling, no I won’t pronounce it), over 100,000 flights were canceled because nobody could predict ash dispersion patterns with enough accuracy. Turns out, crowdsourced photos from farmers and tourists provided better real-time data than some satellite systems. The Icelandic Meteorological Office now officially incorporates citizen observations into their monitoring protocols, which is either brilliant or slightly terrifying depending on how you feel about entrusting air traffic safety to someone’s Instagram feed.
But it works.
Counting Rocks Like They’re Pokemon But With Actual Scientific Value
Then there’s the tedium nobody talks about: tephra classification. Scientists need to analyze thousands of volcanic rock samples to understand eruption mechanics, and they simply don’t have enough graduate students willing to stare at microscopic glass shards for months on end. Enter platforms like Floating Forests and Rock Detectives, where volunteers examine photographs of volcanic deposits and categorize them by size, shape, and composition. A project studying Mount St. Helens’ 1980 eruption processed over 40,000 samples this way, revealing that the blast sequence was far more complex than originally theorized—three distinct pulses instead of one catastrophic event.
One volunteer in Manchester identified a rare pumice formation that challenged existing models of how gas bubbles behave in magma chambers.
Wait—maybe we’re thinking about volcano monitoring all wrong? The Global Volcanism Program maintains a database of eruptions dating back 10,000 years, but huge gaps exist, especially in remote regions. If you live near an active volcano—and roughly 800 million people do—you can submit observations through their online portal. Date, time, ash color, smell (yes, smell matters), even the sound. During Kilauea’s 2018 Lower East Rift Zone eruption, local residents reported hearing sounds like “jet engines mixed with breaking glass” days before lava fountains appeared, giving scientists crucial lead time to refine their acoustic monitoring techniques.
The Thermal Camera Revolution That Runs on Tourist Snapshots
Modern smartphones capture infrared data whether you realize it or not, and volcanic hot spots show up beautifully in certain photographic conditions. Projects like ABOVE (All-sky Balloon Observation of Volcanic Emissions) encourage hikers and tourists to submit thermal images of volcanic vents, calderas, and fumaroles. In 2019, a teenager in Guatemala photographed Volcán de Fuego using a modified GoPro, and the thermal signature revealed a previously undetected lava tube that explained why eruption predictions kept failing. The tube was diverting magma underground, completely bypassing surface monitoring equipment.
Sometimes amateurs notice what experts miss because they’re looking at the wrong instruments.
The Ash That Falls in Your Backyard Tells Stories About Magma Chemistry If Anyone Bothers to Collect It
After the 2011 Puyehue-Cordón Caulle eruption in Chile, researchers asked residents across Argentina to collect ash samples from their roofs and gardens. Over 2,000 people responded, creating a dispersion map so detailed it revealed how wind patterns at different altitudes carried chemically distinct ash layers hundreds of kilometers away. The samples showed that the eruption wasn’t a single event but a series of pulses with varying silica content, suggesting the magma chamber had stratified layers that erupted sequentially. One farmer in Bariloche collected ash daily for six weeks, and his meticulous records helped scientists reconstruct the eruption timeline with unprecedented precision.
Turns out your roof is a scientific instrument if you know what questions to ask.
The Smithsonian Institution now actively recruits “volcano correspondents” through their Volcano Awareness Project, which sounds like a spy network but is actually just people with binoculars and notebooks. They’ve documented over 50 previously unreported eruptions in Indonesia alone since 2015, filling critical gaps in the volcanic record. Some of these eruptions were small—barely VEI 1 on the explosivity index—but they provided data about precursor activity that could improve early warning systems for larger events. A fisherman in the Philippines noticed unusual water temperature changes near Taal Volcano three days before its January 2020 eruption, observations that later corroborated satellite thermal data but arrived faster because, well, he was right there with a thermometer.
Sometimes the best sensor is a human paying attention.
