Specially-adapted drones gather new data from unexplored volcanoes
Specially-adapted drones developed by an international team including Bristol scientists have been gathering data from never-before-explored volcanoes that will enable local communities to better forecast future eruptions. The cutting-edge research at Manam volcano in Papua New Guinea is also improving scientists' understanding of how volcanoes contribute to the global carbon cycle, key to sustaining life on Earth. The ABOVE project was an international endeavour, bringing together leading experts from Bristol with others across the world, all with previous hands-on experience of using aerial robotics to study volcanic emissions. The team included Bristol researchers Dr Kieran Wood , Dr Tom Richardson and Rob Clarke from the Flight Lab in Aerospace Engineering; Dr Matthew Watson from Earth Sciences and Professor Jim Freer from Geographical Sciences; as well as specialists from the USA, Canada, Italy, Sweden, Germany, Costa Rica, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, led by Dr Emma Liu at UCL. Together they co-created solutions to the challenges of measuring gas emissions from active volcanoes, using modified long-range drones. Volcanic emissions are a critical stage of the Earth's carbon cycle - the movement of carbon between land, atmosphere, and ocean - but CO2 measurements have so far been limited to a relatively small number of the world's estimated 500 degassing volcanoes. Measurements need to be collected very close to active vents and, at hazardous volcanoes like Manam, drones are the only way to obtain samples safely.
