Multidisciplinary Volcano Hazards Experiments Workshop

Date: July 24-27, 2018
Place:  University at Buffalo North Campus and Geohazards Field Station, Springville, New York

LODGING AND TRANSPORTATION INFORMATION

Thanks for registering for the Field-Scale Experimental Volcanology Workshop; we look forward to a fun and productive time.

The workshop will take place in two locations.  Day 1 (24 July) will take place at the University at Buffalo North Campus in Amherst, New York (a suburb of Buffalo).  Days 2 and 3 (25, 26 July) will be at the Geohazards Field Station, which is located just outside of the small town of Springville, New York.  Springville is about 45 minutes driving from the UB campus.  The final day, 27 July, will again convene at UB North Campus.

Participants are responsible for making their own lodging and transportation arrangements.  There are a number of hotels within a few kilometers of the UB North Campus, at a range of prices.  If you want a hotel in a location where you can easily walk to restaurants, we recommend one of the two on Main Street in Williamsville (part of Amherst):  Wyndham Garden Buffalo, or Hampton Inn Buffalo-Williamsville.  However, the rates at these hotels are normally on the high side.  There are five hotels at a range of prices within walking distance of North Campus (you can find these online at the intersection of Maple and Flint Roads, Amherst NY).

There is one hotel in Springville:  Microtel Inn & Suites.  Some participants might choose to lodge there on 25, and possibly 26 July, in order to avoid the commute from Amherst.  There is limited restaurant availability and lodging in Springville.​  Note that the experiments will begin at 08:00 on the 26th, with preparations probably beginning one hour earlier.​

Note that summer is high tourist season in this region, with Niagara Falls and other popular destinations.  We recommend that you make hotel reservations soon.

Participants will also be responsible for their own transportation, and we recommend renting a car.  We will soon post the full list of participants and contact information, so you can organize group rentals as desired in order to keep individual costs down.

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Improving Understanding of Volcanic Eruptions recent report (Volcanic Eruptions and Their Repose, Unrest, Precursors, and Timing, www.nap.edu/24650) highlighted the need to develop a community-driven, shared-infrastructure user facility for large-scale, multidisciplinary experiments on volcano processes. The University at Buffalo, with support from the National Science Foundation, has established a Geohazards Field Station to meet this need.  The field station comprises an open area of several acres with supporting infrastructure.

An open workshop will be held at the field station on 24-27 July 2018.  The workshop will include a day of experiments related to explosive eruptions.  Preliminary plans call for four experiments, each carefully timed and spaced sequences of buried chemical explosives, generating blast waves, debris-laden jets and plumes, small-scale density currents, and resulting craters and ejecta deposits. Participants are encouraged to participate in data collection using any approach.  This could include, for example:  high-speed video, acoustic sensors, seismic sensors, thermal infrared video, Doppler radar, ejecta and fallout sampling, and photogrammetry to establish quantitative morphology of explosion products.

Preliminary schedule for the workshop:

·       Day 1 – afternoon presentations and discussions by participants on data collection techniques to be deployed and potential integration of the techniques.

·       Day 2 – setup at the field station.

·       Day 3 – four experiments

·       Day 4 – data archiving for shared access, working session where participants present and discuss data from the experiments and future directions for multidisciplinary experimentation, and begin development of a report on the workshop .

Participation is open to any interested researcher.  There is no registration fee.  Limited funds are available to offset travel expenses for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers (Please indicate whether you are requesting funds when you register; a more detailed request for information will be provided to requesters at a later date.).  Participants will be responsible for their own travel and lodging arrangements (the hosts will provide guidance at a later date).

This workshop is sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation.