Volcanoes are some of the most awe-inspiring natural spectacles on our planet. There is much more to them, though, than the stereotypical image of a conical fire-spitting mountain, and I have been keen to learn more. As I searched for serious introductory books on volcanology, this was one title that kept coming up. But wait, why is a biologist reviewing geology textbooks?
Volcanoes, written by the late Peter Francis and Clive Oppenheimer, published by Oxford University Press in December 2003 (paperback, 521 pages)
A short preamble seems in place. My choice to study biology went at the expense of geology, although the latter topic continued to fascinate me. Two decades later, my job exposes me to many fascinating-sounding but advanced-level earth science books. I have since started to make inroads into this field for the sheer joy of expanding my knowledge. And thus I found myself eyeing up the new book Volcanotectonics. Yet, as I recently rediscovered, there is still a gap between having covered the essentials of geology and diving headlong into an advanced topic. Hoping to bridge that gap, I turned to Francis & Oppenheimer’s Volcanoes.
The first edition of this book was published in 1993 and authored by volcanology professor Peter Francis. When he passed away in 1999, his former PhD student Clive Oppenheimer, now a professor of volcanology in his own right, took it upon him to revise the text and bring it up to date for this second edition, published in 2003. Francis’s desire was to write a book to be read rather than consulted. Volcanoes is thus less of a textbook than you might think: there are no chapter summaries or student exercises. What you will find is a logical flow of chapters detailing the inner workings of volcanoes, glued together by the fascinating stories of past eruptions and, occasionally, Francis’s trademark humour, lampooning the field of volcanology.
“Volcanoes is […] less of a textbook than you might think: there are no chapter summaries or student exercises. What you will find is a logical flow of chapters detailing the inner workings of volcanoes, glued together by the fascinating stories of past eruptions […]”
Volcanoes starts with very primordial questions. Where do the heat and the rocks that drive volcanism come from? This introduces you to planetary formation and the radioactive decay of isotopes. In case you were expecting to start with plate tectonics, that is the next subject to be tackled. This explains the difference between volcanoes at plate margins where the oceanic crust is either formed or destroyed, and the minority occurring far from margins, such as the volcanic islands of Hawai’i.
Chapters four to twelve form, to my mind, the nuts-and-bolts section of this book, going into all the glorious and gory details of an eruption from beginning to end. This covers everything from formation and movement of magma; different eruption styles; types of lava; eruption columns and the deposits of ash and pyroclastic rocks they leave behind; pyroclastic density currents, debris avalanches, and mudflows or lahars—and their deposits; the different landscape forms left after eruptions, including types of volcanoes and how they erode, and the landscape depressions known as calderas; super-eruptions; and, finally, the common but hard-to-observe phenomenon of underwater volcanism.
The last four chapters cover closely allied topics: volcanoes in the solar system; the effects of recent eruptions on climate and the palaeoclimatological evidence of older ones; and, new to this edition, two chapters on monitoring of volcanoes, and assessing and managing the risks they pose.
“I was fascinated by some of the technicalities. For example by […] the physics behind eruption columns and the interplay with the wind, and how to deduce eruption intensity from them […]”
Two aspects, I thought, make this book very enjoyable to read. First, it broaches subjects without overwhelming you. When it talks of magma, it mentions the physics of gas bubble formation and growth (vesiculation), and the flow of liquid rock (rheology) without smothering you in detail. It will list different eruption styles (Hawaiian, Strombolian, Vulcanian, Plinian, etc.) and lavas (andesitic, dacitic, rhyolitic, etc.) while highlighting the arbitrary nature of such classifications, as these things exist on a continuum. And where formulas are given, for instance in the chapter on eruption columns, it is to demonstrate principles rather than go deep into the mathematics. If you are so inclined, each chapter comes with recommended sources and literature references for further research.
The authors explain terminology as they go, supported by many photos and diagrams. I would have liked a glossary—lacking that, I occasionally had to grab my dictionary to jog my mind. Even so, I was fascinated by some of the technicalities. For example by the distinction between central vent and large-scale fissure eruptions. By the underground movement of magma and intrusion of dikes. By the physics behind eruption columns and the interplay with the wind, and how to deduce eruption intensity from them. By the detective work that uses palaeoenvironmental records such as tree rings, and the extent and thickness of deposits to reconstruct eruptions for which there is no eyewitness testimony. Or by what makes pyroclastic density currents so terrifyingly destructive.
The second aspect that makes Volcanoes very readable is that this is not a theoretical treatise with hypothetical scenarios. Explanations are given by means of real-world examples of past eruptions. Four classic ones are introduced early on (Vesuvius, Krakatau, Mount Pelée, and Mount St. Helens), but plenty of others are recounted throughout. This includes those familiar from popular accounts (e.g. Tambora, Laki, and Toba), technical books (e.g. Pinatubo and the Soufrière Hills volcano), and those only known to volcanologists and victims (e.g. El Chichón and Nevado del Ruiz). You will learn as much about these eruptions as about what we learned from them.
“Having read the book cover to cover, there remains one important question that is difficult for me to answer. Given its publication date, how up to date is it? And is it time for a new edition?”
Having read the book cover to cover, there remains one important question that is difficult for me to answer. Given its publication date, how up to date is it? And is it time for a new edition? Technological advances and new space missions have revealed much more about extraterrestrial volcanoes—this book was published before the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers started trundling over the surface of Mars, for example. But what about volcanism here on earth? Recent eruptions have probably taught us new lessons (2010 tongue-twister Eyjafjallajökull no doubt revealing more about ash clouds), but not being a student of earth sciences, this is a hard question for me to answer. The only other more recent book I could think of was The Encyclopedia of Volcanoes, published in a second edition in 2015. But at over 1400 pages this can hardly be called an introductory textbook.
I decided to contact Clive Oppenheimer who kindly replied that there have not been any paradigmatic shifts in volcanology since then, but he did mention, in addition, the 2010 Merapi eruption, and highlighted new technology such as synchrotron radiation sources for fine-scale chemical analysis of volcanic rocks. Additionally, he pointed out Volcanoes: Global Perspectives (2022) as a recent textbook. And a third edition? It is not yet in the making, though he hopes to get around to it when time allows.
So, in sum, if you are looking for a good introductory volcanology textbook, I found this one both enjoyable and accessible. I came away feeling I understood much more about volcanoes. Bring on Volcanotectonics.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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Planet Earth is a somewhat unpredictable landlord. Mostly, conditions here are benign and favourable to life, but sometimes its tenants are suddenly crushed in a violent outburst. For as long as humans have lived, we have been subjected to such natural catastrophes and have been trying to both understand and predict them. As marine scientist Dr Ellen Prager shows here, we have made great strides, but many questions and unknowns remain. Dangerous Earth is a fascinating tour to the cutting edge of the earth sciences to look at some of the complex problems for which we are still lacking answers.
Dangerous Earth: What We Wish We Knew about Volcanoes, Hurricanes, Climate Change, Earthquakes, and More, written by , published by The University of Chicago Press in March 2020 (hardback, 272 pages)
Dangerous Earth is a cleverly structured book. Each chapter opens with some examples of famous or scientifically important natural disasters that in hindsight were as surprising as they were full of lessons. Having whetted the reader’s appetite with tales of destruction, Prager then walks the reader through the basic scientific facts and principles necessary to understand a particular branch of the earth sciences. The largest part of each chapter, though, is dedicated to the unknowns: the open questions, the vexing problems, and the limits of our current methods and instruments.
As the subtitle of the book implies, the usual suspects – volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes – are all present and correct, but Prager takes the bull by the horns and opens with climate change. And this is actually a sensible approach: she does not go quite as far as McGuire does in his book Waking the Giant, but whether certain natural disasters will be exacerbated by climate change is a question of intense interest.
Briefly introducing climate change basics and the 2002 collapse of the Larsen B Ice Shelf in Antarctica, she quickly turns to the uncertainty around sea-level rise. This means examining what is happening at the poles. From earlier reviews, I was already familiar with the rapid retreat of Greenland’s glaciers, but the book is especially up to date on the complexities of what happens at the interface between glaciers and their bedrock, and at the underside where glaciers enter the ocean. Next to the Thwaites Glacier, she mentions other Antarctic monsters most of us will have never heard of, but that will shape our future. Similarly riddled with questions is how global oceanic circulation will be affected by climate change, which means reckoning with its complex three-dimensional nature. Other matters touched on here are melting permafrost, bleaching coral reefs, and dead zones devoid of oxygen.
“[Dangerous Earth] is especially up to date on the complexities of what happens at the interface between glaciers and their bedrock, and at the underside where glaciers enter the ocean.”
The same approach is applied to the topics of volcanoes and earthquakes. Plate tectonics quite literally underlies both, so is introduced first. These are especially riveting chapters – I don’t think I will ever tire reading of the eruptions of Mount St. Helens or Laki. Meanwhile, Mount Pinatubo and the less well-remembered Nevado del Ruiz eruption also taught the geological community a lot. But the unknowns! What does the plumbing that feeds volcanoes look like? How do eruptions progress and end? What of the idea of the life cycle of a volcano: its birth, growth, and death? What of the risk of so-called flank collapses triggering enormous tsunamis? The new book Volcanotectonics offers more insights.
Earthquakes hold similar mysteries, and this field is particularly known for its attempts at prediction. Not surprising, since many cities have been built on or near faults. Prager reveals fascinating complexities and discoveries: The 1992 Landers event revealed that earthquakes can jump tens of kilometres between known segments to trigger tremors at other, unconnected faults. This has raised many questions about the randomness or relatedness of earthquakes. Do they cluster? Can they occur in swarms? Can human activities such as mining or fracking trigger tremors? Then there are the bizarre slow-slip earthquakes where tectonic plates move over days or weeks rather than instantaneously, without discernible seismic waves. This chapter provides a welcome update to a book such as Earthshaking Science. Tsunamis are bundled into this chapter. Especially the 2004 Sumatra earthquake and ensuing tsunami revealed a lot about the subtle complexities of how seafloor shape and topography – its bathymetry – can channel and redirect wave energy. As Prager writes: “It’s not exactly like dropping a pebble in a pond”.
“Earthquakes hold similar mysteries [such as] bizarre slow-slip earthquakes where tectonic plates move over days or weeks rather than instantaneously.”
What unites these first three chapters is the limits imposed by our short window of observation. Data have only been collected for a century or so, a geological blink of an eye. Many recent disasters have spurred scientists to look into the rock record for evidence of past disasters, revealing many. Some, disturbingly, can be very violent, though very infrequent, sparking new questions and concerns about e.g. supervolcanoes.
Dangerous Earth does seem to run a bit out of steam after this. After three solid 40-50–page chapters, the chapter on hurricanes clocks in at 28 pages. It still does a good job of presenting the atmospheric and meteorological mechanics, as well as the unknowns. Why do some storms intensify so rapidly? What are the links with climate change and known patterns such as El Niño? But especially, can we improve forecasts, both of the path storms will take, and the attendant risk of storm surges?
“our short window of observation imposes limits […] many recent disasters have spurred scientists to look into the rock record for evidence of past disasters, revealing many. “
The final chapter, though, felt like an unsatisfying end to an otherwise excellent book. In just 17 pages Prager mentions rogue waves, landslides, rip currents, sinkholes, and – wait for it – sharks (!). Not only does that last one feel totally out of place in a book on geological hazards, on average literally only a handful of people are killed by sharks annually. Since she notes that landslides are much more common than most people realise, an in-depth chapter on these so-called mass movements would have made for a stronger end. It could have included those sinkholes, but also erosion, avalanches, and land subsidence. Furthermore, it connects back to volcanoes and earthquakes as these are often followed by lahars and mudflows. And there are fascinating but poorly understood phenomena such as soil liquefaction during earthquakes.
That observation notwithstanding, Dangerous Earth is overall a fascinating and riveting read that really succeeds in bringing you right to the cutting edge of open questions in the earth sciences. Concerning prevention and preparedness, she echoes the sentiment in books such as The Big Ones and the recently reviewed Disaster by Choice: that we are increasingly, and foolhardily, putting ourselves in the path of destruction. Many questions remain, but we know enough to prevent a lot of the suffering and damage that accompany most natural disasters.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
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“Climate Change and the Health of Nations: Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations“, written by Anthony J. McMichael and edited by Alistair Woodward and Cameron Muir, published by Oxford University Press in February 2017 (hardback, 370 pages)
Anthony J. McMichael was an epidemiologist associated with various renowned academic institutes during his life and advised the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the link between climate change and health (see this obituary for a fuller description of his many achievements and contributions). With the manuscript for this book accepted for publication, he suddenly passed away in September 2014. Alistair Woodward and Cameron Muir took up the torch and saw the book through to publication.
There is obviously increasing concern what future climate change will have in store for humanity and the planet at large. And there is no shortage of dire predictions of more frequent extreme weather events, sea level rise, impact on agriculture, and the risk of disrupted food production accompanied by conflict and unrest. This is not mere idle speculation or hypothetical model forecasting, says McMichael. Our past is littered with episodes where natural climatic changes caused all sorts of misery. The key to understanding what might come next lies in an understanding of our past.
“Our past is littered with episodes where natural climatic changes caused crop failures, famines, warfare and the demise of civilizations.”
The first few chapters give the reader all the relevant background knowledge needed. McMichael introduces the various mechanisms that cause longer and shorter-term climate fluctuations, from Milankovitch cycles to decadal oscillations such as El Niño. The result, as I mentioned in my review of The Oceans: A Deep History, is a fiendishly complex system of feedback loops. He gives an overview of the various direct and indirect health impacts that climate change can have, and provides a short history of the rise of humans and the beginning of agriculture (see also my review of Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States). McMichael speaks of the Faustian bargain we unwittingly made by transitioning from nomadism to farming. Palaeopathology has documented how our health suffered due to our change in diet (see Built on Bones: 15,000 Years of Urban Life and Death, or my review of Evolution’s Bite: A Story of Teeth, Diet, and Human Origins), but this new sedentary lifestyle also made us more vulnerable to climatic changes.
The centrepiece of the book is his synthesis of some 11,000 years of environmental history. Starting with early civilizations in or near the Nile Valley, he walks us through the civilizations of the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Hittites, and, in the Indus Valley, the Harappans. For most of these, the lack of written records means that we have pieced together their history from archaeological and palaeoclimatological data. We have a far more detailed picture of the rise and fall of Roman, Mayan, and Anasazi civilizations, and, later, of the Little Ice Age (ca. 1300-1850), the eruption of Mount Tambora, and the Irish potato blight. Throughout, McMichael summarises how droughts, floods, or changing temperatures are linked to famines, the spread of diseases, warfare, mass migrations (whether as climate refugees or as groups hell-bent on conquest), and, ultimately, the fate of empires.
“McMichael speaks of the Faustian bargain we unwittingly made by transitioning from nomadism to farming.”
Now, there is a vast literature on the link between climate and human history, so this book necessarily takes a bird’s eye view. Next to the academic literature, you could build a small library with more popular books from the likes of Jared Diamond (see Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive) and especially Brian Fagan (see The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization, The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, and Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Niño and the Fate of Civilizations). Early eras are covered in, for example, Climate Change in Prehistory: The End of the Reign of Chaos, but there are also excellent books on Roman civilization (see my review of The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, & the End of an Empire), the Little Ice Age (see The Little Ice Age and my review of Nature’s Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age Transformed the West and Shaped the Present), and the impact of the Tambora eruption (see Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World and Tambora and the Year without a Summer: How a Volcano Plunged the World into Crisis).
What sets this book apart is the synthesis of this vast and fascinating topic, making it a good starting point, and its explicit link to health and disease. Off the top of my head, the only other book that does something similar is Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey, but McMichael’s background as an epidemiologist and his work for the IPCC position him very well to tell this story.
One of the things I liked was the author’s caution throughout the book. So, when he mentions the possible impact on our very early history of the Toba eruption (see my review of When Humans Nearly Vanished: The Catastrophic Explosion of the Toba Volcano) or the question whether the Black Death in 16th-Century Europe was actually caused by bubonic plague (see for example Return of the Black Death: The World’s Greatest Serial Killer or Biology of Plagues: Evidence from Historical Populations), he gives a brief overview of why these ideas are considered controversial. When, in the final chapters, it comes to forecasts and lessons for the future, he is similarly moderate. Never before has our population reached such large numbers, and to see comparable levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide we have to go back tens of millions of years in palaeoclimatological records. So, without downplaying the important lessons that history holds for the future, in some ways the future is not like the past.
“even though I am familiar with [this topic], the way it is brought together and puts time into perspective still gave me near-vertigo.”
The dumb thing is, even though I am familiar with all the individual pieces McMichael lays out here, the way it is brought together and puts time into perspective still gave me near-vertigo. Clearly, no empire ever looked much ahead or entertained the idea of their demise until it was almost upon them. McMichael highlights how evolution, always aiming to help organisms survive the now, has left us poorly equipped to plan for the longer-term. While the full story of most civilizations has spun itself out over many centuries, our “Great Acceleration” and the growth of the world’s population from 1.5 to 7+ billion people took just decades (see my review of The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene Since 1945).
Even if, for the sake of argument, human-induced climate change was not on the menu, have we, through our technological advances, created a robust society able to weather climate fluctuations far into the future? Or have we mindlessly expanded to the maximum carrying capacity allowed by our environment? I think we all know the answer to that (see also my review of Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want it Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future). It is a tall order to look at the totality of the picture revealed here and remain as optimistic as the author – though his mindset does not take away from the urgency of his message.
The only minor quibble I have with this book is that some of the sourced illustrations were designed with colour in mind and have here been reproduced in greyscale, limiting their usefulness. That notwithstanding, Climate Change and the Health of Nations is a fascinating and thorough synthesis that shows how history holds many valuable lessons for those willing to listen. The book is also a fitting testament to McMichael’s long career, and Woodward and Muir, as well as the publisher, are to be commended for making sure this book saw the light of day.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
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“Volcanoes: Encounters Through the Ages“, written by David M. Pyle, published by the Bodleian Library in February 2017 (paperback, 224 pages)
Pyle immediately points out that this is not a textbook (for that, see e.g. Volcanoes), but even so, the introduction explains the basics of plate tectonics (see also my review of The Tectonic Plates are Moving!) and how that creates hotspots of volcanic eruptions. After this, Pyle takes a look at the historical written record, acknowledging, but not further considering, that oral history might record even older eruptions (see my review of The Edge of Memory: Ancient Stories, Oral Tradition and the Post-Glacial World).
By necessity, this book takes a look at the more representative examples of historical records of volcanic eruptions. Greek and Roman philosophers already described them, but the book leans heavily towards descriptions from the 1600s onwards. This includes eruptions of the Vesuvius and Etna volcanoes in Italy, but also the many volcanoes early explorers encountered around the world in Iceland, Southeast Asia, South America, and the Pacific. There are the volcanic islands that can rise above, and sometimes again disappear below the waves in a matter of weeks (notably the island of Surtsey that appeared off the coast of Iceland in 1963 and became an open laboratory to study how new land is colonised by plants and other life forms, see Surtsey: Ecosystems Formed).
Other examples include historical eruptions around the 1900s in the Caribbean that caused much destruction on the islands of Montserrat and St. Vincent. And, of course, some of the largest eruptions in the last few hundred years are included, namely the well-documented eruptions of 
Krakatoa, Laki, and Tambora (each the subject of excellent books, see Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, Island on Fire: The Extraordinary Story of Laki, the Volcano that Turned Eighteenth-Century Europe Dark, and Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World). Notably missing and only mentioned in passing are recent eruptions such as Pinatubo and Mount St. Helens (the latter is well represented in the literature though, see for example In the Path of Destruction: Eyewitness Chronicles of Mount St. Helens and Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens).
“The highlight of this book are the numerous historical illustrations […] from woodcuts and paintings to old maps and the first photographs, this is a remarkable and beautiful collection.”
Pyle liberally quotes from eyewitness testimony of eruptions, and the ideas of early geologists and natural historians who were trying to understand how volcanoes worked. Some of their ideas were remarkably prescient and stand, sometimes little modified, to this day. Finally, he explores the continued difficulty of predicting eruptions, as well as the potentially devastating impact of the rare eruptions of supervolcanoes (for more on those, see also Super Volcano: The Ticking Time Bomb Beneath Yellowstone National Park, Eruptions that Shook the World, and When Humans Nearly Vanished: The Catastrophic Explosion of the Toba Volcano)
The highlight of this book, though, are the numerous historical illustrations that were included in the exhibition and that are collected in this book. From woodcuts and paintings to old maps and the first photographs, this is a remarkable and beautiful collection. The reproduction is excellent, though some double-page spreads unfortunately end up hiding some of the details in their inner margins (this is something you see an awful lot in art and photo books and always makes me question how it is we still have not satisfactorily solved this). Other images are spread over one-and-a-half page, where this is less of a problem; illustrators naturally put the important things in the centre of their image.
Though it is by no means a comprehensive text, the unique collection of historical images makes Volcanoes: Encounters Through the Ages a must for anyone interested in volcanoes. I expect that even seasoned readers in this subject will not have seen many of the wonderful illustrations that have been reproduced here. My only regret after reading this book is that I did not visit the exhibition when it was on.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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