Volcanoes are not only spectacular agents of creation, but also of destruction. Serene mountains awaken from dormancy to threaten nearby populations and disrupt the global economy. This talk by Robin Matoza, Associate Professor of Geophysics, UC Santa Barbara, provides an introduction to Earth's volcanism and its consequences and describes research on developing a new volcano monitoring method using low-frequency sound waves that are too low in pitch for humans to hear (infrasound).

Robin Matoza is an Associate Professor of Geophysics at the Department of Earth Science, University of California, Santa Barbara. He received a MGeophys from the University of Leeds, UK, in 2004 and a PhD in Earth Sciences at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP), Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA, in 2009. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (CEA), France, and a Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Scholar at IGPP. His research is focused on understanding the seismic and infrasonic signatures of volcanic unrest and eruption, with application in monitoring and mitigating volcanic hazards.