Flying a kite over the flanks of an erupting volcano might sound like fiddling while Rome burns. The citizen scientists on the Caribbean island of Montserrat have a deadly serious objective, though. By attaching cameras to their kites, they can take pictures like this, allowing them to monitor the restless giant that dominates, and constantly changes, their island, threatening their homes and lives.
Montserrat's Souffrière Hills volcano has been causing earthquakes and puffing out gas and ash since it blew its top in 1995, burying the capital, Plymouth, in more than 12 metres of mud. The landscape is forever changing as a result: dozens of volcanic mudflows each year pose a constant threat to the island's people.
Active volcanic landscapes are normally monitored from a plane or a helicopter, but the cost usually makes surveys infrequent. So some local people have taken aerial photography into their own hands, with the help of researchers from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh and the Montserrat Volcano Observatory in Salem.
Twenty-two volunteers have been flying ultra-robust GoPro HD Hero2 cameras attached to kites over the Belham River valley. The image above was stitched together using 16 separate kite-shots. This up-to-date, aerial view of the mud-filled valley has already helped rule out the possibility of building a bridge across it.
Jonathan Stone of the University of East Anglia presented the work to a meeting at the Royal Geographical Society in London on Friday.
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
Have your say
Only subscribers may leave comments on this article. Please log in.
Only personal subscribers may leave comments on this article
All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.
If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.
