There are more than 1,500 active volcanoes on Earth. But rather than being spread evenly across the planet, they tend to be clustered in particular locations. A cluster of active volcanoes occurs in east Africa, in what’s known as the Great Rift Valley, which runs through the continent of Africa from Ethiopia in the north to Mozambique in the south. 

Like other places where volcanoes are clustered, such as the Pacific Ring of Fire, the Great Rift Valley is a place where the boundaries between Earth’s tectonic plates meet. In some places, like the Andes of South America, the plates are moving toward one another, causing one plate to be forced below the other, which leads to the formation of tall mountains as the plates buckle and fold. But in East Africa, the plates are moving away from one another. In the gap between them, depressions are created that form large valleys, or lakes as water accumulates. But in a few spots, the separation of these massive plates creates an opening where magma from deeper in the Earth can make its way up to the surface. Where that happens, you get a volcano.

Dr. Kayla Iacovino is a geoscientist who has studied volcanoes all over the world. She has a Bachelor’s degree in geology from Arizona State University and a Ph.D. from Cambridge and her current position is Senior Research Scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. She has also done fieldwork in Antarctica, Costa Rica, Chile, Italy, North Korea, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her work has been featured on numerous documentaries, including a BBC documentary about her work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

The DR Congo, or DRC, is the second largest country in Africa and is located in the center of the continent. The Congo river flows through it, surrounded by the world’s second largest rainforest. The eastern edge of the country, near the border with Uganda and Rwanda, has rugged mountains. This is where the country’s two active volcanoes are located, Nyiragongo and Nyamulagira. In 2002, an eruption of Nyiragongo devastated the nearby city of Goma. Kayla Iocovino was part of the research team that visited these mountains along with the BBC film crew. I watched the documentary and my jaw was on the floor when I saw how Kayla and her team literally rappelled down into the crater of Nyiragongo, at the bottom of which was a massive lava lake– the largest in the world. 

To learn more about Kayla Iacovino’s research on volcanoes, visit her website: https://www.kaylaiacovino.com. 

Did you know Wild World has a merch shop? You can get a T-shirt, coffee mug, or hat to show your support of the podcast. You can find it here: https://www.wildworldshow.com/ 

Wild World is produced by 3WireCreative.

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WildWorld_Volcanos_final01

Still living near an active volcano can be nerve wracking. In order to better understand how volcanoes work and to be able to improve our forecasts for when an eruption might happen, we need to learn more about them, and the best way to do that is to study them up close, real close.

Kayla: I'm the level of tactile that when I'm walking around art museums, I sometimes get yelled at for getting too close to the paintings because they're like, ma'am, this is worth a hundred million dollars.

Scott: Woo, this is Wild World. I'm Scott Solomon. In this episode, we're learning what it's like to climb inside an active volcano. You know, for science,

there are more than 1,500 active volcanoes on earth, but rather than being spread evenly across the planet, they tend to be clustered in particular locations. There's the Ring of Fire, which forms an arc that runs along the edge of the Pacific Ocean, including the west coast of North and South America and the East coast of Asia, through the islands of Indonesia and all the way down south to New Zealand.

In some places, like the Andes of South America, the plates are moving toward one another, causing one plate to be forced below the other, which leads to the formation of tall mountains as the plates buckle and fold. But in East Africa, the plates are moving away from one another. In the gap that forms between them.

Depressions are created that form large valleys or lakes as water accumulates, but in a few spots. The separation of these massive plates creates an opening where magma from deeper in the earth can make its way up to the surface. Where that happens, you get a volcano. My guest is a geoscientist who has studied volcanoes all over the world.

Her work has been featured on numerous documentaries, including for PBS and the BBC. In fact, the BBC documented her work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Dr. Congo or DRC is the second largest country in Africa, formerly known as Zaire. It's located right in the center of the continent. The mighty Congo River flows through it, surrounded by the world's second largest rainforest.

I watched that documentary and my jaw was on the floor when I saw how Kayla and her team literally repelled down into the crater of Mass Mount Nigo at the bottom of which was a massive pool of lava. It's just incredible. And today she's here to tell us all about it. Kayla Yao. Welcome to Wild World.

Yeah, happy to be here. You've done some incredible work all over the world, but your research in Central Africa seems particularly interesting. What was it that drew you to this part of the world?

So I think a lot of us are familiar with mid ocean ridges where we have oceanic plates splitting apart and giving us, you know, new land on the surface of the earth. And it's thought that Central Africa it, there is a rift that runs from sort of north ish to south ish, and it's sort of splitting off the northeastern part of Africa.

So in theory, if we're correct in some number of millions of veers, there will be an ocean there that splits Africa into two different continents. And so when that's happening, the crust there, which is, you know, the layer, we have the crust, we have the mantle underneath, and then the core of the earth. And so the crust as it's being pulled apart is thinning.

So you can think of like pulling a piece of taffy apart and it gets thin in the center.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And so there's a ton of these all up and down that rift zone and on the sides of the rift zone. And that has, that whole system has a lot of consequences for the geology there.

Scott: Yeah. We actually did a, a podcast episode about the Great Rift Valley in the context of Paleoanthropology. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And the study of human origins,

Kayla: atheists comes from that area.

Yeah,

Kayla: Yeah, a lot of them, for one thing, the chemistry of them is relatively unique. It's not a magma or lava like we'd see in Hawaii. It's not a lava like we'd see from something like Mount St. Helen's. It's this very, it's low in, in an element called silicon. And that's one of the things that gives mag structure.

So the more silicon you have, you have silicon bonded to oxygen, bonded to all these other things, and it makes the, the magma more rigid or it has a higher viscosity, you know, so they think of like, honey being is a viscous thing, and water would be a low viscosity thing. Mm-hmm. So these magmas that, that come up in that rift zone are very, very low viscosity, which means they move very, very quickly.

So most people think that you walk up to the the crater rim of any volcano and you look down and you see the magma churning and bubbling away.

Yeah.

Kayla: That's very rare. Most, most people are kind of disappointed when I tell them that when you're looking down into the crater of volcano, it's kind of looks like a smoking pile of rocks.

Yeah, yeah.

Kayla: But there's a few places on the earth, you know, Hawaii is one of them, where you have these lava lakes and only a few of the of those are what we call persistently active. So Hawaii, we've seen crested over. The lava lake. There's a couple of lava lakes in the African Rift, and there's one in Antarctica.

Scott: I mean, the, just the idea of a lava lake sounds like a totally crazy thing. So give us a visual, like you're standing on the edge of, uh, of a crater and looking down and, and you've done this, right? Mm-hmm. Yes. And so what, what do you see? What does it look like? Paint us a picture.

Kayla: Well, in the Dr. Congo where I did some work, it's I think particularly awe inspiring because it's massive.

So the lava lake there is something like th. Yeah. More than 300 meters across.

Scott: That's huge. We're

Kayla: talking about like three football fields. Yeah. To put it in American parlance. Yeah. And it's also, you know, it's far away from you, but it's not that far. And it's one of the few lava lakes where you can actually sometimes feel the heat.

Scott: Hmm. From

Scott: gotta be a lot of heat.

Kayla: It's a lot of heat and it's huge. It's a huge service area. It's very hot lava. Uh, and some people will go into the crater for sometimes for reasons that make sense and sometimes for reasons that are just to be flashy and frankly, you know, going up to the edge of the lava lake and sticking a probe in that lava lake does not have scientific value.

Scott: Yeah, that sounds like a bad idea.

Kayla: Yeah. Given the risk and that it's, it's, there's, so there's sort of a nested crater. So you come up to the, the crater room as a steep hike up takes several hours to hike up, and you get there and you're kind of tired and you, you know, the rim. Kind of the crater rim kind of comes into view and you start to peer over it and it's just like, you know, jaw dropping.

Wow. It's, it's hard to describe. It feels. Very alive.

And just to make sure we've, we've got all the info here. So this is Nigo, is that how you say it?

Kayla: Yeah, NIGO. Nyiragongo. Okay. It's like NYI. So Nyiragongo.

Scott: Yes.

Kayla: And then there's a second sort of sister volcano called Nyaya Gura that's maybe connected underground to Nigo. We're not sure. Oh. But it has a sometimes active level lake as well.

Scott: Now you actually did climb down or repel down into that crater as part of your, your research expedition, which was, was captured in this documentary I mentioned. Walk me through that. Like what is, okay, you're on the, you've, you've, you've gone to the edge, you've peered down into this huge, unbelievable crater with an active lava lake in the bottom of it, and now you're going to go down into it.

What's, what's going through your mind?

Kayla: Well, I'm not like, terrified of heights, but I'm not great with heights. Like I won't go onto a balcony that's very high up.

Okay.

Kayla: So, yeah, fr height you could say a little bit. And they had this like winch system where it was this big metal frame thing that sat at the top of the rim and then you would hook into it with this harness and it would lower you down. And then once you got your footing, then you would use a, a rope and, and, you know, be lay, you know, all the way, repel all the way down.

Yeah. And that was just, just looking at it, watching other people go down Yeah. Was terrifying. Yeah. One of our producers who was more afraid of heights than me Oh, was they, they were teasing him because everyone knew he was not looking forward to it. Yeah. Once he did it, he was like, this is amazing to, to have this experience.

But he hated it every minute of it. I actually ended up not going in as all the way down with some of the other expedition members, which was both disappointing and very relieving, I'm not gonna lie.

Sure, yeah.

Kayla: you know, it's monitored, but there's obviously it's in central Africa, so they don't have a lot of resources Yeah.

For anything, let alone science. The fact that they have a volcano observatory there, so there's a, a city right at the base of the volcano, it's called Goma. It's home to about a million people, which I think. A lot of people don't realize that there are cities that large in the Congo and it's not the only one.

And so yeah, there's this massive city down there and there's a lot of reasons that it's difficult for people to live there. And they still have the Goma Volcano Observatory, you know, setting up seismometers when they can. And these people are so passionate about understanding the volcano, and they've seen it destroy.

Parts of their city before. Yeah. So they're very driven.

Right?

Kayla: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'll, I will throw a caveat in there that predicting volcanic eruptions, I mean, in the field a lot of people will say forecasting okay instead. Mm-hmm. Because we cannot. Predict volcanic eruptions maybe one day. But it's challenging not only because there's actually quite a bit about volcanoes that we don't understand.

How does a volcano erupt? Well, it depends. Slash we don't quite know. Hmm. You know, why, why is there heat right under the volcano in this one place? You know, you could, you could go down. Why did the volcano erupt? Well, because this, this thing happened in the, in the magma chamber. Well, why did that thing happen in the magma chamber?

Well, because there was heat coming from below and then this happened. Well, why was there heat coming below and why did this thing happen? And you get to the point you have fewer and fewer answers.

Scott: Yeah. As

You'll see a lot of seismic activity, small earthquakes right along where we think the magma chamber is, and moving up towards the surface. Sometimes the gas chemistry will change. And some places give no signs at all. So there was a handful of years ago, a volcano in Japan, and those volcanoes are some of the best instrumented on earth.

The Japanese are, are very dedicated, very, a lot of technical skills and you know, a lot of resources and the whole, all of Japan is volcanoes and we know a lot of those volcanoes and there were some volcanologists there that, that died

Oh.

Kayla: In a pyroclastic flow because there was literally no warning.

Wow.

Kayla: What, not even minutes.

Yeah.

Kayla: So, you know, that's a long-winded way of saying we, yeah, we do what we can. And you know, one of the things that we do as geologists is, you know, the, we like to say the, the past is the key to the present.

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Going down, and those are all eruptions, lava has gone over the side and then hardened and build them. And then the next one and the next one. So you get these layers and you can look back in time as you go down through the layers. And one of the things, for example, that we found in the field, just even just looking at this, the samples under, you know, a like a, a a A loop or a a, a.

Hand lens, like a

Scott: magnifying glass. Yeah. Like

Kayla: a magnifying glass is the kinds of crystals that were in. It gave us a hint as to the, the, the chemistry of the rock as a whole. Mm-hmm. And we were able to say that this lava, the, the more recent lavas are looking like they would be a lower viscosity than some of them in the past.

So this trend towards the lower viscosity would mean faster moving lavas, which would mean higher risk.

Right. I think, was it in 2002 they had a mm-hmm. A pretty major eruption that that, you know, caused a lot of damage and deaths in In, yeah. In Goma, is that right?

Kayla: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, the fewer resources you have full stop. Then of course the fewer resources you have to respond to a disaster like that or support people that have been through it or even evacuate people.

Scott: Yeah. So was that kind of thing, you know, like the fact that your work is having this direct effect on these local communities, was that, do you sort of reflect on that while you're in the field, you're in this kind of wild, like very dangerous place. Is that a part of your motivation then to like think about how to help folks like that?

Um, I realize how much geology touches our lives pretty directly. And it's a double-edged sword though. When you're in the field, especially as a white person and someone from the west, you go into, there's a very, a very, very big danger of, you know, having some kind of imperialist sense.

Yeah.

Kayla: Where you come in as the outsider, you're telling these people you know how to do things right.

They're not, they're not doing it the right way. You are taking samples, taking them back to your university in the US and England analyzing them, and then there might not be return for those people.

Yeah. '

Scott: Right. So how do you try to, to, you know, avoid that? Like, are you, you know, you're, you're, you're working in part with, you know, local scientists and, and folks from those communities.

Kayla: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's something I think a lot of us, luckily are becoming more and more conscious of. I think the number one thing is, is to work directly with the local scientists.

And not only is that a thing of your urinal, you're trying to be careful, but it demonstrably makes your science better. Hmm. They, you know, they, imagine where you grew up, you probably know your neighborhood pretty well.

Sure.

Kayla: So if someone from, you know, another country was coming and they wanted to study your neighborhood, you're like, oh, I know, oh, you're looking for, you're looking for this.

Oh, I know this, this house over here is exactly what you need. And. You maybe wouldn't have found that on your own or

Scott: Right.

Kayla: Or hey, uh, you know, I know, uh, this guy, this happens in Costa Rica a lot. I work in Costa Rica a lot and a lot of, a lot of it's populated. And so a lot of the best deposits are on like farms or behind a bar or something.

Is it? Yeah.

Scott: And when you never would've found that on your own? Most likely. No. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So value

Kayla: added all around, I think.

Scott: Yeah. That's awesome.

This is Wild World. I'm Scott Solomon and I'm speaking with v Volcanologist Kayla Yao about her work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. So, so thinking back about Nigo, like your, your, how much time did you actually spend in the, the crater? 'cause you, I think you actually even camped inside, is that right?

Kayla: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So we, there were, gosh, how long were we there? I was there less time than some of the rest of the crew who spent more time. In the crater. I feel like they were down there for maybe a week.

Scott: Oh my gosh, that's a long time.

Kayla: I was up there for the better part of a week, I think. Yeah. And then we traveled to other places around the region to look at some other smaller craters, and we even got a chance to go and see the mountain gorillas.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. The famous, yeah. Silverback gorillas in the wild.

Mm-hmm. I would say it was, it was incredible. What, what was it like for you? Tell me about it.

Kayla: Ab Yeah, absolutely magical. And it was, I wanna say it was two adults and a bunch of babies. Yeah. And they were super chill.

Scott: Okay. Yeah. And I don't know if it's

Kayla: because, you know, these were known, this was a known family.

Scott: Right.

Kayla: And they were, they've been

Scott: habituated to become used to humans.

Kayla: Yeah. And they were used to the, the park rangers mm-hmm. Being around them. Uh, but they weren't, you know, they were in the wild. And so they thought, oh, we're gonna, they're, they should be over in this area now. And they were just. Like, it was like we're almost like having a connection.

Yeah. Like looking at each other and just observing each other and watching the babies jump all over the parents and I'm like, these are like little human kids.

Scott: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. They are so human-like that's, it's yeah. It's kind of, yeah.

Kayla: Yeah. It gets to the point where it's like uncanny valley for me, honestly, at some point, so that is too human.

Scott: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It makes you ask some uncomfortable questions, doesn't it? They start

Scott: that's right. What are they thinking about me? Mm-hmm. But there's also a connection back to the volcanoes, right. Because as I understand it, like, I mean, there's a very specific habitat requirements for these mountain gorillas and, and a lot of that habitat comes from what, what those volcanoes create, right.

Kayla: Absolutely. And that's one thing I always try to impart on people when I'm telling 'em about volcanoes and the Air Congo is a great example that the volcano is thought of typically as a very destructive force. Mm-hmm. But it's also a very, very rich creative force. It creates very fertile soil to grow crops.

Right to grow. Yeah. The types of forests that these creatures live in, a mineral springs, geothermal energy.

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Kayla: And. It. Then you get every one bit of these pieces is a two-edged sword and perhaps the more obvious two-edged sword is, or deposits.

Scott: Oh yeah. Precious metals.

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Kayla: A lot of those are conflict minerals.

Scott: Meaning that they're coming from areas that are having some sort of an act of conflict.

Kayla: Yeah. And the way that their mind, so, you know, these are the PE the people think about the Congolese who live there. They are experiencing all of the dangers of the volcano and some of the benefits, but a lot of those are taken away from them.

So again, this imperialist idea, people from wealthy countries come in, buy a claim, they often work with the government to exchange money so that they can get a claim to mine it. They employ the local people and pay them terrible wages and don't provide them with, you know, the safety requirements that they would have if they were in United States or England or Asia or a lot of other places.

And so they're working these horrible conditions. Not, you know, barely scraping by, but they do it 'cause they need to feed their families.

Yeah.

Scott: Yeah. Yeah. That's the, you know, the, the positive aspect, if there is one of being that close to a volcano is having those resources, but they don't get to enjoy that.

Kayla: Exactly. So they, they, they suffer the negative consequences. The people that come in don't, and just take the, the positive things from the volcano and leave.

Scott: Yeah. Yeah. So while you were there in Narag, GGO, like what was, you know, what was your data collection protocol like? Like walk me through like when you're, when you're doing science, like what does that look like inside a volcano?

Kayla: Yeah. Well, there were two things that I wanted to do, which one was to collect samples, rock samples to bring back, and the other was to measure the gases that were coming outta the volcano. And so I had what we lovingly call a gas box, which is, you know, I mean, you know, scientific, you know, researchers, especially at universities are just kind of cluing things together.

So those probably through the carbon, the sulfur and the hydrogen like H2O are really important for, for understanding what a volcano is doing beneath the surface. And so it was deploying this box and a little tube and a little pump and letting the pump run for a while and watching. The data come back.

Hmm. So a depends on, you know, the pretty, like any field science, it depends on the question you're asking. Mm-hmm. What kind of samples you want. And it depends on. You know how fine tuning you are doing, sort of reading these layers. Do you want one from every layer? Do you want just a couple that you feel are representative?

I'm using air quotes. Yeah. 'cause that can mean different things, you know? So what question are you trying to answer? If you're, if you wanna say we're gonna detailed history of the volcano, you might wanna collect a lot more. So it's a lot of wandering around. Yeah. And taking in the beauty, which I don't mind.

Sure. And then either setting up an instrument, setting up multiple instruments, or carrying big bags of rocks around.

Scott: Sounds heavy.

Kayla: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it can be.

Scott: So what would a typical day be like? So you wake up in a tent here, you're inside of a crater. Mm-hmm. You're having breakfast and then heading out. Is it like, you know, pretty, pretty much, yeah.

They,

Sure. And I don't know if you, it's freeze

Scott: dried kind of stuff, right? Yeah. Or whatever, like Yeah. You just, yeah. You just put

Kayla: like hot water in 'em Sure. And let 'em sit for a while. Yeah. And then eat it. I don't know if you've ever had freeze dried eggs. Like scrambled eggs,

Scott: unfortunately, yes.

Kayla: Yeah, exactly. You know?

Yeah. Do if anyone, not if anyone is listening. Never get the eggs.

Scott: No.

Kayla: It's like well known.

Scott: It's not gonna be what you think it's gonna be. It's

Kayla: so bad. Yeah.

Scott: Yeah.

Kayla: And so we had a couple of good breakfasts and people then learned that the eggs were disgusting and slowly the, you can think of this as like a, you know, a crystallization experiment, right?

Scott: like the last day all you have it to eat is eggs.

Kayla: I think I came down from the volcano before that happened. So socks else. No

Scott: wonder you.

No wonder you got outta there.

Kayla: Exactly. We're like, there's no, there's only eggs left. Let's go. So yeah. So yeah, start. First thing of the day is fighting over not having eggs.

Scott: Right.

Kayla: Maybe have a coffee and then Yeah, you set out as early as you can and. It's easy to do that 'cause you're psyched.

Scott: You know? I guess I'm wondering about like, you know, you're wandering through this just crazy terrain and I'm guessing chances are pretty good.

You're going places like nobody's ever gone before, like, or at least very few. Mm-hmm. I mean, what is that like? Is it, is it like terrifying? Is it exciting? Is it some of both?

Kayla: It's some of both. I mean, it's exciting if you know, obviously you gotta know what you're doing when you walk off trail. So if you don't have a clear plan and maybe a guide don't walk off the trail.

Yeah.

Kayla: Is pretty wild. Like, I'm actually struggling to believe that I have, even though maybe I have. Just the idea of that is like the Earl the world is pretty well studied, you know?

Yeah. People have been everywhere, but Right.

Scott: Exactly.

Kayla: Maybe not right here.

Scott: Maybe not Right. In the, in the active volcano.

Kayla: Yeah. And some of it is understanding the hazards. And the one that I am most, maybe this stems from my fear of heights, the one that I am maybe the most cautious of is going up to the edge of the crater.

Yeah.

Kayla: Because not only is that material, you know, it can break apart, it's not necessarily super well held together, but there can be overhangs

Ooh.

Kayla: Over the edge of the crater that you cannot see. Yeah. So if you go and stand on the edge of this thing that looks like you can stand on there and get a good view, just do not, because if that thing breaks,

Scott: that's it.

That's it. Yeah. You don't know that you're on an overhang. Yeah. As you're standing on top of it. I get that. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And when you're

Scott: Yeah.

Kayla: So you can get those gases that are coming over it. So it's a bit of. Figuring out how to do that without being, without, without risking too much.

Scott: Yeah. Do you use drones or something like that to scout out terrain? Or is it you just, you know, do do your best? You absolutely can. Yeah. Yeah. And

Kayla: that, those are becoming more and more popular now. They're, they're less expensive, easier to fly. We had a drone when we went to nra and there we spent a, a bunch of time in the crater.

So that, that, that one was interesting. So that was a very, very different day for me. Uh, if you wanna talk about like, life in the day. In the life, yeah. So we woke up and we were in Goma, I believe. And then we went to this like un United Nations like airstrip. Hmm. And they had charter, this UN helicopter, like one of these big ones that you can like, take the doors off of it.

Yeah.

Scott: Like a military style helicopter. Like a military helicopter. A

Yeah. And it was like a small room with like five, like, like folding chairs. Mm-hmm. And I remember, so this was in 2017, I believe. And a couple years prior, there was all those, uh, issues with the Galaxy Note seven that had like started on fire in planes.

Scott: Oh yeah. Yeah. Do you remember that? They like lithium batteries.

Yes. And were just catching on fire.

Kayla: And so there was literally a sign in this like tiny room in Goma in the Dear Congo that said, no Galaxy Note sevens.

Scott: Oh my gosh. We're allowed. Yeah. Which like, that's your biggest risk around there, huh? Like even they knew. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Kayla: So we get on this helicopter, we're all stoked.

And so there's a lot of rebel activity for, for one, trying to get some of these resources that the, that the volcanic landscape provides. And if they see these, you know, helicopters heading towards the volcano, they might know these are people we can, you know, exploit potentially even kidnap, you know, if, if you're a rebel group and you wanna make world news, a good way to do that would be to kidnap a bunch of people from the west.

Hmm. Because you now, now it's on the b bbc, now it's in the New York Times, you know? Right,

Scott: right. So you're something of a target for me. You're a target. Yeah.

Kayla: And so because of that, they're flying low and I can't remember what they called it, but it was like this sort of military type of flying. Yeah.

Where they're pretty close to the ground more than you'd normally be and fast.

Scott: Does that help your fear of heights or make it worse?

Scott: Are you sure you're scared of heights?

That seems like it would be an absolutely terrifying thing for somebody scared of heights.

Kayla: Well, I love roller

Scott: coasters. Oh, okay.

Kayla: And this was just so. Incredible that it totally overcame Gotcha. The fear.

Yeah. Yeah. So,

Kayla: yeah, I, I'm, we're looking out the side and just talking about what we're seeing, and you're sit, you're, you know, flying over and you're close to the ground, so it looks even faster flying over these treetops.

And we land in the crater with this helicopter. Oh, wow. Get out, do our walk, you know, march over towards the sort of inner crater where the, the not active but lava lake is, it comes and goes there,

Scott: but it is an active volcano. It, it doesn't have Lava lake. Yeah.

Kayla: And it has a lava lake, but it's not always active.

Scott: I see.

Kayla: So sometimes we'll see Orango do something and then RA would do something. So we think they're connected underground.

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh wow.

Kayla: So it's a not, I don't remember if it's two, three hours, something like that wasn't a terribly long amount of time. And it was, I mean some like it was real, it was real danger, but it was definitely emphasized for the cameras in part.

Scott: Oh, okay. Like it real, it was playing up a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kayla: Now that we're here, team minus, but you know Yeah. It was like this is a military operation.

Yeah.

Kayla: And so we, you know, land there, make our, I'm immediately, they're talking about how what we're gonna shots we're gonna film and I am like off picking up rocks.

Scott: Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm like,

Kayla: we have a limited amount of time.

Right?

Scott: That's let's, yeah. Not wasting any time. And these are, these

Kayla: are beautiful.

And so we march over, some people are setting up instruments along the way. We had someone who flew a drone there and made like a 3D map of the crater, which was awesome.

Yeah. That's really

cool.

Scott: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Where Where

Kayla: is she?

Scott: Yeah.

Kayla: And I was just like over like on a small hill, like setting up my gas box and collecting rocks was Yeah. And doing your science. And I could see them over there.

Scott: Yeah. But

Kayla: they're like, we've lost her. Where has she gone? Yeah. And my, my friends, when they saw that, they were like, Kayla, that is very un brand for you.

It just like wander

Scott: off, wander off into the volcano. Into the volcano. No big deal. Yeah. So your mom didn't appreciate this, you're saying?

Kayla: Yeah, no. Yeah. My mom did not love. She's like, Kayla, you have to stay with the group. You're so reckless. But I got, well, the data wasn't actually that great from there, unfortunately in the end.

Ah, that's too bad. But it was, you didn't

Scott: have much time.

Kayla: It was worth it. For, you know, to try.

You're listening to Wild World. After another short break, I'll ask Kayla what the scariest experience is that she's ever had while studying volcanoes.

Welcome back. I'm speaking with Dr. Kayla Yao about her work studying volcanoes in Central Africa.

So what is the scariest thing that's happened to you while doing field work?

Scott: Well, that is famous in the study of human evolution. Mm-hmm. Because yeah, Lucy Ast, Australopithecus Fr Inis comes from afar. Yeah. See,

Kayla: I, I, I was, I thought I was impressing you with Reus, but I don't know a second name of it.

Scott: That's about the extent of what I know about fr other than that, it's in, I think Eastern part of Ethiopia.

Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. East

Kayla: African Rift. So kind of close to the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Mm-hmm. Which is a very. Contentious geopolitically. That's right. Area. So there's Eritrean Rebels that will come into Ethiopia. Kidnap people kill people. Yeah. So we were there for this conference.

And then the latter part of the conference was a field trip where we would go in this sort of ring up the rift. So up to the north through the FR Rift, we would get to this very famous volcano, very similar to Nagano called Ur Ale. Which is another one of these things with a massive lava lake and very similar geologic setting.

And then we would kind of come back down, you kinda go up into the mountains a little bit, come back down, stop at a famous place called Lolly Bella, which if you've ever eaten at an Ethiopian restaurant like nine times outta 10, there was a picture of Lolly Bella on the, on the wall.

Scott: I've actually been to LL Valley.

Have you? Yeah, I I, so go ahead. I don't wanna derail you, but I, that's actually one of my favorite places I've ever been anywhere in the world. It's

Kayla: pretty amazing. It's

Scott: incredible.

I can't remember why. So we set off a day late and you know, it, mind you, there are armed guards with us, like machine gun. Armed guards because that's what you need to be safe in the field there.

Yeah.

Kayla: And people, tourists do go there. It's this, you know, geo tourism, extreme tourism thing, which fine. And so we're, we're, we are in like a caravan, I don't know how many of six, maybe these like land cruiser things and we're driving up.

I can give a quick aside for a funny story. Okay, go ahead. That's part of this. Go ahead if you like,

Scott: please.

Kayla: So we'll get to the, the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. But first, one of the, the worst medical issues that happened to me in the field, which was that I got like sick from the food. Sick.

Kayla: And in Ethiopia, people are like, expect to get sick. Like it's. You know, you can't drink the water at all. Don't eat anything that's been washed. So no lettuce, right? Don't brush your teeth with the water, use bottles. Like it's very, very serious. And we had stopped at a place called Lake F Dura.

I. Which is one of these hyper saline lakes, like the dead Sea. Very salty. Where it's very salty so you can float on it. Mm-hmm. And so it was a, the reason that happens is they're originally connected to the ocean. Oh yeah. To saltwater. Yeah. And then as evaporation occurs, they get cut off from the sea and evaporation continues and it's becoming more and more, less and less water.

And so proportionally more and more salt.

Scott: Yeah. The water evaporates, but the salt stays behind

Kayla: It. Stays behind. Exactly. So I remember a friend of mine's like, we're, oh, we're gonna go swimming and float in the water. And he's like, okay, you, I am not. We're like, why aren't you coming? He's like, you people are crazy.

Yeah,

Kayla: whatever. So we go in the wa in the water and we're hanging out and it's fun. Come back, you know, have dinner and go to bed. And that night was one of the worst nights.

Scott: Oh no.

Kayla: We, so we had like a bathroom tent.

Scott: Sure I was,

Kayla: I was in the bathroom tent.

Scott: Yeah.

Kayla: Almo if, if not as, as much as I was in my tent, maybe more.

Oh no. It was not fun. I felt, no, it was terrible. Felt horrible. Yeah.

Kayla: The whole went the whole night. Like that woke up in the morning. Well, probably it was up and there was a few of us that were really had to have the same experience.

Scott: Yeah. All competing for the bathroom tent, I'm sure.

Kayla: Yeah. Oh gosh. I don't, I'm trying to remember like how, how did I make it to the bathroom tent every time. Yeah. Maybe luck.

Yeah.

Kayla: And we're all sitting there and I'm feeling like crap. And we're sitting around the breakfast table and people are starting to eat and drink coffee and everyone takes a couple sips of their coffee and doesn't really say anything.

Scott: Oh, no.

Kayla: And everyone, yeah. Has this realization come over their face like, oh my God,

Scott: where did the water come from? They,

Kayla: yes. They've been using the local water Oh, no. To cook our food. Oh. And we were like, okay.

Scott: The fact that it's salty is the least of your worries at this point.

Kayla: Exactly. The fact. Yeah, exactly. And so it was like, okay, now we know why like a third of us are sick. So tip word to the wise. If you ever go somewhere like this, get a, a antibiotic called Cipro for short. Yeah. Or ciprofloxacin. Mm-hmm. If you, you go see a doctor tell you're gonna one of these places, they'll prescribe it for you.

It it like nukes your system. Very strong antibiotic, but it's just like a miracle.

Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you need it, you need it.

Kayla: And it, I took it and in a handful of hours I was like, completely fine.

Scott: Oh, wow. That's fast.

Kayla: Yeah. Yeah. So I forever will be indebted to the creator of zip rows.

Antibiotics.

Kayla: Yeah. And just, yeah. So it happened to me. That was, that was rough. Wow.

Scott: Yeah. That was bad. I had, that could've been worse if you didn't have the Cipro, but Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I don't even know

Kayla: what I would've done. We were out in the middle of nowhere.

Scott: Right.

Kayla: There was not buildings.

Right.

Kayla: There was definitely not a hospital or anything like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow.

Kayla: So, all right, so we had that wonderful experience. Yeah. Now I'm better. And we're driving north, heading towards the volcano. This might have been the next day trying to remember. And we can start to see the volcano rising above the horizon in the distance. And we're trotting along in our caravan and we see another caravan coming the opposite direction, like in these sand dune fields.

And they stop. And our drivers who are all Ethiopian, and a lot of 'em didn't speak any English, so we just made do.

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Oh.

Kayla: He had been kind of happy and goofy and he was not at this point.

Uh oh.

Kayla: He was like silent.

Mm-hmm.

Kayla: And we're just driving along and everyone sees that this is just, there's a, something in the air, something has happened, something has happened. As we're starting to talk to each other, like, what? What do you think they said to him?

Like what? What is going on? And you know, he can't tell us, first of all, 'cause he doesn't speak English,

right?

Kayla: But he's saying enough with his body language in silence, we know something bad is happening. So we're still gonna go in towards the volcano and all of a sudden we start veering off to the left and we're not really going towards the volcano anymore.

And the building was, some philanthropic group came and built like a school Okay. For the kids there.

Yeah.

Kayla: But there's not, not much. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. In the desert. And so we all get out of the cars and we're sitting on the ground lined up outside of this school and wondering what's going on.

Yeah.

Kayla: The leader of the trip who was a professor of a university in England.

He comes up and he explains what's happening. And there had been, the night prior there had been an attack on the volcano.

Scott: Oh, wow.

Kayla: So sort of what I mentioned before about, you know, if you're a rebel group, you're coming in, you're kidnapping people, but the biggest prize will be people from the west. Right.

Oh my goodness. I don't know how long some of those people were there. I believe some people. Got away and were able to make it back to the Capitol. Wow. But a lot of people were taken back to Eritrea. Some of them were then killed, and some of them eventually got back and got home.

Scott: Oh, what a absolute horrific nightmare.

Scott: Oh my gosh.

Kayla: If you recall, we set off about a day late Wow. On the field trip. And he recalled that on the website, for the conference, they had published a field trip schedule.

Scott: Oh. So people could figure out where you were going and when you were gonna be there. Yeah. Wow, that's so terrifying. Terrifying. And then these other people happened to be there. It was a tourist group that was there at the time. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And

Kayla: it's, yeah, the amount of guilt too, of thinking this happened to these people because of something that, you know, that was a mistake to publish that.

Yeah.

Scott: Yeah.

Kayla: Clearly.

Or, or, or risks you won't take now?

Kayla: I don't know that there would actually be a, well, I. Certainly, depending on the situations, there would be places I wouldn't go. But honestly it's kind of rare if I think that it's safe.

Yeah.

Kayla: And so it definitely, you know, I was pretty young at the time, not that I'm not still naive, but definitely a lot more naive about that kind of thing when I was that age.

And it, it's, it really opened my eyes to what can actually happen. You know, when you're in your twenties and early twenties, you're like, well this happens to other people.

Right.

Kayla: But it would never happen to me. You just can't believe that it could happen to you. Yeah. And knowing that it could was big and understanding what the actual risks are and how you mitigate those risks.

What countries are Sure. Dangerous. Yeah. And local guidance. And if you're going with a group. You know, vetting what they have done. So when we went to the Dr. Congo, the BBC provided me with a whole packet of information from a Rec E where they went on reconnaissance trip there.

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Kayla: And I was able to look through it and say, okay, I believe they've done a thorough job.

And they checked all these boxes. So when I was in the Dr. Congo, I felt very safe.

Yeah. Yeah,

Kayla: and I think it, I think Ethiopia was a lot more dangerous probably in general, but plus just the fact that I didn't even know what RI risks were really there, let alone how to mitigate them at the time.

Welcome back. My guest is Vul Volcanologist, Dr. Kayla Yao Avino.

I think it's interesting that we're talking about, about risk and, and clearly what you're describing is, is real risk that, you know, unfortunately you, you, you, you've seen how it can be risky to, to other folks, but you know, for people outside your field, like, you know, if you describe what you're doing, I mean, you're literally climbing into active volcanoes.

But, you know, do, do you feel like what you're doing when you're going out and doing field work is, is generally risky?

Kayla: I mean, I think, you know, you said it that, that the people are absolutely the riskiest part of all of this and followed maybe by the wildlife. And depending on the volcano, it's more or less risky.

I mean, even if you look at really high risk volcanoes, the number of people, like the number of volcanologists or geoscientists that have died there is relatively small, you know, so it's not without risk, but there are geology, uh, even volcanology, which is this very active process. Uh, geology exists on a timescale different from our own.

Scott: Yeah. Or even just, uh, being in a car accident on the way there.

Kayla: Exactly. Yeah.

Exactly. So that's one thing that helps if you're going to a place that's a safe country and you're not as, as worried about the risks of just being that in that physical place, I think that's honestly the biggest risk. The other thing is that if it's an active volcano. Working with, again, it's all about working with the locals.

So there's a local observatory or local scientists. I worked on a volcano or a few volcanoes. We traveled around in Northern Chile and there was one that was particularly active and we made sure to liaise with the observatory scientists there. Mm-hmm. And they knew we, we would check in with them every day or two and say, how's the volcano?

You know? And if they said there was an increased risk, then we need to leave.

Scott: Yeah.

Kayla: Yeah. They have all the instrumentation, you know, they can see what's going on.

Right? Yeah.

Kayla: Yeah. And I mean, the other thing is, I, you know, I hate to sound trite, but like, don't act, don't do something stupid.

Scott: Yeah.

Kayla: You know, it's not, we're not there to look cool. Like to tell what I talk to students in particular. You know, they sometimes get excited about the risk. And I'm, it's dying on a volcano is not a cool way to die.

No,

Kayla: you do. It is not a cool way to die.

Yeah.

Kayla: And some people would be like, I don't know, it seems pretty cool. It is. You do not want to die on a volcano. No, no, no. So if it's not worth it, it's not worth it.

Scott: Absolutely. So did you always wanna study volcanoes? Did you, did you grow up imagining that you would be traveling around the world going and, and visiting volcanoes?

I mean, you grew up in Arizona, right? There's some I did, yeah. Some cool geology. Mm-hmm. But not a lot of volcanoes. At least not active. Not in any active, that's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

So when I was in high school, we had an earth science class, but I think from freshman to senior, it was like earth science, biology, chemistry, and physics. And there was this sort of. Idea that they were of increasing difficulty and sort of therefore maybe increasing importance. Mm. Yeah. Which obviously I don't agree with.

And so I fancied myself one of the smart kids. Mm-hmm. So I was allowed to just skip earth Science Oh. And go right to biology.

Scott: Really?

Kayla: Yeah. And also the earth science teacher was notorious for being kind of a wacko, and you didn't learn very much in that class.

Scott: Oh, I see.

Kayla: So, yeah. Yeah. That wasn't so bad.

But yeah, it was, earth science wasn't something I thought you could have a career. I just never thought about it. Yeah. Yeah. If someone had asked me, can you have a career in earth science, I'd be, I guess literally just never crossed my mind. I knew I loved science and I knew I loved filmmaking.

Kayla: So I was a kid, I was like making videos with my friends on like VHS with a big chunky Sure.

I remember VHS camcorder. Yeah. And then, you know, the, the, what are they called? The little. High eight tapes or whatever, uhhuh. And they got smaller. And I loved Star Trek.

Scott: Okay. Yeah.

Kayla: Grew up watching Star Trek. Still watch Star Trek.

Scott: Yep.

Kayla: And the thing that everyone gets something different out of Star Trek, all the different people who are fans.

The thing I got out of it was the sense of exploration, knowledge seeking for the sake of building our own knowledge.

Yeah.

Kayla: So not following some monetary thing or, you know, imperialism. It's just we wanna learn about each other, we wanna learn about the universe.

Scott: Curiosity.

Kayla: Yeah. Curiosity in a scientific, rigorous way.

Right. And then you apply it and it's just cool. And so I, those were my two loves and I was trying to figure out what to do when I got to college. I, I definitely grew up in a family, in an area where. Going to college was obvious. It was the thing you were supposed to do.

Scott: Mm-hmm.

I would go to college if I, if I didn't want to, you know, I'm sure my parents would've supported me, but again, it was expected I didn't question it. Yeah. I was like, yeah, of course I'm gonna college. So I went in as an undeclared major. Mm-hmm. And floated around for a bit. I did a, a semester in film school at USC California, and then started my undergrad at a SU Arizona State and floated around for a bit, took some some film courses, and then they opened this new major, a whole new school at Arizona State called the School of Earth and Space Exploration.

Oh yeah.

Kayla: And actually the guy who's now my husband is the one who found out about it, he comes and tells me about this thing. And we're looking at each other like, oh, he's like, I'm switching my major to this, like right now. Like I'm gonna go talk to them. And I was like, this is basically like let's go be astronauts.

Right,

Scott: Yeah. But

Kayla: also in this very sort of sexy way. Yeah. Amazing. I'm in, I loved space science, so I was like, I am so in. So we both switched our majors. So glad that I did. Now the geology and astronomy departments there have sort of become this.

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Kayla: And being so much geology in Arizona, we had great geology professors in great field sites we could go out to. And I was choosing between this astronomy or geology. 'cause I thought astronomy was it, you know, I wanna go study other planets.

Yeah.

Kayla: But I quickly realized that modern astronomy, it's great, but it, I'm a very tactile person.

Yeah.

Kayla: Like, I need to pick up a rock. Right. Smell it.

Scott: Yeah. You

Kayla: know, hike out to it.

Scott: Yeah. It's hard to touch the stars.

Kayla: Exactly. But you, you know, so it's basically, you know, electrons on a computer screen. Mm-hmm. And that's, that's what you do. You sit in front of a computer screen screen, your data comes down and you deal with your data.

Scott: Yeah. It's, it's sometimes it's about more than just the questions. It's also about the, the, the way you answer them. Yes. And the lifestyle of doing the research. Right.

Kayla: Yeah. I have to be inside of it. Like, I, I'm the level of tactile that when I'm walking around art museums, I sometimes get yelled at for getting too close to the paintings.

'cause they're like, ma, this is worth a hundred million dollars. Please do not breathe on it. Right. So that's why I fell in love with geology. And then from there, there was a guy who became like a very important mentor to me for my whole career, put out a email to the whole department for a job student researcher that the title of the, of the email was Get Paid to Melt Rocks.

Wow.

Kayla: And I was like, I, I, once again, me jumping at opportunity, I was like, I'm there.

Yeah.

So how do rocks at the surface, you know, where did they come from? And I learned a lot there. And from there that's, we did a lot of work that was directly related to vulcanism and that just. Shot me and I up, you know, up into the the volcano realm. And just before I graduated, this guy named Clive Oppenheimer from the University of Cambridge came to, I don't even know how he got hooked up with our lab.

It came to do some kind of collaboration and brought these samples from Antarctica. And I was also obsessed with Antarctica. 'cause my first geology professor had been there and I saw these pictures and it was like this great frontier of the unknown.

Scott: Yeah.

Kayla: And I was like, can I work on these Antarctic rocks?

And so I did. Wow. And then, you know, I was really excited about the project and I emailed this guy Clive and was like, Hey, I'm really interested in doing a PhD.

Yeah.

Kayla: And he was like, sure,

wow.

apply.

Kayla: And he helped me, like work out a, a project and I applied there, somehow got accepted and that's how I got to Antarctica.

And then just from there with his research group, his, you know, they go all over the world. That's what he does. He goes from volcanoes to volcano, measuring the gases. So I got, I, I mean, it's a lot of luck, a lot of luck.

Scott: Yeah. There's luck and then there's also, you know, seeing those opportunities and grabbing them Absolute.

Taking Absolutely. And taking full advantage of them.

Kayla: Yeah.

Scott: Well, Kayla Yao, thank you so much for sharing all of these incredible experiences that you've had and, uh, and awesome research that you do.

Kayla: Oh, absolutely. It's been a blast. Woo.

Scott: To learn more about Kayla Yao's research on Volcanoes, visit her website kayla yao.com.

There's a link to it on our website. Wild World is produced by Three Wire Creative. That's it for this episode. I'm Scott Solomon. Join me next time as we explore another part of our wild world.