I am fascinated by volcanoes. They are a wonder of nature that man is still trying to understand and predict. It seems like the smallest change in their environment can set them off and that’s so cool.
So, I’m bringing you to the Alaska Volcano Observatory site. They just recently bumped the volcano at Augustine up to Orange. What does that mean? Well, they assign the volcanoes color codes that tell you what their amount of volcanic activity is. You can find more about color codes in the Activity section under the Reports link. (You’ll find it on the side menu or the level of concern color codes link under the image). The color codes are green, yellow, orange and red.
Green: Volcano is in its normal “dormant” state.
Yellow: Volcano is restless.
Orange: Small ash eruption expected or confirmed.
Red: Large ash eruptions expected or confirmed.
The site is broken into the following sections: Home, About AVO, Activity, Library and Volcanoes.
Home – this link will take you back to the main page from all the other sections!
About AVO – you may have noticed when you mouse over these links that they come up with a link bar underneath them. In this section on the link bar you’ll find : Introduction, Operations, Response, Fields of Study and Staff. This is where you can learn all about AVO and what they are trying to study and record, as well as, who works there.
Activity – this section contains a Summary, Reports and Monitoring. This is my favorite section because you can learn about what’s going on with the volcanoes and when you click the Monitoring link, you can see live Web cams of volcanoes.
Library – here you will find an Introduction, Reference Search, Image Search and Glossary.
Volcanoes – this is another section I really liked. Here you can check out the Introduction, Alphabetical List, Regional Map and Eruption Search. This is where you can find out where the volcanoes are located, get a listing of them and find out when they erupted!
On February 1st, 2006, Augustine changed to Orange like I mentioned earlier. You can check out images of the volcano from the main page!
http://www.avo.alaska.edu/index.php
~ Amanda