Impacts of the Calbuco eruption, Chile

智利卡尔布哥火山发生重大喷发。这座火山已经平静了40多年，直到几个小时前才显示出即将喷发的迹象。这次喷发产生了壮观的烟柱，将火山灰和气体送入大气层，扰乱了航空运输，给地面造成了痛苦。在喷发后的三天里，火山灰落在南美洲中部的大片地区，包括古老的原生森林；城市、城镇和村庄；以及陆地和海上的农场。我们计划在智利和阿根廷火山灰坠落的地区开展实地工作，与当地科学家合作，测量火山喷发期间有多少火山灰掉落；并计算出火山喷发在喷发后几周和更长时间内的影响。尽管这是一次大喷发，但大部分沉积物很快就会被埋在土壤中；被风吹走，或被雨水冲走，所以我们需要迅速找到火山灰落下的地方。由于火山灰散落在一个数百万人居住的地区，我们应该能够通过定位当时发布在社交媒体上的照片，计算出自火山爆发以来的几天和几周里，沉积物发生了多大的变化。我们希望从这次喷发中学到的一件事是，当火山灰在他们的城市和农场中掉落时，如何帮助人们更好地应对，并利用这些信息来帮助计划未来的事件。

A major explosive volcanic eruption in Chile has occurred at volcan Calbuco. This volcano has been quiet for over 40 years, and showed no sign that it was about to erupt until just a few hours beforehand. This eruption created a spectacular plume, which sent ash and gases high into the atmosphere, disrupting air transport and causing misery on the ground. In the three days after the eruption, volcanic ash fell across a wide area of central South America, across areas that include ancient native forests; cities, towns and villages; and farms, both on land and at sea. We plan to carry out field work across areas of Chile and Argentina where ash fell, working with local scientists to measure how much ash fell out during the eruption; and to work out what the effects of the eruption are both in the weeks after the eruption, and in the longer term. Although this is a major eruption, much of the deposits will soon become buried within the soil; blown away by winds, or washed away by rain, so we will need to work quickly to find the ash where it fell. Since ash fell out across an area where many millions of people live, we should be able to work out how much the deposits have changed in the days and weeks since eruption, by locating photographs posted across social media at the time. One of the things that we hope to learn from this eruption is to work out how to help people cope better when ash falls out across their cities and farms, and to use this information to help plan for future events.