Living With Volcanoes

The study of volcanoes and their eruptions has taken on renewed significance over the last 40 years as major eruptions around the world have impacted communities and disrupted patterns of human activity.

In parallel with that, there has been an extraordinary development of techniques focused on understanding of how volcanoes work and how the potentially dangerous impact of their eruptions can be mitigated. Ian’s research has focused on volcanoes of the ’Pacific rim of fire’ particularly the southwest Pacific islands and New Zealand.

Dr Ian Smith has worked as volcanologist at the Central Volcanological Observatory in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. He then took up a research fellowship at the University of Toronto in Canada studying some of the oldest volcanic rocks on the planet and their role in the formation of the Earth’s early crust. In 1980 Ian began a teaching position at the University of Auckland where he remained until retirement.