UAF drones enter the hot zone to make volcano research safer

The four-propeller drone sitting briefly on a rocky and dusty surface in Central America in early March had an impressive diameter of nearly 7 ½ feet.

From afar, however, it appeared as just another small rock or outcrop in the steaming crater of Costa Rica's Poás volcano.

This small speck had a big and innovative mission: sample gas escaping from the soil of an active volcanic crater about a half a mile wide and about 1,000 feet deep, one of Earth's largest.

"Our goal was to test a new and safer way of measuring soil degassing at a variety of spots in an active volcanic crater, and we accomplished that goal," said research assistant professor Társilo Girona of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute. "The UAF drone team was fantastic, and the equipment performed exceptionally well."

"It's a major challenge to work in a setting such as an active volcano crater," he said. "We learned a lot on this mission, and we'll be working to make improvements to make this process even better."

Girona said using unmanned aircraft to efficiently and safely measure soil gas emissions in potentially risky areas has great potential for the field of volcanology.

The 4,800-mile trip from Fairbanks to Costa Rica was a success for both science and technology.

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The mission of the four-person UAF team was part of an international gathering to better understand Poás volcano's plumbing system. Researchers from the United States and elsewhere arrived with different instruments and methods.

It was the second year of the larger Poás community experiment, arranged as part of last year's Cities on Volcanoes 12th Congress, held in Guatemala. This community experiment is sponsored by the AVERT project, Anticipating Volcanic Eruptions in Real-Time, in collaboration with Oviscori, the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica.

Poás, one of Costa Rica's most active and accessible volcanoes, stands 8,848 feet above sea level. The volcano's crater can be seen in an Oviscori webcam.