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1 Travelling across Afar 2 Moving house, Afari style 3 Afari women 4 Some of the team at Erta Ale (Lorraine is on the left), including one of the police guards 5 Making bread on the summit 6 Erta Ale erupting during the team’s visit Main image The main crater and the southern pit – to the left are people for scale.


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lava flows. Tese are pristine samples, unaffected by weathering, and are perfect for scientific research. I had the bonus of watching my samples ‘being born’! Te team were lucky enough to spend


around 48 hours watching the eruption and taking field observations. We use ground observations along with thermal imaging from satellites to piece together the full history of the eruption. In the future we will be able to use this thermal imaging to see if there is any unusual activity at this volcano without being there. In the laboratories I used the samples


collected to find out more about the lava and the magma plumbing system. We can look at the whole rock geochemistry and compare this to previously erupted lavas from the volcano to see if anything has changed. We can also use these data and analysis of the individual minerals to determine information such as the viscosity, at what depth the crystals formed and the temperature of the magma just before eruption. As a result we now have a far better understanding of the magma system of this volcano and how it may erupt in the future.


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Augmented ReALItY


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