Question for volcanologists/enthusiasts

[Equipoise]

After me bitch-slapping Bobby Jindal for dissing money spent for volcano watching, someone else posted this post, wondering how money in the Stimulus bill meant for volcano watching would stimulate the economy. Besides the obvious of hiring volcanologists to watch them thar volcanoes, where will the money go? Could someone point me to an article or give a rundown as to what the money will be spent on, so I can counter posts like that? If nothing is decided yet, what are the likely expenditures?

I’d post this in General Questions, but there may not be a concrete answer at the moment, if people are still deciding what to do with the money.

Oh, and how’s Yellowstone and that volcano in Alaska doing?

[whiterabbit]

I have no answers for the OP, except to say that I am close enough to Yellowstone that if the whole thing blew I’d be a goner. I don’t think I want to know if that’s going to happen; I don’t personally mind funding scientists, but I’d still rather be kept in the dark. In fact, I rather wish I’d never heard about the whole Yellowstone volcano thing. I’m not particularly worried about it, but still.

[Equipoise]

At least it’ll be quick whiterabbit!

I found an article that pretty much answers my questions.
Gov. Bobby Jindal’s volcano remark has some fuming

…

The governor, a rising Republican star, questioned why "something called ‘volcano monitoring’ " was included in the nearly $800 billion economic stimulus bill Obama signed earlier this month. Video Watch “Is Jindal prime-time ready?” »

“Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington,” Jindal said.

But Marianne Guffanti, a volcano researcher at the U.S. Geological Survey, said, “We don’t throw the money down the crater of the volcano and watch it burn up.”

The USGS, which received the money Jindal criticized, is monitoring several active volcanoes across the Pacific Northwest, Alaska and Hawaii. One of those is Mount St. Helens, about 70 miles north of Vancouver, Washington, and neighboring Portland, Oregon.

The volcano killed 57 people when it erupted in 1980 and sputters back into action periodically, most recently in late 2004 and early 2005, when it sent plumes of steam and ash thousands of feet into the air.

USGS researchers are also keeping a close eye on Alaska’s Mount Redoubt volcano, about 100 miles from Anchorage, which is predicted to go off again within a few months. Its last eruption, in 1989, disrupted air traffic and forced down a commercial jet that sucked ash into its engines.

“If we can give good information about what’s happening, that system of diversions and cancellations all works much more efficiently,” Guffanti said. “And fewer people are delayed and standard business is resumed quickly.”

…

The $140 million line-item for the USGS includes not only monitoring, but also replacement of aging equipment “and other critical deferred maintenance and improvement projects.”

The spending could provide new jobs “no different than the amount of money you would spend on building a street or building a bridge or something,” said Danny Boston, an economist at Georgia Tech university in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Pollard, a former Army officer who has served as Vancouver’s mayor for 14 years, said USGS equipment used to keep tabs on volcanoes is frequently damaged or destroyed. He said he wasn’t sure how many jobs the money could produce, but, “For us and the people who live closer to it than Vancouver, it’s important.”

“We lost lives the last time, and we could lose them again,” he said.

[lieu]

I’m pretty sure poster Duckster’s job responsibilities include monitoring at or near St. Helens’ summit. I’ll fire off a PM to make him aware of this.

I’ll second the cost of equipment reference in the article too. Several friends are involved in designing and positioning a variety of instrumentation on Redoubt and other Alaskan volcanoes and it is a huge undertaking to keep everything running at an acceptable level. Most sites are quite remote and the conditions within are incredibly hostile. Some of the equipment like the gas sniffers need to be right in the thick of it all.

While there are scientific entities that do spend freely and lavishly, I believe the USGS to be remarkably productive and efficient with repect to funding and the usefulness of interpreted data that results from such.

[Chefguy]

Part of the money would go to upkeep of sites like this one. The effort and expense required to get scientists to remote places like Redoubt or any of the other innumerable volcanoes up here is considerable. On-location seismographs and other equipment are expensive and may have to be replaced whenever the volcano erupts. The question should not be “where does the money go”, but rather, “is any of this research providing any benefit”.