When Steve Malone retired earlier this month, he could take satisfaction in the great strides that have been made in forecasting volcanic eruptions, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. He was in the vanguard helping to develop those forecasting methods when Mount St. Helens became a global icon in 1980.

“The techniques developed at St. Helens were used to great success at Pinatubo in the Philippines 10 years later,” he recalled. “And, of course, those techniques are now used worldwide, each with its local modifications.”

More than 150 people gathered in Kane Hall on Sept. 28 to celebrate the career of the scientist who was among the first to recognize, all those years ago, that the increased seismic activity at Mount St. Helens meant that the Cascades volcano was rumbling to life.

Malone, who will continue working at a much-reduced level, came to the 91̽»¨geophysics program in 1972 as a postdoctoral researcher, fresh from completing his studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. He grew up in Auburn, Ala., where his father taught comparative literature, but he came West for undergraduate work in physics at Occidental College in the Los Angeles area.

By 1975 he was operating a seismograph network in Eastern Washington to complement one in Western Washington run by 91̽»¨geophysics colleague Robert Crosson. The networks operated separately until early 1980, when the U.S. Geological Survey donated computers that allowed for a unified network that Malone and Crosson directed.

That network has grown into the highly successful Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, which Malone has overseen for the last 15 years. As part of that work, for the last decade he also has been a key player in developing the Advanced National Seismic System, which uses modern monitoring and technology to provide accurate and timely information about seismic events, including their effects on buildings and structures.

But the Northwest’s first advanced system, made possible by donated computers, began operating on March 1, 1980 — just three weeks before the first earthquake marked the end of St. Helens’ dormancy.

“That was quite an adrenalin-filled period,” Malone recalled. “We were working very hard here in the lab to monitor the volcano, starting with the first earthquake, and we were hopeful we would detect any change in activity.”

Before long, the northern flank of the mountain began to bulge and scientists placed a sensor there hoping to spot signals that an eruption was looming. Instead, without warning, an earthquake caused a huge landslide on May 18 that triggered the eruption, which killed 57 people, including U.S. Geological Survey scientist David Johnston, who had earned his doctorate at the 91̽»¨two years earlier.

“Not only had we missed it, but a friend and colleague had been killed, along with a lot of other people,” Malone said.

The signals Malone expected to see with the first eruption simply never materialized, and the eruption itself exceeded scientists’ expectations. “But our development of skills allowing us to predict later eruptions at Mount St. Helens was pretty heartening,” he said.

The groundwork had been laid for a monitoring system that has helped scientists keep close tabs on St. Helens and other volcanoes. Today the improved technology allows real-time detection and monitoring from a series of instruments that beam data directly from St. Helens to the 91̽»¨seismology laboratory, and GPS sensors make it far easier to detect deformation associated with volcanoes. In fact, technology allows scientists to observe a volcano from anywhere in the world using the Internet.

When St. Helens reactivated in 2004, scientists developed a much narrower range of expectations based on their previous experiences and were on target with their forecasts.

Malone says simply, “We nailed it.”

Steve Malone began studying Mount St. Helens in 1973. He didn’t know that just seven years later he would be tracking swarms of earthquakes signaling that the mountain was about to blow its top.

Those initial studies, as a beginning geophysics researcher at the 91̽»¨, centered on a small seismometer network he and a colleague installed on the mountain to investigate reports of volcanic earthquakes. The two discovered the signals being recorded were generated by the sliding of glaciers that encased the peak.

Today those glaciers are gone. It has been two decades since the north face of Mount St. Helens collapsed, unleashing hot gas that melted the glacial ice and spewed a cloud of ash that blanketed much of Washington. Fifty-seven people were killed and hundreds of square miles of forest were flattened.

To Malone, a 91̽»¨research professor in geophysics, one of the lasting legacies of the May 18, 1980, eruption is the improved technology that allows real-time detection and monitoring from a series of scientific instruments that beam their data directly to the 91̽»¨seismology laboratory.

“It helps us to anticipate and prepare for what’s going to happen in the near future,” he said. “There were about 20 eruptions during the six years after the major eruption, and with all but two we could predict the start within hours or a day. St. Helens was certainly the first time in the United States where this was done so successfully.”

At one point Mount St. Helens held the distinction of being the most digitally wired mountain in the world. It has since been surpassed by other volcanoes, particularly in Japan, including Mount Usu on the island of Hokkaido, which recently erupted.

The first permanent seismic station was installed at Mount St. Helens in 1972. Signals from that instrument were transmitted to the university by radio and recorded on photographic film. This old-fashioned recording system was being replaced in early 1980 with a state-of-the-art digital computer system.

The computer recorder was activated on March 1 – just in time, it turned out. On March 20, it recorded a magnitude 4.2 earthquake. The next day, Malone and colleagues went to the mountain to install four more instruments.

“When we got back that night and looked at the seismograms, we saw that the aftershock pattern was not dying out,” he said. Concern mounted further the next day when the scientists realized the pattern of earthquakes was the type that could lead to an eruption.

Later analysis of the data showed that the seismic indications of the eruption actually started several days before the 4.2 earthquake was recorded. But it wasn’t until the scientists gained new knowledge from their work that they recognized those signs.

“It’s like a lot of science, there’s usually a small amount of progress with additional information,” Malone said.

And so it was two years ago, when once again there was a flurry of seismic activity under Mount St. Helens. When the earthquakes dissipated, researchers were left trying to understand how, after an eruption, a volcano replenishes its deep magma system, 4 miles or so beneath the surface. Does it happen continuously over time, in brief episodes of activity spread over many years, or all at once as a precursor to eruption?

“Studying the swarm of earthquakes in 1998 leads us to think that, at Mount St. Helens at least, it is episodic,” Malone said.

###

For more information, contact Malone at (206) 685-3811 or steve@geophys.washington.edu

The U.S. Geological Survey has established a Web site that recounts, day by day, what happened at Mount St. Helens 20 years ago. It is at