Volcanic disruptions

Mountain volcanoes spew lava flows that can harden into new land, as well as greenhouse gases and particulates that can promote climate change. Undersea volcanoes and vents do the same-only more so.

The deep sea contains the largest volcanic system on Earth, wrapping around the planet and emitting massive amounts of chemicals like carbon dioxide and forming new seafloor. On Tuesday, April 19, Columbia University's Maya Tolstoy will discuss "Pulses of Seafloor Volcanism: Exploring Links to the Rhythms of Long-term Climate Change." The talk, this year's Strock Lecture at Skidmore, is free and open to the public. It begins at 5:30 p.m. in Emerson Auditorium, Palamountain Hall.

A marine geophysicist at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Tolstoy has joined or led scores of research cruises, collecting data throughout the world's oceans. Advances in technology, she says, allow scientists to penetrate deep, dark waters and listen for the sounds of tectonic plates breaking apart in pulses-rhythmic stops and starts-on time scales from days to millennia. Most surprising, she adds, are the signs that very long-term orbital and sea-level changes may be drivers of undersea volcanic activity. The story illustrates the planet's complex and delicate balance among land, oceans, and atmosphere [TEDx talk].

Tolstoy holds a B.A. from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and a Ph.D. from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. Along with numerous articles in scientific journals, she co-authored a piece on monitoring the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil leak in Science magazine. She represented Scripps in a presentation before the U.S. Congress, was profiled in Earth magazine, and participated in the IMAX documentary Aliens of the Deep. She was a NASA astronaut candidate finalist in 2009.

While at Skidmore, she will meet with a geophysics class, lunch with students, and confer with faculty.

Sponsored by the Geosciences Department, Skidmore's Lester W. Strock Lecture was endowed by a renowned authority on Saratoga's mineral springs, the MIT and Sylvania Electric geochemist Lester Strock, who died in 1982.