Dr. Terry Naumann enjoys traveling and interacting with new people. As a university professor researching volcanoes in the Galapagos Islands he does a lot of both.

Naumann spends the fall and spring semesters teaching geology to students at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Then in May of each year, he takes a few of these students on field trips to further study what they learned in the classroom.

The past two years have seen selected students make the lengthy journey from Anchorage to the Galapagos Islands off the coast of South America where Naumann has worked for nearly 11 years. In the past, scientists thought the Galapagos were hotspot volcanoes like Hawaii, where each volcano is a different age.

“It was like trying to fit a Galapagos peg into a Hawaii hole, it just didn’t fit,” Naumann said.

His research shows that the Galapagos volcanoes are not different ages. The amount and types of magma control the differences and determine the chemistry and shape of the volcano. The size is based on supply and amount of magma, not age.

The Galapagos are unique when compared to other volcanoes of the world. Here there are seven volcanoes that were simultaneously active. They are not as big as the Hawaiian volcanoes but are more spread out and are a part of different systems.

Naumann says that he would even go so far as to say, “that as important as the Galapagos are to biology, they are at least as interesting and valuable to geology because of these differences.”

The Galapagos are located in one of the most tectonically active areas of the world. Beneath the islands the seafloor is spreading at a little less than three inches per year, which pushes the Nazca plate toward South America.

This makes them tectonically similar to Hawaii, but differences in magma change the way they grow. They have a shape and profile that is unique on earth, but is comparable to shapes seen on other planets such as Mars. Studying the Galapagos allows volcanologists to see another side of hotspot volcanoes.

This is one of the reasons Naumann uses it as a training ground for the students he takes there. Not only are there plentiful opportunities for students to make new scientific discoveries, but the whole experience is full of extraordinary opportunities.

Departing from Alaska’s Arctic environment, Naumann and his students travel by airplane to Quito, Ecuador, a city located in a hot, humid, Spanish speaking country at a high elevation. This alone can take some getting used to.

They then travel to the islands, a very distinctive and exotic location.

The Galapagos.com Web-site describes it as, “a rare destination where you become accustomed to being surprised … Setting foot on barren coasts of fresh black lava frozen in its descent to the shoreline, you'll see why early explorers, whalers, and pirates likened the islands to an inferno on earth.”

The chance to study volcanoes in a warm location is one of the reasons Naumann chose to study the Galapagos.

“Think about it, there are volcanoes spread worldwide,” Naumann says.

“But for me the draw is the climate, there are plenty of volcanoes to study in Alaska, but it’s cold. We might have to wait out the rain but there are no snow days.”

For California-born Naumann, the combined opportunities of being in the sun, introducing new people to the project and building their enthusiasm for new discoveries there are almost as rewarding as the geologic aspects of his work in the Galapagos.

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