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Jacob Richardson – Dividing Time Between Lava Flows From Different Worlds

Young man with reddish brown hair and fair skin wears a blue and red plaid shirt and stands, smiling in front of trees.
Jacob A. Richardson, Geologist and Volcanologist
NASA/W. Hrybyk

Name: Jacob A. Richardson
Title: Geologist and Volcanologist
Organization: Planetary Geology, Geochemistry, and Geophysics Laboratory; Solar System Exploration Directorate (Code 698)

What do you do and what is most interesting about your role here at Goddard? How do you help support Goddard’s mission?

I split my time studying volcanoes on Earth and on different worlds, like the Moon, Mars and Venus. Mostly I study how lava flows. On Earth, lava flows are a huge hazard. On other planets, lava is one of the major surface materials. I also get to do a lot of fieldwork in Iceland, Hawaii and the American southwest to help our Planetary Geosciences Lab at Goddard understand how lavas flow on landscapes that are similar to landscapes on other planets.

You grew up in Michigan, which is not very volcanic. How did you become interested in volcanoes?

I was always interested in geology in general, but not volcanoes especially. In college, I realized scientists actually study the geology of other planets. As a geology major at Eastern Michigan University, I cold-applied to a NASA fall internship in planetary geology. In 2009, I went to Goddard for the fall semester in the same lab where I am working now. A then-new scientist there, Jake Bleacher asked me to sit at a computer and look at volcanoes on Mars. After that, I was hooked.

Forming volcanoes is a really energetic and violent process that takes place across the solar system. On Mars, they sometimes make up a beautiful quilt that covers the whole surface. Looking at volcanoes on any planet helps you understand the evolution of that planet. For instance, by observing volcanoes on Mars, we can interpret how the heat flow at the surface diminished because the number and sheer magnitude of volcanoes over time decreased. Billions of years ago Mars perhaps had explosive volcanoes. Millions of years ago, “recent” Mars appears to have only been erupting fields of smaller volcanos. But the smallest volcanos on Mars are still 10 times larger than the ones you see on Earth!

You like volcanoes. You really like lava flows. Why?

Flowing lava is fundamentally liquid rock flowing downhill out of a volcano and it is an interesting process. On Earth, lava flows represent a huge hazard to communities around the world. So one facet of my research is to understand that hazard. I recently helped write a paper about lava flow hazards at the Idaho National Laboratory, which is a large nuclear facility built on a lava flow plain. Turns out, the risk of lava flowing into the laboratory from a new volcanic eruption is about one in 10,000 years.

I am enamored of lava flows on other planets because they are a primary way that a planet resurfaces itself. Lava flows and magmatic systems, the hot roots of volcanoes, are how the crusts of planets evolve. Volcanoes in general deliver the building blocks of life and evolved atmospheres to the surface, so they are a critical part of our search for habitable worlds here at NASA.

Where else did you go to school?

In 2016, I got a Ph.D. in geosciences from the University of South Florida, which has a great volcanology program. It is faster to fly from Tampa to volcanoes in Central America than it is to fly from Tampa to D.C. I graduated on a Friday and came up to work at Goddard as a NASA postdoctoral fellow the very next Monday so I wouldn’t have to miss a paycheck. But I was also very excited to begin working with the planetary geologists at Goddard again, because this is the best place to study volcanoes in a planetary context.

What are some of your favorite field work stories?

Well, field work doesn’t always go the way you plan it, but that makes for good stories. I have a good yellow jacket story. In 2014, I was in Southern Utah, in the San Rafael Swell, a place where an old volcanic field consisting of dozens of erupted volcanoes was laid down a few million years ago but has since eroded away completely. You can see the magmatic system, the volcanoes’ roots, directly. It is one of the most beautiful areas on Earth — giant towers of sandstone capped with these beautiful black sills and huge mountains that stand like mesas, tables. One is called frying pan because it is so flat, tall and broad.

I went with another graduate student named Lis Gallant who is allergic to bees. We set up camp in the middle of the desert and opened up a can of chicken. Turns out, yellow jackets love canned chicken too, in fact, so much that they actually gorge themselves to death. Within minutes, they descended and set up a permanent camp inside of our folding dinner table just outside our tents. We ended up wrapping the entire table in garbage bags and duct tape and tossing it into the nearest dumpster we could find, which was a two-hour drive away. It’s a good story because my friend never got stung.

That same year, I crashed a quadcopter on Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia. This was into the ravine of a famous and catastrophic 1985 lahar (a volcanic mud flow). We wanted to understand the shape of this ravine better because the shape of the river channel determines how fast and where floods, of water, mud, or lava can travel.

My job was to use a brand new Unoccupied Ariel Vehicle (UAV) about 15,000 feet above sea level. Turns out, the air was so thin that the UAV literally wouldn’t fly. It would spin up a few feet, go shakily into the air and then turn off in the air and crash. I finally got the drone to hover over the waterfall, which is about 25 stories tall, and a wind gust knocked it out of the air and into the waterfall.

The next day, with protection equipment, we descended into the gorge, walked up the river and found the drone submerged beneath the waterfall. The drone was full of sulfur-smelling, acidic mud. It never flew again.

What is your favorite volcano?

I would say Arsia Mons on Mars. It is an absolutely giant shield volcano meaning that the lava flows that constructed it give the volcano a shield shape. It absolutely dwarfs even the largest mountains and volcanoes on Earth. Only Olympus Mons and Ascreaus Mons, both Martian volcanos, are taller. Arsia Mons has one of the largest calderas, the crater inside the rim, in the entire solar system. It is about 80 miles in diameter, really massive. This caldera is so big that inside it are 30 smaller volcanoes. On top of that, tthe entire volcano is actually completely split in half. One of the mysteries of volcanism in the solar system is how Arsia split.

Why do so many volcanoes have Italian names?

Geologists generally names things after “type locations” and type locations are commonly wherever the first recorded observations of a landform or a process are found. Italy has the most active volcanoes in Europe, where modern geology took off, so many volcanology names are in Italian. For instance, “Volcano” is a volcano in Italy, and “Stromboli” is an explosive Italian volcano that is the namesake of “Strombolian eruptions.” Hawaii, where many other volcano words come from, has been inhabited by a volcano-savvy culture for hundreds of years: pāhoehoe, ʻaʻā, and Pele’s hair, all names of lava and volcanic products, are all Hawaiian terms.

What has your mentor, Jake, taught you?

The first thing that Jake told me when I met him was that by the end of the internship I would know more about the subject that I studied than anyone else on Earth. And he was right. I became the expert on a field of volcanos on Mars called Syria Planum. For the first time in my life in a way, I was an expert on something. It made me realize that I could contribute to human knowledge, which inspired me to continue in science.

What has Goddard taught you?

When I got to Goddard, I realized Goddard functions because we are a team with different talents instead of individual geniuses. The way that this center works so well is by pulling in people with these different talents to make a team, which becomes a family. At Goddard, everyone is a personal genius in a different skill set and brings in a different perspective that helps this place thrive. So since I first got to Goddard, I’ve been thinking more about what makes a great science team more than what makes a great scientist.

Is there something surprising about you outside of work that people do not generally know?

I play tennis a few times a week, but need to play more often because I’m still not very good. When the weather is nice and I have time, I really enjoy backcountry camping and backpacking, especially along the Appalachian Trail.

By Elizabeth M. Jarrell
NASGoddard Space Flight Center