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To the heart of the earth

A team of researchers from UNC-Chapel Hill, Boise State University, Georgia State University, and Michigan State University, set out to complete an expedition on one of South America's most active volcanos.

Jonathan Lees, chair of the department of Geological Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has traveled all over the world — Russia, Guatemala, Italy, Japan — to conduct research on volcanoes and gain a better understanding of the inner workings of our earth. Most recently he and three of his students traveled to Chile to deploy instruments on Llaima, one of the most active volcanoes in South America.

“We go to exotic places around the world because that’s where we can find the volcanic activity we’re trying to understand,” Lees said.

While Lees has been leading research expeditions on volcanoes for decades, he said this one is special because of the large collaboration. Working with researchers from Boise State University, Georgia State University and Michigan State University allows Lees to expand the scope of the project, and vastly increase the amount of data they are able to gather.

“We’ve gathered together different groups of people who are combining a variety of different instrumentation that we’ve never had before on any volcano,” he said.