Chris Rowan is a geologist specialising in the dark arts of paleomagnetism, and getting people to pay him to travel to exotic destinations for fieldwork. Having drilled up New Zealand during his PhD, he is now a post-doc at the University of Johannesburg. 
I've just come across an excellent article in Time about Lusi, the mud volcano currently engulfing eastern Java. Entitled 'A Wound In the Earth', it's a good summary of the human impacts, the attempts to contain the mud, and the wrangling over whether it was the result of natural causes or human incompetence. This seemed like a good prompt to seek out the latest satellite photo from the University of Singapore's Centre for Remote Imaging, Sensing and Processing (shown together with some older ones from the same source):
It seems that the ever-higher holding dams are largely keeping the eruption contained - for now, anyway. But as the Time article mentions, past experience suggests that even after almost two years, this operation is only just beginning:
In 1979, the oil company Shell set off a similar eruption while drilling off the shore of Brunei. That mudflow took 20 years and 20 relief wells to halt.
Environment
Comments
The real question is: did they cite Maria as an expert? I know she had an AGU abstract on it, and she's got a paper going through the publication process (I think).
Posted by: Kim | March 18, 2008 11:18 AM
Why does the "Lusi" link seem to go nowhere?
Posted by: Badger3k | March 18, 2008 3:59 PM
They did not cite me. The bastards. But they did talk to my coauthors... the paper should be out soon. There was some difficulty finding reviewers, but I'm not sure what the holdup is now. I'm not first author, so I haven't been worrying about it.
Posted by: Maria Brumm | March 18, 2008 6:35 PM
Well, you should definitely let us know when it's out.
Badger3k - fixed, sorry.
Posted by: Chris Rowan | March 19, 2008 6:35 AM