A Perspective on Earthquake-Volcano Interactions

Introduction On average, some 120 strong earthquakes (M ≥ 6) and 60 volcanic eruptions occur somewhere in the world every year. Thus it shouldn’t be hugely surprising when news of a volcanic eruption follows news of a damaging earthquake somewhere else in the world by a week or less. Such newsworthy coincidences inevitably prompt the question from both the media and the public, “is this eruption related to that earthquake?” In this lecture, we examine why the answer has become more complicated (and interesting) than a simple “probably not” based on an appeal to statistical significance and Poisson processes [see Hill et al., 2002].