08/12/2026
🌋 Volcanologists Terry Plank and Einat Lev of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory with the AVERT team and Chilean colleagues have brought real-time monitoring to Villarrica, one of Chile’s most active and dangerous volcanoes.
The indigenous Mapuche people call the volcano Rukapillán, often translated as “house of the spirits” or, less generously, “the demon’s house,” which may better convey Villarrica's long record of eruptions and the challenges it posed to this expedition from power-system troubles to washed-out roads to helicopter weight limits to sharp rock, high winds, and corrosive gas.
Despite that, the team aimed to make Villarrica the most wired remote crater rim on the planet. “Most observatories don’t even try to put instruments right on the rim, and yet, there are unique signals that can be picked up when instruments are that close to the action,” Plank says.
Months later, the sensors have done what the team hoped they would do: survive. They have continued sending data from the top of Villarrica to help make forecasts of future eruptions more accurate and give more time to act.
Learn more via State of the Planet: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2026/08/10/wiring-the-spirits-house/
📷 by Francesco Fiondella:
🔶 Terry Plank disembarks from the helicopter at the site where the majority of the instruments are being installed.
🔶 Each day, the helicopter would make nearly a dozen trips from the base camp to the rim, hauling everything from cement bags to heavy equipment, tools, solar panels, and the 32 lead-acid batteries that would provide continuous power to the instruments.
🔶 A gas plume from the crater heads toward the main instrument site, where team members were working to set up the thermal and visual cameras. Solar panels (left) were bolted to steel A-frames, hopefully strong enough to withstand wind and the weight of snow and ice.
🔶 Conor Bacon and Einat Lev test the thermal camera before installing it in its aluminum casing. The computer and other electronics will be stored in rugged plastic boxes, which will sit directly on the rim surface.
