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  • On the 9th January, 1953, the writer received a letter from the Rev. Knoller of the Lutheran Mission, Umboi, describing some recently discovered thermal areas. Permission was requested and obtained from the Government Secretary, Port Moresby, to proceed to Umboi and investigate these areas. During the investigations all six thermal areas known to the inhabitants, both European and Native, were visited. These six areas are disposed about Mt. Talo, a well defined volcanic cone containing two crater lakes and located somewhat northwest of the centre of the island. These thermal areas have been numbered i to vi in the order in which they were visited.

  • The Asia-Pacific region is home to well over half the world's population and is also the focus of some of earth's most intense geological activity. It is no surprise therefore that geological hazards, in particular earthquake and volcano hazards, make the Asia-Pacific region the scene of som e of the worlds most lethal natural disasters. While this is evident form a perusal of historical data relating to natural disasters, it is not clear how well such historical data can be used as a guide for high -impact events that might be expected in the future. This uncertainty is due to (1) how poorly extreme geological events having long recurrence intervals are represented in the relatively short historical record, and (2) the failure of the historical record to account for recent demographic trends, in particular the explosive growth of population in the Asia -Pacific region and its rapid urbanisation during the 20 th century. We present here two novel techniques for assessing the potential impacts of volcanic and earthquake events on human population in the Asia Pacific region. For volcanic risk, we have calculated the frequency of large eruptions, aggregated for the countries of the Asia -Pacific region, using data provided by the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program. These eruption frequ encies have been combined with an analysis of population data for the region to estimate the average number of people who might be affected, in the broad sense of death, injury or loss of essential services, by a major volcanic eruption. For earthquake, risk, we have considered that the potential future high -impact events will be driven by the probability that an earthquake might occur in or adjacent to one of the many megacities of the Asia -Pacific region. Earthquake probabilities near megacities are cal culated from catalogue data, and these are combined with a rough criterion for damage based on earthquake ground motion, to asses potentially affected populations. We present preliminary results of these analyses, which suggest the potential for earthquakes and volcanoes in the Asia-Pacific region to cause future `mega-disasters', for which affected populations may be much larger than the numbers indicated by the historical record.

  • No details are available of the previous volcanic activity of Vitu Island, but some old natives have stories of unusual phenomena referable to vulcanism which accompanied a change in sea level many years ago. The inference of the stories was that the change was sudden and accompanied by increased emissions of steam from Zones A and B (of this report). It was impossible to assess from natives interrogated how long ago this occurred, but palms estimated to be about 40 years old grow near the shore in the area to which the stories refer. This area embraces the Catholic Mission, Balangori No. 2 village and Mt. Utopi, and, according to legend, most of the coastal portion to an height of about 300 feet was previously submerged. A more detailed survey of the island would be necessary to establish the veracity of the stories, but there is certainly evidence that portion of the area was submerged. Old oyster shells occur to heights of about 30 feet above sea level attached to basalt cliffs below the Catholic Mission. Since it was necessary for the "Theresa May", on which the writer was travelling, to visit the Vitu Island Group on the return trip from the Langila Crater investigation, the advantage was taken of examining as many thermal areas as possible. Although geysers and fumaroles occur on Narage Island, the northernmost island of the group, it was possible only to examine briefly those areas on Vitu (Garove) Island in the time available.

  • Legacy product - no abstract available

  • Legacy product - no abstract available