THERE'S A LAVA FLOW GOING THROUGH TOWN: CLASS ACTIVITY OF A SIMULATED VOLCANIC ERUPTION WITHIN THE TOWN OF MAMMOTH LAKES

During the 2019-2020 academic year, students in the volcanic hazards class at Cal State San Bernardino had as their final lesson of the quarter a simulation of a volcanic eruption occurring near/in the town of Mammoth Lakes California. The objectives of this lesson were for students to apply the knowledge they had gained throughout the quarter as well as for students to see how a community could react to a volcanic eruption happening within it. Students were given a brief introduction of the town of Mammoth Lakes and the geology of the area before they selected different roles to play within the town. During the simulation, students needed to make decisions on how they and their agency would react to developments during a volcanic eruption. Students in the fall and winter quarters were able to apply the knowledge the gained earlier in the quarter on seismic activity and gas flux to predict when was the best time to evacuate the town. During the spring quarter, this class activity was adapted to an online setting with an asynchronous teaching mode. For this quarter, each student took on the role of the Mono County Sheriff and had to make decisions on when to evacuate the town, what level of evacuation they would order, as well as how to react to other situations that would develop. This class activity was implemented using the software PlayPosit which allows for the video to automatically pause and questions to be asked before proceeding with the video. Students used both the seismic activity and gas flux data, and made the correct decisions on levels of evacuation 84% of the time in the online version of this class activity. At the end of the simulation in both in person and online versions, students were asked to reflect on the class activity and answer why it is important for officials to go through a simulation of a disaster. Future implementations of this class activity will be expanded to include tiltmeter, GPS, and InSAR data. Other simulations could also be developed including different locations for an eruption, a false alarm volcanic eruption, students taking on the role of the USGS during an eruption, and simulations of other disasters such as an earthquake sequence.