Mount Baker GPS research is published: the volcano has been shrinking

Brendan Hodge and his GPS receiver on the south rim of Sherman Crater, 2006

Brendan Hodge, who just completed his Master of Geology degree at Western Washington University, has published his thesis as a journal article. Brendan’s research used Global Positioning System surveys to measure minute changes in the shape of Mount Baker over a period of years, and then used that data to suggest that a magma chamber has been cooling and contracting beneath the volcano. The evidence for this is ‘shortening’, or decreasing distances between measured locations on Baker’s surface, obtained by the GPS survey . You can read the abstract here. The paper’s coauthor is Dr. Juliet Crider, who was the chair of Brendan’s thesis committee. The reference for the paper is:

Hodge, B. E., and J. G. Crider (2010), Investigating mechanisms of edifice deflation, 1981–2007, at Mount Baker volcano, Washington, United States: Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 115, B04401. doi:10.1029/2009JB006730

I will post a link to obtain the pdf when that is available online, unless you prefer to download it now for a fee.

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