Photo of the Week: Sampling Sabancaya

Members of the Trail by Fire team hike along the slope of the active Peruvian volcano Sabancaya earlier this month to take sulfur dioxide samples. Led by Yves Moussallam, a research fellow at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California San Diego, the team is visiting 15 active volcanoes in Peru and Chile to better understand how volatile gases in the atmosphere and hydrosphere are recycled through Earth’s crust and mantle at subduction zones.

Their latest blog entry about the expedition describes how they got up at 1 a.m. in order to drive to a trailhead in order to make the six-hour trek to the crater rim.

Full information about the expedition is at trailbyfire.org. Follow their progress on Facebook.