With nine islands and 26 active volcanic systems, the Azores have built increasingly sophisticated monitoring and research capabilities. But Fátima Viveiros, director of the University of the Azores’ Institute for Volcanology and Risk Assessment, warns that technology alone is not enough: the islands need stable funding and qualified people capable of transforming data into knowledge.
To live in the Azores is to inhabit a landscape whose beauty was created by forces that have never entirely disappeared. Beneath green pastures, crater lakes, towns and fajãs lies a geological system that continues to move, release gases and occasionally remind islanders of its presence through earthquakes and periods of volcanic unrest. For Fátima Viveiros, director of the Institute for Volcanology and Risk Assessment (IVAR) at the University of the Azores, understanding that landscape requires permanent vigilance. The archipelago contains 26 volcanic systems considered active, 18 of them subaerial, and monitoring must extend beyond volcanology to earthquakes, landslides, degassing areas, floods and other interconnected hazards.
The scientific capacity behind that vigilance has changed dramatically. IVAR traces its origins to the Center for Volcanology and Geological Risk Assessment, established in 1997. A group that began with seven University of the Azores professors has grown to around 70 members, including 26 with doctorates. New instruments and methodologies have accompanied that expansion, while CIVISA—the Azores Seismovolcanic Information and Surveillance Center, bringing together the University through IVAR and the Regional Civil Protection and Fire Service—provides operational monitoring. Yet Viveiros is careful not to confuse progress with sufficiency: all nine islands require continued observation, particularly as new methods of collecting and interpreting data emerge.
One of the next transformations may come from artificial intelligence. IVAR has more than two decades of data from some permanent monitoring stations and plans to use machine learning and AI to identify patterns that may have escaped conventional statistical analysis. The institute is also participating in DIGIVOLMAC, an Interreg project with partners from Madeira, the Canary Islands and São Tomé and Príncipe, applying these tools to monitoring data in an effort to better understand volcanic-system reactivation. Viveiros sees AI not as a replacement for traditional volcanology but as another instrument capable of extracting meaning from enormous quantities of accumulated information.
Few events illustrate the importance—and uncertainty—of this work better than the 2022 São Jorge crisis. Thousands of earthquakes occurred within hours, accompanied by significant crustal deformation, and the alert level reached V4. Viveiros says two more recent scientific studies support the interpretation that magma entered the system but migrated toward greater depth rather than reaching the surface. São Jorge also exposed a fundamental difficulty in volcanic forecasting: scientists would prefer weeks or months of recognizable precursors, but nature does not always provide them. The island went from relative seismic quiet to thousands of earthquakes in a remarkably short period. The lesson, she says, is straightforward: “How do we combat this? By monitoring better and better.”
Monitoring, however, also depends upon public trust. Viveiros considers scientific literacy an essential part of civil protection: people who understand natural phenomena are better prepared to respond to them and less vulnerable to misinformation during periods of anxiety. IVAR and CIVISA therefore have another responsibility beyond interpreting seismic signals and volcanic gases—to communicate what is known, what remains uncertain and where citizens can find reliable information. “Each one of us is an element of civil protection,” she argues. Perhaps the hardest message to communicate is also the most scientifically honest one: volcanic systems contain uncertainty and do not always behave as researchers would prefer.
The Azores themselves make this scientific work internationally significant. Situated where the North American, Eurasian and African lithospheric plates meet, and combining volcanism with seismicity, degassing, landslides and extreme meteorological events, the archipelago is what Viveiros calls a “natural laboratory.” IVAR works with partners in countries including Italy, France, Spain and Iceland; its researchers assisted colleagues during the 2021 Canary Islands eruption, while its own IVAR Academy has received more than 80 interns since 2017. The relationship is reciprocal: the Azores learn from other volcanic regions, and the world learns from the Azores.
But sophisticated equipment and international partnerships eventually return to a profoundly human question. Recent funding has allowed IVAR to acquire important new technology, yet instruments still require scientists to install them, interpret their signals and develop new methodologies. Viveiros therefore identifies stable, predictable funding—and especially the ability to retain qualified researchers—as the essential investment for the future. “Human resources are what make institutions,” she says. Without knowing what funding will exist next year or during the next three-year period, strategic scientific planning becomes extraordinarily difficult.
The volcanoes beneath the Azores cannot be silenced, nor can science promise to predict every movement of the earth. What it can do is listen more closely. And in islands born from fire, perhaps preparedness begins precisely there: with instruments capable of detecting the smallest change, scientists given the stability to remain and study it, and communities educated enough to understand that uncertainty is not ignorance—it is part of living responsibly upon a restless earth.
Based on an extensive interview published by Diário dos Açores-Paulo Vivieiros, director. Photos from DA.