Volcanologist Brad Scott retires after 50 years tracking volcanoes, earthquakes and geothermal systems
Brad Scott points to some African club moss growing beside Kuirau Park’s steaming sulphur springs.
“That plant has been around since the time of dinosaurs,” he tells the Rotorua Daily Post.
Scott hasn’t been around quite that long, but he has spent more than 50 years studying geothermal systems, volcanoes and earthquakes, devoting his life to understanding our restless planet.
And it continues to fascinate him.
Scott retired from his role as a volcanologist at Earth Sciences New Zealand this year.
He will take an unpaid emeritus scientist role with the agency, mentoring younger scientists.
His contribution to science was recognised when he was named a finalist for the Lifetime Achievement prize at the Science New Zealand Awards in Wellington on May 26.
He describes his career as a “social accident”.
He grew up around aviation and volcanology. His grandfather flew volcanologists in the 1940s, photographing eruptions at Mt Ruapehu and Mt Ngāuruhoe. His father flew helicopters carrying scientists and equipment onto volcanoes.
It “made an impression” on the young boy.
When he left Rotorua Boys’ High School, he joined the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research as a science cadet.
He found it “pretty hard not to be passionate” about a job that paid him to go outside and enjoy “the most awesome features of nature”.
His first “significant introduction” to a volcanic crisis came in 1979.
He was in his late 20s when the Karkar volcano erupted in Papua New Guinea, killing two volcanologists.
Thrown in “cold”, Scott saw a “really weird over-response”, which he put down to scientists having been killed.
Military aircraft stood ready to evacuate “several thousands of people” and abandon “multimillion-dollar industries”.
“The volcano wasn’t doing enough to warrant it,” he told authorities.
He worked at Papua New Guinea’s Rabaul Volcano Observatory for about a year under foreign aid.
Vanuatu’s Ambae volcano erupted in 2017, and the evacuation of about 11,000 residents was ordered.
Scott arrived to collect data and assess the volcano.
“Guys, you don’t need to evacuate,” he said.
He believed removing people from the island could have left them “treated as refugees” for years.
That advice was revised nine months later when the eruption risk escalated.
Helping communities to make the right decisions was one of the most “rewarding” parts of the job for Scott.
His half-century of experience has led him no closer to answering society’s most burning question for a volcanologist: exactly when will a given volcano erupt? He calls it the “two o’clock on Tuesday” question.
Volcanologists have become “really good” at detecting unrest and recognising when a volcano is “getting worse”, but events can still catch them out.
The August 2012 Mt Tongariro Te Māri eruption demonstrated that unpredictability.
Scientists had tracked unrest for months before the midnight phone call came: “Te Māri’s erupted.”
“We were all equally surprised,” he says.
He played a major role in improving how New Zealand monitored and responded to volcanic activity after the chaotic response to Mt Ruapehu erupting in 1995.
It had been rumbling for months before blasting a plume 12km into the sky that September, sending lahars down three river valleys.
Eruptions continued into July 1996.
Aviation, transport, agriculture, health and emergency management were suddenly trying to work out who was in charge and how to respond.
It became the “catalyst” for Scott building the Caldera Advisory Group, linking scientists with response teams.
He helped to establish the volcanic monitoring function and refine the volcanic alert level system used today.
Ongoing coronial proceedings mean he is unable to talk about the 2019 Whakaari-White Island eruption in detail.
He says the eruption “knocked us all for six” and describes it as a “sad day”.
His work’s purpose became “pretty clear”: highlighting the importance of monitoring volcanoes and improving scientific understanding to help keep people safe.
Developing historical records for Ruapehu, Tongariro and Whakaari to improve hazard calculations for the future remains an ongoing project.
He has already been collecting entries for decades.
Scott was involved in the work of recovering Rotorua’s geothermal systems.
He provided the scientific evidence needed to back the Rotorua Geothermal System Management Plan, used by the Bay of Plenty Regional Council and iwi to protect the areas.
Overuse of geothermal water and steam through private bores between the 1960s and 1980s caused many to decline or disappear.
“It hasn’t got back to its full natural state … but it’s got a hell of a lot closer.”
In his opinion, proposed changes to the Resource Management Act risk “unzipping that rapidly”.
He is “really concerned”.
He says Rotorua residents often “don’t think twice” about the city’s “unique” geothermal environment because they see it every day.
Visitors, on the other hand, can find the “living” environment “unnerving”.
The questions he hears most often are: “Is it safe here?” or “Is it going to blow?”
He replies, “If you see me running, just try and keep up.”
Annabel Reid is a multimedia journalist for the Bay of Plenty Times and the Rotorua Daily Post, based in Rotorua. Originally from Hawke’s Bay, she has a Bachelor of Communications from the University of Canterbury.