Humanitus Sidoarjo Fund Receives US$1M Russian Grant
Australia-based NGO Humanitus Foundation has announced the receipt of support for a US$1 million grant for technical equipment and assistance for its recently established Humanitus Sidoarjo Fund (HSF).
The funds were allocated by the Russian Institute of Geology for the study of the ongoing disaster created by an erupting mud volcano near Sidoarjo, East Java. The funds will be used to map the sub surface (underground) using advanced geological data processing systems. Further programs in future are also envisioned with use of passive seismic sensors to identify the geodynamics of underground structures, their movements and predict potential eruption events.
HSF will support various activities that will include online seismic monitors, recorders, satellite modems and information processing units. The monitors will be placed strategically around the area of the mud eruption to capture all seismic activity in this very volatile area. The resulting data will afford scientists a complete seismic map of the area and provide advance warning of possible additional eruptions in adjacent areas.
In May, 2010, the Humanitus Foundation, a non-political, non-religious NGO, announced the signing of a working agreement with BPLS, the Indonesian government agency tasked with managing the mud volcano, which suddenly erupted on May 29, 2006, and has since inundated villages, destroyed key infrastructure and displaced over 40,000 residents. Humanitus Executive Director, Jeffrey Richards, said that part of that working agreement was the establishment of HSF, which would serve as a platform for launching scientific investigations of the mud eruption.
?This very generous support is a starting point for HSF to begin the very necessary work of mapping the geodynamics of the mud volcano and its surrounding area, in order to prevent future catastrophes from occurring in the region?, said Richards. He added that HSF hoped to attract other funding and support for this vital research.
?We know from a team of Russian scientists who have been studying mud volcanoes in Russia and Ukraine that seismic activity is the key to this disaster and that by seismic activity mapping, we can predict future eruptions,? Richards said. He added that data would then be provided to BPLS in order to prepare for possible emergency measures to protect residents of the densely populated region.
The East Java mud volcano, which has been spewing some 150,000 cu meters of hot mud and gases a day for over four years, has been given the name ?LUSI? by geologists studying the event. LUSI is a compendium of the Indonesian word for mud, ?lumpur? and Sidoarjo, the town near which LUSI erupted. To date, the exact cause of the eruption has been a subject of debate amongst international scientists, but a report due to be published in August by geologists from the Russian Institute of Geology will reportedly shed much needed light on the origins of the disaster. The Russian study utilized the latest technology involving 3D subsurface mapping, which will for the first time show the inner dynamics of the mud volcano structure.
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