Who we are and what we do
Mission Statement
The Cascades Volcano Observatory (CVO) strives to serve the public
interest by helping people to live knowledgeably and safely with volcanoes
and other natural hazards including earthquakes, landslides, and debris
flows, in the western United States and elsewhere in the world. Our goal
is to provide accurate and timely information pertinent to the assessment,
warning, and mitigation of natural hazards. We assess hazards before they
occur by identifying and studying past hazardous events, their products,
ages, and areas that would be affected by similar events in the future.
We provide warnings during volcanic crises by intensively monitoring
restless volcanoes and interpreting results in the context of current
hazards assessments. We investigate and report on hazardous events after
they occur to hone our assessment and prediction skills and to provide
information for use in land-use management, emergency response plans,
and public education.
CVO also studies the impact of natural processes on our environment,
including the effects of volcanic gases on the atmosphere, increased
sediment transport on streams and life forms that depend on them, and
various other geologic or hydrologic processes on the landscape.
We are in the business of helping to keep natural processes from
becoming natural disasters. We work closely with other government agencies,
public officials, emergency response groups, the business community,
educators, and concerned citizens - real people with real-world concerns
that include natural hazards. We measure our success not by what we know,
but rather by the degree to which society knows what we know, and do not
know, about the sometimes hazardous environment in which we live.
