Three years of the Chaitén eruption: Understanding the perception of volcanic hazards

Last week I marked my third blogiversary - and acknowledged that I started this blog looking for information on an eruption that had started in Chile. That eruption turned out to be Chaitén, a rhyolite volcano that hadn't erupted in over 9,000 years. We were all stunned by the images of the giant eruption plume (see below) that sent ash across all of southern South America. The domes that have grown in the Chaitén caldera continue to grow - now at a much slower rate than in the year after the eruption began - but it is now over 3 years of emissions from the domes with the caldera.