
As part of a collaborative National Science Foundation grant to understand how on magma plumbing systems beneath volcanic arcs respond to glaciation and deglaciation, faculty from eight institutions, including UW-Madison and the University of La Frontera in Chile, have developed a Volcanoes and Ice Summer Program (VISP). The program aims to familiarize students from non-geoscience majors and non-traditional institutions in the U.S. and Chile with volcanic and glacial deposits and processes. In addition, an important component of the seminar is training in the use of drones for geoscience applications. The field-based, 5-day summer program was conducted in Chile in 2023, Sunriver, Oregon in 2024, and will be conducted at Villarrica volcano, Chile in January 2025. Approximately 10 to 15 students participate each year.
Volcanoes and Ice Summer Program (VISP)
Through lectures and daily field activities we seek to:
- Generate theoretical and practical experience on volcanoes located in regions with glaciers.
- Train students in the use of drones for the collection of geological observations and data.
- Train students in software that uses digital elevation images.
- Develop mapping (QGIS) and statistics (R) skills for information visualization.
- Establish connections between researchers, students, and program participants so that students learn about the various work environments.

Tutorials
The PowerPoint presentations and Word document below include tutorials used during the IsoAstro workshop to introduce fundamentals of radioisotopic clocks, the 40Ar/39Ar method, and basic statistics used when working with radioisotopic dates and data sets.
- Introduction to Radioisotopic Dating [PowerPoint]
- The 40Ar/39Ar method [pdf]
- IsoAstro Geochron Statistics Practical Background [Word]