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I love volcanoes…they fascinate me and I find them mesmerising.

Volcanoes however mean more than that to me: I actually get scared by them!!  This motivates me to try and make them safer.

My work involves getting people who live around volcanoes to take part in monitoring them. This monitoring can be anything, from just telling me what they see, to them taking some quite complicated measurements. The people that I involve in this aren’t necessarily trained scientists, but are often school students or members of the public.

One of the really cool ways that I involve people, is to get them to use a kite that has a camera attached to it. The kite takes the camera up very high, and takes photographs. These photographs are looking straight down at the ground, and what we then do is put them together, sort of like a collage/mosaic. This means that I can make a map! Not only can we see things like lava flows, but people can spot their houses too – and see how close they are to the volcano.

When people are involved in monitoring the volcanoes, rather than scientists just telling them what is happening or what to do…it makes them think more about how they may be at danger and to take precautions to make their lives safer.

I also get to some other cool things –> at the moment I am helping to make a Volcano Top Trumps Game…maybe you can all test it out for me…?!

I have worked in many amazing places, and at the moment I am working on the Caribbean island of Montserrat (you can see some photos below).

My work is split in two, I go out on ‘fieldwork’ to visit volcanoes – basically a long field trip. I also do a slightly more normal job at a desk with my computer, working on the observations that I have made whilst out on fieldwork.

I also like to try and tweet about volcanoes, so if you have some cool volcano things to tell me, then find me on twitter: @jonathanstone10