The Genesis Agendum 
Autumn Lecture
Coventry  25 October 2008

Disaster & Recovery:
Ecological lessons
from Mount St Helens

Dr J H John Peet
BSc, MSc, PhD, CChem, FRSC

The volcanic explosion of Mount St Helens in 1980 has been studied extensively.  Though not unusual as volcanic explosions go, it has been much studied and taught us many lessons.  Much emphasis has rightly been put on the catastrophic nature of the event and its immediate consequences: rapid sedimentation and stratification, rapid erosion and rapid peat formation, for example.  This has been helpful in contributing to understanding the Earth history as a result of the Noahic Flood.

But, the world then, like the local environment of St Helens , has to recover. The biblical account implies that the then world recovered quickly.  What lessons are there to be learnt from the post-1980 experience that will clarify our thinking.  A lot of detailed research has been carried out by ecologists and some of this will be described and the implications for our Flood models will be considered.