[Geysers] automating eruption logging?

[Davis, Brian L.]

> ...is it not possible to use a webcam to cover most of a geyser field,
> sample the cam every 30 secs, 60 secs...

It's an interesting idea. Which would work OK, unless...
...it was night.
...or raining.
...or hard to tell steam from an eruption.
...or foggy.
...or snowing.
...or out of sight of the camera.
(and probably others I'm missing.)

Still, it's -NOT- a bad idea... it's a very interesting one (to me), actually, and somebody with the programming experience could try to start with Old Faithful & Beehive from the streaming cam. More data is good... but this would be an incomplete set with unknown data collection biases. What would be interesting is to compare an automated image-capture-based system with the other methods (temperature sensors, humans watching cameras) to see exactly what the sampling bias is.

-- 
Brian Davis