The 7-Wonders Creation Museum at Mount St. Helen's Volcano Monument Celebrates Ten Year Anniversary
"The devastating eruption of Mount St. Helens has transformed scientific thinking about the nature of volcanoes and how ecosystems recover from them." -Richard A. Lovett, Science Magazine
(Silverlake, Washington)—Residents of the Northwest who witnessed the eruption of Mount St. Helen's in 1980 are well aware of the amazing and unexpected recovery of the habitat that had been destroyed in the historic explosion.
Recently, geologist Stephen Austin was a special guest speaker at the 7 Wonders Creation Museum near Mount St. Helens during its 10th anniversary celebration. (Logo: 7 Wonders Creation Museum)
According to a Christian News Northwest report, Austin, who has 30 years of experience studying sites around the world as part of his work with the Institute for Creation Research, says Mount St. Helens is one of the most important in understanding the processes by which canyons can be formed.
These canyons and how they formed rapidly are significant in understanding geology not only at Mount St. Helens but elsewhere and challenge some long-held theories of non-creationist scientists.
Dr. Jerry F. Franklin, a forest ecologist at the University of Washington, from a NY Times Science article published May 16, 2000, says it well: "St. Helens was the epiphany where finally the scales fell from our eyes and we said, 'Oh my gosh, we haven't been thinking clearly. The most important things we need to think about are the legacies left in the landscape. The richness of the legacy of organisms that was there, the rapidity with which recovery occurred and the incredible diversity of ways in which organisms were able to survive'—it just astounded us."
