Augmenting heavy and power-hungry data collection equipment with lighter, smaller wireless sensor network nodes leads to faster, larger deployments. Arrays comprising dozens of wireless sensor nodes are now possible, allowing scientific studies that aren't feasible with traditional instrumentation. Designing sensor networks to support volcanic studies requires researchers to address the high data rates and high data fidelity these studies demand. The authors' sensor-network application for volcanic data collection relies on triggered event detection and reliable data retrieval to meet bandwidth and data-quality demands.