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Published May 15, 2020 | Supplemental Material + Published
Journal Article Open

Unexpected large eruptions from buoyant magma bodies within viscoelastic crust

Abstract

Large volume effusive eruptions with relatively minor observed precursory signals are at odds with widely used models to interpret volcano deformation. Here we propose a new modelling framework that resolves this discrepancy by accounting for magma buoyancy, viscoelastic crustal properties, and sustained magma channels. At low magma accumulation rates, the stability of deep magma bodies is governed by the magma-host rock density contrast and the magma body thickness. During eruptions, inelastic processes including magma mush erosion and thermal effects, can form a sustained channel that supports magma flow, driven by the pressure difference between the magma body and surface vents. At failure onset, it may be difficult to forecast the final eruption volume; pressure in a magma body may drop well below the lithostatic load, create under-pressure and initiate a caldera collapse, despite only modest precursors.

Additional Information

© The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Received 15 October 2019; Accepted 08 April 2020; Published 15 May 2020. The research presented here has benefitted from extended visits of FS during a sabbatical term to, and discussion with scientists at, the University of Leeds, ISTerre University of Savoie Mont-Blanc, USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory, and Geological Survey of Japan. We acknowledge reviews by Philip Benson and Luca Caricchi that helped to significantly improve the paper, as well as reviews of an early version of the paper by two anonymous reviewers. Financial support from the H2020 project EUROVOLC funded by the European Commission is acknowledged (grant number 731070). F.S. acknowledges support from the University of Iceland Research Fund, and R.G. acknowledges partial support through NSF grant EAR-1464546. Fissure swarms, central volcanoes and caldera outlines shown in Fig. 1 are reproduced from publications referred to (refs. 42,76) with permissions from Elsevier, and we acknowledge the use of ArticDEM (ref. 77) to plot surface and ice topography shown in Fig. 1. COMET is the NERC Centre for the Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tectonics, a partnership between UK Universities and the British Geological Survey. Data availability: The source data underlying Figs. 1, 2b, 4, 6, and 8 and Supplementary Figs. 1 and 2 are provided in a Source Data file. Author Contributions: F.S. led the development of the ideas and modelling framework presented in this paper, with the participation of V.P., R.G., A.H., S.A.H., P.E., E.R.H., M.T.G., T.W. and T.Y.; Numerical modelling with the COMSOL software was carried out by V.P., and S.A.H. did the D-Compress modelling. The crustal density model was made by M.T.G.; Collection and analyses of seismic and geodetic data was carried out by B.G.Ó., K.J., K.V., M.P., S.D. H.M.F., G.B.G, P.E., E.R.H, H.G., F.S., A.H., S.L. and V.D. All the authors contributed to evaluation of the modelling, discussion of the results and the writing of the paper. The authors declare no competing interests.

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Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 20, 2023