Geologists turned to small bubbles and investigated the dynamics driving magmatic flow beneath Hawaiian volcanoes, with the country’s islands floating northwest with tectonic plates. They discovered that when the islands “escape from hot spots that burn Killua Air on large islands, “the magma flow not only slows down, but also moves deeper underground.” Report In the journal Advances in science.
“This challenges the old idea that eruptions are fueled by magma stored in the Earth’s crust, suggesting new possibilities for magma to be preserved and matured in the Earth’s mantle, and eruptions are fueled from this deep mantle reservoir.” Esteban GazelleCornell University scientist and author of the paper, press release.
Understanding volcanic eruptions
To reach this conclusion, scientists have adopted techniques that will help them improve their understanding of the causes of eruptions and predict those events more accurately. They focused on small gas bubbles trapped inside the crystals within the magma – A phenomenon known as “fluid inclusion.”
Calculating the pressure and depth at which those bubbles are captured will allow scientists to get more accurate information about the activity of the magma.
“The technology allows us to measure pressure from depth with just a few hundred metres of uncertainty, which is very accurate for the depth of tens of kilometers below the surface,” Gazelle said in the release. “Before this, magma storage was much more difficult to measure, and there was uncertainty spanning kilometers.”
read more: 5 of the most explosive volcanic eruptions
Watching the life stages of various volcanoes
Scientists applied this method to samples from three Hawaiian volcanoes at different stages of “life.” The Kilauea magma was stored at a relatively shallow depth of about a mile, as predicted. They found two magma storage areas under Haleakala. This found something shallower just over a mile, deeper in 12-16 miles of the Earth’s mantle. Diamond Head on Oahu displayed a magma reservoir of about 13-18 miles deep within the Earth’s mantle.
“Knowing these depths is because one of the most important constraints to understanding the drivers of eruptions is where magma is preserved,” Gazelle said in the release. “This is the basis of a physical model explaining the eruption process and is necessary for volcanic risk assessments.”
read more: How to stay safe before, during and after a volcanic eruption
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Before joining Discove Magazine, Paul Smaglik spent more than 20 years as a science journalist specializing in US life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to science magazines. His works have appeared in publications such as Science News, Science, Nature, and Science American.
