Magma-reservoir evolution following edifice destruction at Krakatau and Ritter Volcanoes

To investigate how edifice destruction impacts magma system evolution.

Sector collapses are among the largest volume events to affect volcanic systems, and there is growing evidence that associated changes in surface loading can have profound effects on the stability of an underlying magma reservoir, manifested through shifts in eruption rate or composition and dominant eruptive behaviour. However, a detailed understanding of how magma systems are perturbed by destructive events is lacking, because of the challenges involved in generating high resolution reconstructions of past eruptive activity that span pre- and post-collapse periods. This project will take advantage of two unique datasets to address this problem: marine sediment samples collected offshore Ritter Island (Papua New Guinea) and samples related to the 2018 collapse of Anak Krakatau (Indonesia). There is the potential to add to these with further datasets to assess longer timescales, including material samples offshore Montserrat. These datasets preserve a record of activity before and after major collapses, and can advance our understanding of how volcanism at arc-volcanic systems responds to sudden changes in surface loading.