Tracking melt movement through the Icelandic crust using microearthquakes

The aim of the project is to apply newly developed microseismic hypocentre mapping to track melt movement through the crust using our world-class dataset from Iceland, which is ongoing and extends back two decades. Particular target areas will include the plumbing systems beneath recently active volcanoes in the Northern Volcanic Zone, including the currently inflating and primed to erupt Bardarbunga volcano, Grimsvotn and Askja. This will offer a great opportunity to study melt movement all the way from the base of the crust to the surface (see Hudson et al. 2017 and Agustdottir et al. 2019).

The student will join an experienced fieldwork team in servicing our broad-band seismometer array in central Iceland (currently with 29 instruments), then integrating new data with our catalogue of seismic data in the region, which extends back to 2007. They will then use powerful tools newly developed in Cambridge to accurately map the hypocentre locations down to very small magnitudes: currently we record c. 10,000 events per year in the study area. This is the most detailed survey of an active volcanic rift anywhere in the world, and is likely to lead to significant new understanding of the way melt travels through the crust and erupts. Many of the computer programs for the analysis already exist, though it is likely that the student will want to further develop some of these for their own analysis.