Building a picture of magmatic-hydrothermal systems from rock and mush fragments brought to surface by silicic eruptions

Lead Research Organisation: University of Bristol
Department Name: Earth Sciences

Abstract

Understanding the distributions of silicate melts and aqueous fluids in magmatic systems is important for monitoring volcanoes and geothermal resources. In the build- up to a silicic eruption, magma may accumulate in a shallow chamber, but there can be even more melt and exsolved fluids stored in dominantly crystalline 'mushes'. Indeed, mature magmatic systems can be 'transcrustal' with melt and fluids heterogeneously distributed in space and time over a large range of depths. Geophysical data (e.g. seismic, electrical resistivity) provide major constraints on the geometry of magmatic systems but the inversions for melt and fluid distributions can be non-unique and have coarse resolution. Petrology provides complementary data on the generation and storage (e.g. pressure and temperature) conditions of magmas that erupted, and even timescales of processes preceding eruption from chemical profiles in crystals. This study will build on case studies with substantial geophysics and magma petrology datasets.

Publications

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Studentship Projects

Project Reference Relationship Related To Start End Student Name
NE/S007504/1 01/10/2019 30/11/2027
2890928 Studentship NE/S007504/1 01/10/2023 30/03/2027 Hannah Ellis