NI MagmaStress: Quantifying the effect of crustal stress states on the style and timing of magmatism in the Southern Volcanic Zone, Chile

Volcanic eruptions are an ever-present hazard facing society both in terms of their immediate devastation, but also global disruption to flights, trade and economic development. While petrological insights into magmatic processes are possible following an eruption, as yet there exists no way to link present day volcano-monitoring techniques to an understanding of the magmatic plumbing system, and its effects on the duration, size and magnitude of the volcanic eruptions prior to and during volcanic crises.

This proposal seeks to establish a multidisciplinary team of Earth scientists to attempt to link the geophysical observations of upper crustal stress state (compression, extension, transtension) with petrological inferences of magma storage conditions. Once established, this team will look to undertake some initial data collection of the time it takes for magma to rise and be erupted, at carefully selected target volcanoes which are known to be in different stress states.

Longer-term, this new team of experts will look to use the initial data collected from this Global Partnerships Seedcorn Fund to establish a series of crustal stress-magmatism archetypes to be tested and applied at volcanic arcs worldwide. There is potential that in the future, timescales between unrest and eruption at poorly-monitored volcanoes could be better anticipated based on volcanism-stress archetypes coupled with remote observations of upper crustal stress states.

This proposal has both immediate and long term impact, for both people within the UK and worldwide. In the short term, the initial data collection undertaken during this seedcorn funding will establish the ascent rates of three active volcanoes in the SVZ of Chile, and thus this will be of great importance to both SERNAGEOMIN, allowing better forecasting of potential activity during future periods of unrest at these three volcanoes, and natural hazard response planners proximal to these volcanoes. By including SERNGEOMIN in this proposal there is direct involvement in civil defence monitoring and hazard planning, and thus initial data of ascent rates at these active volcanoes can be shared with key decision-makers to inform decisions made during future periods of unrest at these three volcanoes. The Buenos Aires Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre (VAAC) will also benefit from this research through greater understanding of timescales from unrest to eruption modelled during this project.

Also in the short term, the integration workshop in Chile will have impact for Chilean Earth scientists, as the short course component will allow more Chile-based Earth scientists to learn about the application of diffusion modelling in volcanic systems, and the limitations and assumptions that go into this modelling. Alongside this, the short course will contain a component considering how to integrate geophysical and petrological observations of volcanic systems, and discuss the benefits of this approach, and challenges to this.

In the long term, this research (and that which follows on from this initial seedcorn fund) will allow arc volcanic archetypes based on crustal stress considerations to be established. In the future it is anticipated that this will be of use for understanding volcanoes globally. By beginning the process of integrating geophysics and petrology in the SVZ, this project will yield new insights into magma-stress relationships upon which future studies both within more varied geological settings in the SVZ, and at arcs worldwide, will be based. The results of this project will allow more detailed research questions to be framed, especially regarding the timescales between magmatic priming and eruption for volcanoes in specific stress regimes. This will be particularly important for volcanoes in the Global South which lack a dedicated monitoring network, but for whom the stress state can be inferred from global datasets.