Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
© The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Science Advances 4 (2018): eaap7567, doi:10.1126/sciadv.aap7567.
Description:
Very large eruptions (〉50 km3) and supereruptions (〉450 km3) reveal Earth’s capacity to produce and store enormous quantities (〉1000 km3) of crystal-poor, eruptible magma in the shallow crust. We explore the interplay between crustal evolution and volcanism during a volcanic flare-up in the Taupo Volcanic Zone (TVZ, New Zealand) using a combination of quartz-feldspar-melt equilibration pressures and time scales of quartz crystallization. Over the course of the flare-up, crystallization depths became progressively shallower, showing the gradual conditioning of the crust. Yet, quartz crystallization times were invariably very short (〈100 years), demonstrating that very large reservoirs of eruptible magma were transient crustal features. We conclude that the dynamic nature of the TVZ crust favored magma eruption over storage. Episodic tapping of eruptible magmas likely prevented a supereruption. Instead, multiple very large bodies of eruptible magma were assembled and erupted in decadal time scales.
Description:
This work was supported by the NSF (EAR-1151337)
and by two Vanderbilt University Discovery Grants.
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
