Volcanology articles within Nature

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  • News & Views |

    New evidence suggests that seismic waves from the Chicxulub meteorite impact doubled the eruption rate of lavas on the opposite side of the planet — a combination that led to the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period.

    • Robert Duncan

  • News & Views |

    A compilation of more than 300,000 rock compositions provides crucial input into a 100-year-old debate on how the continental crust formed, and provides new constraints for theories of continental-crust development. See Article p.301

    • Christy Till

  • Article |

    A global geochemical data set of volcanic and plutonic rocks indicates that differentiation trends from primitive basaltic to felsic compositions for volcanic versus plutonic samples are generally indistinguishable in subduction-zone settings, but are divergent in continental rifts.

    • C. Brenhin Keller
    • , Blair Schoene
    •  & Jon M. Husson

  • Letter |

    Observations of the south pole of the Saturnian moon Enceladus revealed large rifts in the terrain that were found to be the sources of the observed jets of water vapour; now it is shown that much of the eruptive activity can be explained by broad, curtain-like eruptions, many of which were probably misinterpreted previously as discrete jets.

    • Joseph N. Spitale
    • , Terry A. Hurford
    •  & Symeon S. Platts

  • Letter |

    Seismicity and ground deformation measurements show how a recent segmented dyke intrusion in the Bárðarbunga volcanic system in Iceland grew laterally for 45 kilometres over 14 days; dyke opening and seismicity were focused at the most distal segment, where lateral dyke growth with segment barrier breaking by pressure build-up occurred.

    • Freysteinn Sigmundsson
    • , Andrew Hooper
    •  & Eva P. S. Eibl

  • Letter |

    The age distributions of zircons (found in magmatic rocks) enable magma fluxes in the Earth’s crust to be calculated, providing insight into geological processes such as ore deposit formation and volcanic eruptions.

    • Luca Caricchi
    • , Guy Simpson
    •  & Urs Schaltegger

  • Letter |

    High-resolution three-dimensional simulations of hydrothermal flow beneath fast-spreading ridges predict two interacting flow components — shallow on-axis flow and deeper off-axis flow — that merge to feed axial vent sites, reconciling previously incompatible models favouring only one flow component.

    • Jörg Hasenclever
    • , Sonja Theissen-Krah
    •  & Colin W. Devey

  • Letter |

    We lack thermal histories for magma reservoirs, but here the magma under Mount Hood (Oregon, USA) is shown to have been too cold to mobilize for most of the time it has been stored, which implies that magma mobilizes (at which point it can be imaged geophysically) very quickly prior to eruption.

    • Kari M. Cooper
    •  & Adam J. R. Kent

  • Article |

    Several irregularly shaped craters located within Arabia Terra, Mars, are interpreted as a new type of highland volcanic construct, similar to supervolcanoes on Earth, fundamentally changing the picture of ancient volcanism and climate evolution on Mars.

    • Joseph R. Michalski
    •  & Jacob E. Bleacher

  • Brief Communications Arising |

    • Fabrice Gaillard
    • , Bruno Scaillet
    •  & Nicholas T. Arndt

  • News & Views |

    An analysis of geochemical data reveals a substantial change in the composition of Earth's magmas about 2.5 billion years ago, just as Earth's atmosphere and climate were also changing drastically. See Letter p.490

    • William M. White

  • News & Views |

    The origin of volcanic activity occurring far from tectonic-plate boundaries has been a subject of contention. The latest geodynamic model offers a fresh take on the matter. See Letter p.386

    • Cin-Ty A. Lee
    •  & Stephen P. Grand

  • News & Views |

    A petrology study of the Bronze Age 'Minoan' eruption on the Greek island of Santorini finds that the sub-volcanic magma reservoir was recharged in spurts during the decades to months that preceded the eruption. See Letter p.77

    • Jon Blundy
    •  & Alison Rust

  • Letter |

    A study of pre-eruptive magmatic processes at a caldera volcano shows that, although such a volcano may have been dormant for a long period, its magma reserves may be replenished in a comparatively very short time and it may move rapidly from a quiescent state to one on the verge of eruption.

    • T. H. Druitt
    • , F. Costa
    •  & B. Scaillet

  • Letter |

    Assimilation of mantle minerals is proposed as a cause of deep-seated exsolution of dissolved volatiles and the driver of kimberlite magma ascent.

    • James K. Russell
    • , Lucy A. Porritt
    •  & Donald B. Dingwell

  • News & Views |

    Data from the Siberian Traps volcanic region suggest that its magma source includes a significant component of recycled oceanic crust. This finding helps to explain why basalt eruptions are so environmentally devastating. See Letter p.312

    • Paul B. Wignall

  • News Feature |

    Vesuvius is one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world — but scientists and the civil authorities can't agree on how to prepare for a future eruption.

    • Katherine Barnes

  • News & Views |

    Seismic images of the Colorado plateau region reveal a mantle 'drip' forming under the Grand Canyon area. This hidden process may be responsible for the puzzling uplift of the plateau. See Letter p.461

    • George Zandt
    •  & Peter Reiners

  • Letter |

    This study shows that a dynamic two-stage model can unify a wide range of apparently contradictory observations from both large plutonic bodies and volcanic systems by a mechanism of rapid remobilization, or 'unzipping', of highly viscous crystal-rich mushes. This remobilization can lead to rapid overturn and produce the observed juxtaposition of magmatic materials with very disparate ages and complex chemical zoning. The agreement between calculated and observed unzipping rates for historical eruptions at Pinatubo and Montserrat demonstrates the potentially wide applicability of the model.

    • Alain Burgisser
    •  & George W. Bergantz

  • News & Views |

    A new model for volcanic tremor has a magma column, surrounded by gas bubbles, oscillating or 'wagging' back and forth. The model reconciles several observations of this characteristic signal. See Letter p.522

    • Stephen R. McNutt

  • Letter |

    Most models for volcanic tremor rely on specific properties of the geometry, structure and constitution of volcanic conduits as well as the gas content of the erupting magma. Here, a model is used of a silicic magma rising in a conduit as a columnar plug to demonstrate that, for most geologically relevant conditions, the magma column will oscillate or 'wag' against the restoring force of a highly vesicular annulus of sheared bubbles at observed tremor frequencies. The frequencies produced are relatively insensitive to the conduit structure and geometry.

    • A. Mark Jellinek
    •  & David Bercovici

  • Brief Communications Arising |

    • T. L. Grove
    • , C. B. Till
    •  & E. Médard

  • Letter |

    The deformation style at moderately active volcanoes — such as Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland, which underwent an explosive summit eruption earlier this year — is little understood. These authors show that deformation associated with the eruptions at Eyjafjallajökull was unusual as it did not relate to pressure changes within a single magma chamber, and infer that this behaviour might be attributed to its off-rift setting with a 'cold' subsurface structure and limited magma at shallow depth.

    • Freysteinn Sigmundsson
    • , Sigrún Hreinsdóttir
    •  & Kurt L. Feigl

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