Coordinating science during an eruption: lessons from the 2020-2021 Kilauea volcanic eruption.

Data collected during well-observed eruptions can lead to dramatic increases in our understanding of volcanic processes. However, the necessary prioritization of public safety and hazard mitigation during a crisis means that scientific opportunities may be sacrificed. Thus, maximizing the scientific gains from eruptions requires improved planning and coordinating science activities among governmental organizations and academia before and during volcanic eruptions. One tool to facilitate this coordination is a Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC). In the USA, the Community Network for Volcanic Eruption Response (CONVERSE) has been developing and testing this concept during workshops and scenario-based activities. The December 2020 eruption of Kilauea volcano, Hawaii, provided an opportunity to test and refine this model in real-time and in a real-world setting. We present here the working model of a SAC developed during this eruption. Successes of the Kilauea SAC (K-SAC) included broadening the pool of scientists involved in eruption response and developing and codifying procedures that may form the basis of operation for future SACs. Challenges encountered by the K-SAC included a process of review and facilitation of research proposals that was too slow to include outside participation in the early parts of the eruption and a decision process that fell on a small number of individuals at the responding volcano observatory. Possible ways to address these challenges include (1) supporting community-building activities between eruptions that make connections among scientists within and outside formal observatories, (2) identifying key science questions and pre-planning science activities, which would facilitate more rapid implementation across a broader scientific group, and (3) continued dialog among observatory scientists, emergency responders, and non-observatory scientists about the role of SACs. The SAC model holds promise to become an integral part of future efforts, leading in the short and longer term to more effective hazard response and greater scientific discovery and understanding.

What lies beneath Yellowstone?

There is more magma than previously recognized, but it may not be eruptible.

Time scales and temperatures of crystal storage in magma reservoirs: implications for magma reservoir dynamics.

The thermal and therefore physical state of magma bodies within the crust controls the processes and time scales required to mobilize magmas before eruptions, which in turn are critical to hazard assessment. Crystal records can be used to reconstruct magma reservoir histories, and the resulting time and length scales are converging with those accessible through numerical modelling of magma system dynamics. The goal of this contribution is to summarize constraints derived from crystal chronometry (radiometric dating and modelling intracrystalline diffusion durations), in order to facilitate use of these data by researchers in other fields. Crystallization ages of volcanic minerals typically span a large range (104-105 years), recording protracted activity in a given magma reservoir. However, diffusion durations are orders of magnitude shorter, indicating that the final mixing and assembly of erupted magma bodies is rapid. Combining both types of data in the same samples indicates that crystals are dominantly stored at near- or sub-solidus conditions, and are remobilized rapidly prior to eruptions. These observations are difficult to reconcile with some older numerical models of magma reservoir dynamics. However, combining the crystal-scale observations with models which explicitly incorporate grain-scale physics holds great potential for understanding dynamics within crustal magma reservoirs. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Magma reservoir architecture and dynamics'.

Response to Comment on "Rapid cooling and cold storage in a silicic magma reservoir recorded in individual crystals".

In a recent paper, we used Li concentration profiles and U-Th ages to constrain the thermal conditions of magma storage. Wilson and co-authors argue that the data instead reflect control of Li behavior by charge balance during partitioning and not by experimentally determined diffusion rates. Their arguments are based on (i) a coupled diffusion mechanism for Li, which has been postulated but has not been documented to occur, and (ii) poorly constrained zircon growth rates combined with the assumption of continuous zircon crystallization.

Rapid cooling and cold storage in a silicic magma reservoir recorded in individual crystals.

Silicic volcanic eruptions pose considerable hazards, yet the processes leading to these eruptions remain poorly known. A missing link is knowledge of the thermal history of magma feeding such eruptions, which largely controls crystallinity and therefore eruptability. We have determined the thermal history of individual zircon crystals from an eruption of the Taupo Volcanic Zone, New Zealand. Results show that although zircons resided in the magmatic system for 103 to 105 years, they experienced temperatures >650° to 750°C for only years to centuries. This implies near-solidus long-term crystal storage, punctuated by rapid heating and cooling. Reconciling these data with existing models of magma storage requires considering multiple small intrusions and multiple spatial scales, and our approach can help to quantify heat input to and output from magma reservoirs.

Rapid remobilization of magmatic crystals kept in cold storage.

The processes involved in the formation and storage of magma within the Earth's upper crust are of fundamental importance to volcanology. Many volcanic eruptions, including some of the largest, result from the eruption of components stored for tens to hundreds of thousands of years before eruption. Although the physical conditions of magma storage and remobilization are of paramount importance for understanding volcanic processes, they remain relatively poorly known. Eruptions of crystal-rich magma are often suggested to require the mobilization of magma stored at near-solidus conditions; however, accumulation of significant eruptible magma volumes has also been argued to require extended storage of magma at higher temperatures. What has been lacking in this debate is clear observational evidence linking the thermal (and therefore physical) conditions within a magma reservoir to timescales of storage-that is, thermal histories. Here we present a method of constraining such thermal histories by combining timescales derived from uranium-series disequilibria, crystal sizes and trace-element zoning in crystals. At Mount Hood (Oregon, USA), only a small fraction of the total magma storage duration (at most 12 per cent and probably much less than 1 per cent) has been spent at temperatures above the critical crystallinity (40-50 per cent) at which magma is easily mobilized. Partial data sets for other volcanoes also suggest that similar conditions of magma storage are widespread and therefore that rapid mobilization of magmas stored at near-solidus temperatures is common. Magma storage at low temperatures indicates that, although thermobarometry calculations based on mineral compositions may record the conditions of crystallization, they are unlikely to reflect the conditions of most of the time that the magma is stored. Our results also suggest that largely liquid magma bodies that can be imaged geophysically will be ephemeral features and therefore their detection could indicate imminent eruption.

Drilling to gabbro in intact ocean crust.

Sampling an intact sequence of oceanic crust through lavas, dikes, and gabbros is necessary to advance the understanding of the formation and evolution of crust formed at mid-ocean ridges, but it has been an elusive goal of scientific ocean drilling for decades. Recent drilling in the eastern Pacific Ocean in Hole 1256D reached gabbro within seismic layer 2, 1157 meters into crust formed at a superfast spreading rate. The gabbros are the crystallized melt lenses that formed beneath a mid-ocean ridge. The depth at which gabbro was reached confirms predictions extrapolated from seismic experiments at modern mid-ocean ridges: Melt lenses occur at shallower depths at faster spreading rates. The gabbros intrude metamorphosed sheeted dikes and have compositions similar to the overlying lavas, precluding formation of the cumulate lower oceanic crust from melt lenses so far penetrated by Hole 1256D.