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VOLCANOLOGY

A volcanos sharp intake of breath

Andrew Hooper

Shallow magma bodies that feed regularly erupting volcanoes are usually considered enduring features that grow steadily between eruptions. Measurements of deformation at Santorini, however, reveal sudden rapid magma accumulation after half a century of rest.

he Greek islands of Santorini are the ocean-emergent parts of a large volcano that has ripped itself apart many times in the past 600,000years1. The last large, caldera-forming eruption occurred 3,600years ago and has been linked with the demise of the Minoan civilization. Since then, there have been a series of smaller, so-called dome-building eruptions, which have gradually built up new islands in the centre of the archipelago. Since January2011, magma has been again accumulating at shallow depths beneath Santorini2. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Parks etal.3 show that the recent volcanic activity is probably the only significant episode of magma recharge since the last dome-forming eruption in 1950, implying that shallow magma bodies feeding the smaller eruptions could be ephemeral. As is the case for most volcanoes, eruptions at Santorini are sourced from a shallow magma body a few kilometres beneath the surface, whereas the parental magma forms at greater depths (Fig.1a). It was thought that the shallow reservoir at Santorini grew gradually, fed by the parental magma over decades for smaller, domeforming eruptions, and over thousands of years for the largest, caldera-forming eruptions (Fig.1b). Such a pattern of steady recharge between smaller eruptions has been witnessed at several highly active volcanoes, such as Hekla in Iceland4. However, evidence from Santorini and some other volcanoes now indicates that the shallow magma bodies that fuel large caldera-forming eruptions can be assembled in only a relatively short time before eruption57 (Fig.1c). Satellite data can be used to monitor changes in the shallow magma system. When magma moves up to shallow depths, it deforms the surrounding crust all the way up to the Earths surface. Multiple passes of radar instruments carried by satellites allow monitoring of the surface deformation through time, which can then be used to estimate the volumes of injected magma. Parks etal.3 used satellite data to estimate the volume of magma that moved

Sea level Active dome Shallow magma reservoir

Lava ows Ca Caldera rim

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Shallow magma body volume (km3)

Conventional theory

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New observations

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Figure 1 | Schematic view of the volumetric evolution of magma ponding at shallow depths beneath Santorini Volcano. Eruptions are sourced from a magma reservoir in the shallow crust that is fed by magma from greater depths (a). Parks et al.3 show that recent unrest at Santorini Volcano is due to the rapid injection of magma into the shallow crust since January 2011. This observation challenges the conventional view (b) that the shallow magma reservoir is slowly replenished by an ongoing supply of small amounts of magma fed from below. Instead, both large and small eruptions seem to be fuelled by episodic injections of magma (c). If so, the shallow magma system could be an ephemeral feature.

up to shallow depths beneath Santorini since January 2011. They also used GPS instruments to determine the coordinates of monuments in an old triangulation network on the islands. Triangulation is a method that allows the location of points on the Earths surface to be determined relative to other points, based on the angles between them. Comparison of the GPS observations with the positions calculated from the last triangulation survey in 1955 reveals deformation equivalent to that measured by

satellite between January 2011 and the time of the GPS survey. This implies that there was no significant intrusion of magma to shallow levels before the onset of activity at Santorini last year. Furthermore, the volume of magma injected since last year is a sizeable fraction of that estimated for previous dome-forming eruptions, such as that of 193941, and could therefore lead to another eruption in the near future. The observation of a rapid, high-volume inflow of magma into the shallow crust
1

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beneath Santorini opposes the conventional idea that the shallow magma body should be gradually fed small amounts of parental magma over decades. This view comes from petrological studies of the lavas erupted over the past two millennia. The magma rising from depth is relatively silica-poor, and the silica-enriched composition of the erupted lavas was thought to be due to fractionation processes acting over many years within the shallow magma body. Various lines of evidence suggest, however, that the silica composition of the magma body did not fluctuate significantly during the sampled 2,200 years, which would indicate that the silica-poor magma was introduced gradually3. The new finding that magma is arriving at shallow depths episodically seems therefore inconsistent with the observation that the silica concentration does not vary significantly with time. If, however, the magma arriving at shallow depths is already silica-rich, these two conclusions become compatible. The implication is then that there is a deeper magma reservoir where the silica content becomes enhanced, which then feeds the shallow body episodically. Interestingly, a similar argument has been made for the last caldera-forming eruption at Santorini in Minoan times. Based on petrologic evidence, it has been argued that much of the erupted material was sourced from a silica-rich magma that had ascended from a deep storage zone5. There is no suggestion that a Minoantype eruption will occur at Santorini any time soon. The volume of magma intruded into the crust over the past 18 months or so is less than a thousandth of the volume that erupted around 1600bc. However, the rate of magma supply since January 2011, enough to fuel a dome-forming eruption, is strikingly similar to the rate of magma supply leading up to the Minoan eruption. The main difference between the two styles of eruption, therefore, is primarily the length of time that magma flows from depth, rather than the rate of magma input at least, this is the case at Santorini. The new observations from Santorini do not preclude the existence of a permanent shallow magma body. They do, however, suggest that most of the magma that goes on to erupt is transferred to shallow depths in short pulses. The deeper magmatic system therefore seems to play an important role in the eruption dynamics of Santorini, for both small and large eruptions alike. The next big question to answer is what processes are operating within this deeper magma reservoir. Parks etal.3 show that ongoing volcanic activity at Santorini Volcano is due to the rapid injection of magma into the shallow crust since January 2011. Rapid assembly before eruption of the liquid magma bodies that fuel giant caldera-forming eruptions had been documented57, but the new observations from Santorini suggest that the same process may be responsible for smaller eruptions too.
Andrew Hooper is in the Department of Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Delft University of Technology, Delft 2628CN, The Netherlands. e-mail: a.j.hooper@tudelft.nl References
1. Druitt, T.H. etal. Santorini Volcano (Geological Society Memoir No. 19, 1999). 2. Newman, A.V. etal. Geophys. Res. Lett. 39, L06309 (2012). 3. Parks, M.M. etal. Nature Geosci. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ ngeo1562 (2012). 4. feigsson, B.G., Hooper, A., Sigmundsson, F., Sturkell, E. & Grapenthin, R.J.Geophys. Res. 116, B05401 (2011). 5. Druitt, T.H., Costa, F., Deloule, E., Dungan, M. & Scaillet, B. Nature 482, 7780 (2012). 6. Wark, D.A., Hildreth, W., Spear, F.S., Cherniak, D.J. & Watson, E.B. Geology 35, 235238 (2007). 7. Saunders, K.E., Morgan, D.J., Baker, J.A. & Wysoczanski, R.J.J.Petrol. 51, 24652488 (2010).

Published online: 9 September 2012

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