Over 800 million people live close to active volcanoes, but predicting eruptions remains challenging. One such volcano is Italy’s Colli Albani, just 20 kilometers from Rome. Despite its less explosive magma, this volcano has had violent eruptions, puzzling scientists.
A team led by the University of Geneva (UNIGE) is uncovering answers by studying “melt inclusions,” tiny droplets of magma trapped inside crystals during eruptions. These crystals act as time capsules, preserving details about the magma’s makeup and gas content.
Their findings revealed Colli Albani’s magma contained significant amounts of trapped water and carbon dioxide. This gas acted like a compressed sponge, storing pressure that rapidly released during eruptions, causing unexpectedly massive explosions. The last big eruption, 355,000 years ago, sent 30 cubic kilometers of ash and molten rock into the atmosphere.
The team used the PETRA III particle accelerator in Hamburg to create detailed 3D images of magma inclusions. This device produces powerful X-rays to study tiny materials at a tiny scale.
Exact magma locations could help with predicting volcanic eruptions
Corin Jorgenson, first author of the study and a doctoral student at the Department of Earth Sciences of the UNIGE Faculty of Science at the time of the research, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, said, “This approach is innovative in volcanology, particularly in the study of melt inclusions. It opens up new perspectives in the field.”
Luca Caricchi, full professor of Petrology and Volcanology at the Department of Earth Sciences of the UNIGE Faculty of Science, who led the research, said, “The excess gas made the magma similar to a sponge, compressed when additional magma accumulated in the reservoir and rapidly expanding at the onset of eruption, both essential ingredients for the unexpectedly large and highly explosive eruption of Colli Albani.”
Journal Reference:
- Corin Jorgenson, Michael E Stuckelberger, Giovanni Fevola, Gero Falkenberg, Tizian Kaiser, Fabian Wilde, Gregor Weber, Guido Giordano, Luca Caricchi. A Myriad of Melt Inclusions: A 3D Analysis of Melt Inclusions Reveals the Gas-Rich Magma Reservoir of Colli Albani Volcano (Italy). Journal of Petrology. DOI: 10.1093/petrology/egaf012
Source: Tech Explorist
