In what is becoming a recurring theme, we have a new story on how scientists thought something must act one of two ways, and the reality is both things can happen. In this particular case, we’re looking at volcanoes.

Trying to understand what exactly a volcano is likely to do has been of long interest but so far just hasn’t been all that possible. This is because volcanoes are complex systems that combine vast networks of reservoirs and tubes that store and transfer magma from deep in the Earth to the surface above. Understanding these networks is made all the more challenging because they are located underground, and even the most sensitive ground-penetrating radar doesn’t give us the kinds of resolution needed to completely understand exactly how magma pushes its way through the rock.

Luckily, erosion and plate tectonics can help; there are various places on our planet where the guts of volcanoes have been exposed on cliff faces and in volcanic fields.

In order to build a new and better understanding of volcanoes, an 85-person workshop was convened in Argentina that combined two days of scientific meetings and a three-day field workshop that looked at rock formations altered through magma intrusions and other volcanic features.

Of interest was how rocks deform when magma encounters them – specifically are they cut like with a knife or are they pushed like with a probe. In the knife scenario, magma cuts into a rock that then tears and splits out of the way. In the probe scenario, the encountered rock compresses and deforms as it is pushed along. It turns out that both these situations happen — sometimes magma cuts through rock and sometimes it pushes — and this has consequences for how we model volcanoes and what we look for. Put simply, there is no one way that volcanoes store magma, and when we see the ground begin to bulge, all we can know is something is moving and not if something is gearing up to explode.

These are not satisfying answers. This does not help say when or for how long a volcano may erupt. But this does tell us we need to model things in more ways than one, and that our predictions need to say “If this, then that, and if this other thing, then, well, something different.”

Our planet is complex. And the data looked at in this research is complex. The report from this research conference has now been published in Eos and includes numerous references to individual papers that discuss different aspects of this work in detail. 

The data analyzed combined our standard, gather-what-your-grant-allows, academic data with much more thorough data obtained with more expensive equipment and larger data gathering budgets by petroleum companies. With this additional information, researchers were able to apply their theoretical knowledge to gain new insights that are leading to new laboratory experiments to try and model what’s going on at a much smaller scale. I can only hope that we see more of these joint industry and academia ventures in the future.

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Eos article