Magma Transport and Storage Along Rift Zones Through Volcanic Conduits

Abstract

AbstractRecent geodetic data has clearly imaged significant contraction of rift zones during effusive eruptions, which is attributed to deformation of active, elongated feeders, challenging the rigid conduit paradigm. In this work we develop a physical model to understand the impact of conduit deformation on the eruptive dynamics. Numerical calculations show that magma overpressure increases the width of the conduit, resulting in higher discharge rates than would be expected from the rigid case. At the same time, conduits with high aspect ratio, have larger compressibility and can store significant amount of magma, thereby acting as secondary reservoirs. The net result is that rift zones can maintain high fluxes over prolonged periods of time, leading to large volume eruptions and biasing magma compressibility estimates. We apply our findings to the 2018 Kīlauea eruption where episodic collapse of the summit led to pressure pulses that propagated down‐rift and that were recorded by both tiltmeters and peaks in the effusion rates. Inversion of the data indicates a conduit with a height of 700–800 m and a maximum opening of 4 m, located at a depth of 2.5 km in the Upper East Rift Zone, becoming shallower in the Puʻu ʻŌʻō region and propagating sub‐horizontally in the Middle and Lower East Rift Zone. Based on these properties we infer that up to 30% of the erupted volume can be attributed to magma stored in the rift zone. In agreement with recent studies, we find that magma over‐pressure was low at the end of the 2018 eruption.