Dynamo

DYNAMO - DYNAmics of eruptive phenoMena at basaltic vOlcanoes

Luciano Zuccarello, INGV Sezione di Pisa 

Volcanic eruptions have social and economic impacts at scales from local to global. In more severe cases they can affect climate on a planetary scale and threaten the population's life. Damage to buildings, crops, telecommunications, and disruption of aviation traffic, are frequent occurrences. The mitigation of volcanic risk requires the ability to understand monitoring data that are recorded in real-time before the unrest and during the eruption, and to quantify the processes that control the intensity, style and timing of eruptions.

This project is motivated by one of the main challenges in today’s volcanology, that is deciphering how the dynamics of magma ascent within volcanic conduits control: i) the onset of eruptions; ii) the sudden transition from low-level eruptive activity to episodes of more vigorous, and frequently, explosive activity; iii) the ejection of pyroclastic material into the atmosphere. The overarching goal of DYNAMO is to deliver a multi-disciplinary framework to understand shallow conduit processes that control the onset and evolution of eruptive activity at basaltic open-conduit volcanoes, and to improve our understanding of monitoring data in near-real-time during an eruptive crisis. We will work at two volcanoes, Etna and Stromboli, that exemplify a range of common types of paroxysmal activity at basaltic volcanoes globally and offer high quality datasets. Etna and Stromboli are archetypes of activity characterised by prolonged periods of low level explosivity interspersed with higher energy paroxysms (e.g., De Angelis et al., 2019). An existing multi-disciplinary dataset spanning several paroxysmal eruptions, alongside a unique time-constrained suite of erupted products, will form the basis of our investigation.

The project has three main research objectives:

1. Characterization of transition in eruptive style and paroxysmal activity

2. Evaluation of eruption source parameters using physical and stochastic modelling

3. Characterization of plume dynamics and validation of eruptive scenarios

Associated researchers

External Participants from Academia and Research Institutes