The role of dyking and fault control in the rapid onset of eruption at Chaitén volcano, Chile

Charles Wicks (), Juan Carlos de la Llera, Luis E. Lara and Jacob Lowenstern
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Charles Wicks: US Geological Survey
Juan Carlos de la Llera: Escuela de Ingeniería, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Luis E. Lara: Servicio Nacional de Geología y Minería, Volcano Hazards Program
Jacob Lowenstern: US Geological Survey

Nature, 2011, vol. 478, issue 7369, 374-377

Abstract: The beginnings of the current Chaitén eruption Eruptions of rhyolite magma are historically rare and explosive in nature — the last major one occurred in a remote part of Alaska in 1912. Because rhyolite is the most viscous of liquid magmas, it was surprising that during the 2008 eruption of Chaitén, a volcanic caldera in Chile, rhyolitic magma migrated from a depth of more than 5 kilometres in less than four hours, erupting explosively with only two days of detected precursory seismic activity. Wicks et al. use surface deformation data to show that the rapid ascent of rhyolitic magma during this eruption occurred through dyking, and that melt segregation and magma storage were controlled by existing faults. The reservoir seems to be connected to a magma chamber about 20 km beneath the nearby Michimahuida volcano.

Date: 2011
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DOI: 10.1038/nature10541

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