Oceans at MIT

Striving to understand, harness and sustain Earth's defining frontier.

http://oceans.mit.edu

America/New_York

20171105T020000 -0400 -0500 20181104T020000 EST 20180311T020000 -0500 -0400 EDT 20170414T100000-n91e8qdrst0dg1c0kqh59dudk0@google.com 20180503T093454Z MIT Seminar | PAOC Chemical Oceanography and Biogeochemistry The What, When, Where, and Why of Supereruptions Supereruptions are gigantic volcanic eruptions (�450 km^3 of magma) the likes of which we have never witnessed. Yet, this does not mean that we will never experience one. Such enormous eruptions have the potential to wreak havoc on life, infrastructure, travel, and the environment. Consequently, it is critical that we study past supereruptions to understand how, when, where, and why one might happen in the future. In addition, supereruption deposits are evidence that large volumes of magma existed in the crust multiple times in Earth’s history; thus, studying these systems can inform on the magmatic construction of Earth’s crust. In this talk, I will address several outstanding and strongly debated questions regarding supereruptive systems: Where in the crust do these magmas reside? What shape do they take? How long do they persist in the crust before erupting? When, why, and over what timescales does the eruptive process occur? How are the giant volumes of crystal-poor high-silica rhyolite magma involved in supereruptions generated? Answering these questions is important both for practical reasons (e.g., hazards preparation and mitigation) and intellectual ones (e.g., understanding crustal processes). To address these questions, I combine information from multiple scales and perspectives (field studies, geochemistry, textural relations of crystals in rocks and melt inclusions in crystals, geochronology, geobarometry, phase-equilibria modeling, and diffusion modeling). Results from this work suggest that we can make some broad generalizations about supereruptive systems, but these systems have notable variability as well (e.g., their shape in the crust). This work also illustrates the power in using a multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary approach to addressing questions in the Earth Sciences. 20170414T100000 20170414T110000 Building E25, Room 119 0

COG3 Seminar – Ayla Pamucku (Princeton)