1 What is the difference between an effusive and an explosive eruption, and what factors can make an eruption truly

effusive rather than explosive? 2 What types of eruption are common and what types are rare on Earth, using a typical human life span as a scale? Is there any correlation between eruption style and rarity? 1 What are the main differences, and how do these arise, between magmas generated at mid-ocean ridges and hot spots on the one hand and subduction zones on the other? 2 What factors cause magmas to separate from their parent rocks when partial melting occurs in the mantle? 1 What factors control the deformation properties, i.e., the rheology, of rocks? Why do we not understand the rheology of the rocks in the mantle as well as we would like? 2 What are the two main ways of moving large volumes of molten rock within the Earth? 3 Why are the rise speeds of diapirs and dikes so different? 4 Why does magma rising from the mantle not necessarily reach the surface to erupt? 1 Describe four kinds of evidence that might be used to suggest that a currently active volcano has a region of magma storage at shallow depth below its summit. 2 What kinds of features would you look for in rocks now exposed at the Earths surface by uplift and erosion as evidence for the presence of an ancient volcano? 3 What differences are there between the patterns of activity of basaltic volcanoes as a function of their tectonic setting? What effect does this have on the chemistry of the magma erupted? 4 For each of the eruptions described in Table 4.1, work out the area of the caldera (treating it as a circle or ellipse, as appropriate). Next divide the erupted volume by the caldera area to get the equivalent vertical depth of magma that was erupted from the shallow magma reservoir, assuming one exists. Finally assume that, as implied by the data in Table 4.2, most magma reservoirs extend vertically for 5 km and work out what percentage of all the magma originally in the reservoir is represented by the erupted magma volume. Recalling that theory suggests that caldera collapse will occur if more than 0.1 to 1% of the magma in a reservoir is erupted, would you have expected collapse to occur in all of these eruptions?

Why are magmas stored in magma reservoirs at depths of a few kilometers below the surface more likely to contain bubbles of carbon dioxide than bubbles of water vapor? 2 What is the main factor controlling whether volatiles exsolve in a way close to being in equilibrium with the decreasing pressure in a rising magma or out of equilibrium with the pressure? 3 What are the three processes by which the average size of the gas bubbles in a rising magma increases? 4 What property of the magma allows bubbles to coalesce more easily in basaltic magmas than more evolved magmas? 5 What is the main control on whether an explosive eruption involves the discharge of a steady or unsteady stream of gas and pyroclasts through the vent? 1 What two aspects of the expansion of gas bubbles in magmas rising toward the surface cause an increase in the magma rise speed? 2 Why does magma fragmentation make a big contribution to increasing the rise speed of magma in a dike? 3 In what three ways does a large volatile content in a magma contribute to a high eruption speed? 4 Why do some magmas reach the surface at pressures greater than atmospheric pressure? 5 Why does the material in an eruption cloud slow down at first after leaving the vent but then increase its speed for a while before eventually slowing down again? 6 What controls the maximum height to which an eruption cloud can rise in the atmosphere? 7 Why are large pyroclasts always found close to the vent in air fall eruption deposits whereas small clasts are found at all distances from the vent? 8 Why is it likely that an eruption may evolve from being Plinian to being ignimbrite-forming in nature but is much less likely to evolve in the other direction? 1 In what two main ways can transient volcanic explosions occur? 2 What determines the violence of a transient volcanic explosion as judged by the eruption speed of pyroclastic fragments? 3 How would you expect an explosive eruption under water to differ from one in air? 4 Imagine two eruptions, both of which release magma at an average rate of 2 105 kg s1 (which corresponds to about 80 m3 of bubble-free magma per second). The first eruption proceeds steadily forming a Hawaiian lava fountain with a constant plume above it. The second eruption is Strombolian and has one explosion every ten seconds, forming a series of transient plumes.

Use eqns 6.7 and 7.5 to deduce the height of the plume in each case. 5 What is the difference between vents and rootless vents? 6 What is it that makes maar-forming explosions so violent? 1 What is likely to be the difference between a lava flow formed by direct overflow from the vent and a rootless lava flow formed by the eruption, at the same volume flux, of a more gas-rich batch of the same magma? 2 Two compound lava fields form on a certain volcano. One forms by a large number of lava flow units being erupted side by side, whereas the other forms by earlier flow units becoming lava tubes and feeding later flows. If the total volume of lava erupted in the two cases is the same, which one is likely to have the greater area? 3 Two lava flows form from the same type of magma at the same temperature erupted at the same rate on the same topographic slope, but one is much more vesicular than the other. What effect is this likely to have on the morphology of the flow? Why are eruptions on the ocean floor more likely to be effusive than explosive? 2 What is the main reason, overall, that evolved magmas are more likely to have very explosive eruptions than more basaltic magmas? 3 If a long-lived eruption is explosive, what factors control whether it is intermittently explosive or continuously explosive? 4 Why do we use more than one scheme for categorizing eruptions? 5 What are the general trends of the relationships between magma reservoir size, volume of magma erupted, and frequency of eruption?
CHAPTER 1

1 All magmas coming from the mantle appear to contain some dissolved volatiles that can be released as gases at low pressure. Explosive activity happens when a sufficiently large number of gas bubbles are formed. Thus truly effusive eruptions require that not too much gas is released in the erupting magma. On the deep ocean floors the water pressure is so high that gases stay dissolved in virtually all magmas, suppressing explosive activity. If magma is stored at shallow depth it gets the chance for gas bubbles to escape into the surrounding rocks before the magma erupts. If magma comes directly to the Earths surface the key issue is just how much gas it contains. 2 Common types of activity on human time scales are Strombolian, Hawaiian, Vulcanian, subPlinian, Plinian, hydromagmatic, deep marine, and subglacial eruptions. Very much rarer are flood basalt, ultraPlinian, ignimbrite-forming, and diatreme-forming

eruptions. This is very fortunate, because the less frequent eruptions are those that are more violent, and likely to spread larger volumes of volcanic materials over larger areas more quickly.
CHAPTER 2

1 Magmas formed at mid-ocean ridges and hot spots are generally some or other variety of basalt. They are produced by partial melting of mantle rocks as a result mainly of decompression of rocks in the rising parts of mantle convection systems. Subduction zone magmas are generally more silica-rich than basalts and have a wide range of compositions. They are produced when ocean floor rocks are heated by contact with the hotter rocks into which they are being pulled down and helped to melt by the presence of water in ocean floor sediments being carried along with them. 2 First, melts are almost always less dense than their pre-melting parent rocks and also the unmelted solid residues remaining after melting occurs. Thus buoyancy the effect of gravity on the difference in density acts to make them rise. Second, the parent rocks are commonly subjected to nonuniform stresses by processes such as mantle convection and plate movements, and these tend to drive the melts upward as compaction occurs.
CHAPTER 3

1 The rheology of rock typically depends on temperature, pressure, and the strain rate the rate of deformation imposed on the rock. It is difficult, but not impossible, to subject rocks in the laboratory to temperatures like those in the mantle. It is significantly more difficult to reproduce the mantle pressures, and it is impossible to carry out experiments for the lengths of time needed to reproduce the mantle strain rates. 2 At great depths, where the mantle is partly molten in the rising parts of convection cells, both the host rock and the melt forming within it will be rising. As melt percolates between mineral grains and becomes concentrated in the upper part of a convection cell, the region of melt concentration behaves as a diapir, i.e., a body of relatively lowviscosity fluid rising through a layer of relatively high-viscosity fluid. When the high-viscosity fluid can no longer deform fast enough, it starts to behave as a brittle material, and a fracture forms in it. The low-viscosity fluid flows into the fracture to form a dike. 3 Diapir movement is controlled by the slow deformation of the high-viscosity mantle rocks surrounding the diapir. Dike tips propagate as brittle fractures and so can potentially travel at very high speeds; the actual speed is controlled by the ability of the low-viscosity magma within the dike to flow. Mantle rock viscosities are 1020 times larger than

molten basalt viscosities, hence the enormous difference in speed. 4 If the magma is rising mainly as a result of buoyancy, it can become trapped when it is no longer less dense than the rocks surrounding it. The base of the crust, where there is generally a significant decrease in rock density from mantle to crust, is a likely density trap for many magmas in continental areas and for high-density magmas in oceanic environments. If magma is rising in dikes the situation is more complex because, not only must the magma have a net positive buoyancy integrated over the entire vertical length of the dike, but also the stress intensity at the propagating dike tip must be large enough to overcome the effective fracture toughness of the host rocks.