Nature Communications (Nov 2018)

Combined effusive-explosive silicic volcanism straddles the multiphase viscous-to-brittle transition

  • Fabian B. Wadsworth,
  • Taylor Witcher,
  • Caron E. J. Vossen,
  • Kai-Uwe Hess,
  • Holly E. Unwin,
  • Bettina Scheu,
  • Jonathan M. Castro,
  • Donald B. Dingwell

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07187-w
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
pp. 1 – 8

Abstract

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Recent observations of silicic eruptions show that they can be both effusive and explosive at the same time. Here the authors use scaled experiments to demonstrate that magma in effusive eruptions will fracture during flow to the Earth’s surface, accommodating mixed eruption styles.