Crystals and rich ores drawn from deep inside active volcanoes might lead the way to a better future

By Teresa Ubide / 11 May 2023



Teresa Ubide in the Andes. Supplied.

Using chemistry and chemical analysis to investigate the insides of active volcanoes.


I can remember my first ever geology class, at an age in school when I didn’t even know what the word geology meant. The teacher asked us all to draw a volcano, so we took our notebooks out and drew a typical triangle shape, with some lava, the sun, some trees, whatever. Our teacher then drew the same thing, the triangle, at the very top of the whiteboard, and said, “This is great, but watch this.”

She then started drawing a vast maze of conduits and magma chambers below the surface – everything that was happening deep inside the volcano, showing how the magma controls the development of eruptions. I was totally hooked. From that day I have wanted to be a volcanologist.

Understanding what happens deep inside a volcano is crucial to understanding the development of eruptions at the surface. Of course, we can’t go inside active volcanoes. But we can use our science to investigate. We’ve discovered that their complexity is enormous and the complexity is different depending on the setting.

Typically, we find volcanoes in three tectonic regions on Earth. One is where two tectonic plates move towards each other – that’s called an arc system. Another is where two tectonic plates move apart from each other – that’s a mid-ocean ridge. And another one is in the middle of nowhere geologically speaking, and that’s where we have a hotspot, like Hawaii. The architecture of the magma-feeding systems can be quite different in these different geological settings.

More:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/earth-sciences/nbt-crystals-ores-volcanoes-teresa-ubide/