Magma chambers: Formation, local stresses, excess pressures, and compartments

摘要

An existing magma chamber is normally a necessary condition for the generation of a large volcanic edifice. Most magma chambers form through repeated magma injections, commonly sills, and gradually expand and change their shapes. Highly irregular magma-chamber shapes are thermo-mechanically unstable; common long-term equilibrium shapes are comparatively smooth and approximate those of ellipsoids of revolution. Some chambers, particularly small and sill-like, may be totally molten. Most chambers, however, are only partially molten, the main part of the chamber being crystal mush, a porous material. During an eruption, magma is drawn from the crystal mush towards a molten zone beneath the lower end of the feeder dyke. Magma transport to the feeder dyke, however, depends on the chamber's internal structure; in particular on whether the chamber contains pressure compartments that are, to a degree, isolated from other compartments. It is only during large drops in the hydraulic potential beneath the feeder dyke that other compartments become likely to supply magma to the erupting compartment, thereby contributing to its excess pressure (the pressure needed to rupture a magma chamber) and the duration of the eruption. Simple analytical models suggest that during a typical eruption, the excess-pressure in the chamber decreases exponentially. This result applies to a magma chamber that (a) is homogeneous and totally fluid (contains no compartments), (b) is not subject to significant replenishment (inflow of new magma into the chamber) during the eruption, and (c) contains magma where exsolution of gas has no significant effect on the excess pressure. For a chamber consisting of pressure compartments, the exponential excess-pressure decline applies primarily to a single erupting compartment. When more than one compartment contributes magma to the eruption, the excess pressure may decline much more slowly and irregularly. Excess pressure is normally similar to the in-situ tensile strength of the host rock, 0.5-9 MPa. These in-situ strength estimates are based on hydraulic fracture measurements in drill-holes worldwide down to crustal depths of about 9 km. These measurements do not support some recent magma-chamber stress models that predict (a) extra gravity-related wall-parallel stresses at the boundaries of magma chambers and (b) magma-chamber excess pressures prior to rupture of as much as hundreds of mega-pascals, particularly at great depths. General stress models of magma chambers are of two main types: analytical and numerical. Earlier analytical models were based on a nucleus-of-strain source (a 'point pressure source') for the magma chamber, and have been very useful for rough estimates of magma-chamber depths from surface deformation during unrest periods. More recent models assume the magma chamber to be axisymmetric ellipsoids or, in two-dimensions, ellipses of various shapes. Nearly all these models use the excess pressure in the chamber as the only loading (since lithostatic stress effects are then automatically taken into account), assume the chamber to be totally molten, and predict similar local stress fields. The predicted stress fields are generally in agreement with the world-wide stress measurements in drill-holes and, in particular, with the in-situ tensile-strength estimates. Recent numerical models consider magma-chambers of various (ideal) shapes and sizes in relation to their depths below the Earth's surface. They also take into account crustal heterogeneities and anisotropies; in particular the effects of the effects of a nearby free surface and horizontal and inclined (dipping) mechanical layering. The results show that the free surface may have strong effects on the local stresses if the chamber is comparatively close to the surface. The mechanical layering, however, may have even stronger effects. For realistic layering, and other heterogeneities, the numerical models predict complex local stresses around magma chambers, with implications for dyke paths, dyke arrest, and ring-fault formation.