Introducing Volcanology by Dougal Jerram

Author:Dougal Jerram
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dunedin Academic Press Ltd

7Igneous intrusions – a window into volcano plumbing

When a modern volcano, erupting hot lava at the surface, is observed the complex plumbing beneath the volcano is masked. Much like the complex plumbing behind the taps in our houses, the routes by which the magma travels from the magma chamber below to feed the volcano at the surface are a vital part of the volcanic system – its plumbing. There are a large variety of ways in which magma gets from its origins to the surface. When it gets trapped below by cooling in the crust, or if it never makes it to the surface, igneous intrusions occur. In order to fully categorise the types of intrusions in volcanic systems, the system as a whole needs to be looked at (Figure 7.1). There are a number of examples on the Earth where key elements of the plumbing system are preserved and exposed by erosion. In and around recent volcanoes, where erosion has revealed the shallow system, and with deeply eroded old volcanoes, the key to the puzzle is to unravel the three-dimensional shape of the intrusion and how it relates to the preexisting country rocks it cuts through. Deeper into a volcanic system, outcrops that expose the middle and lower parts of the crust and, in some cases, the mantle parts of the lithosphere, are needed. Thus evidence of intrusions that are part of the deep plumbing of the volcanic system, from the very source of the melt itself, may be found.

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