Cargando…

The feeder system of the Toba supervolcano from the slab to the shallow reservoir

The Toba Caldera has been the site of several large explosive eruptions in the recent geological past, including the world's largest Pleistocene eruption 74,000 years ago. The major cause of this particular behaviour may be the subduction of the fluid-rich Investigator Fracture Zone directly be...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Koulakov, Ivan, Kasatkina, Ekaterina, Shapiro, Nikolai M., Jaupart, Claude, Vasilevsky, Alexander, El Khrepy, Sami, Al-Arifi, Nassir, Smirnov, Sergey
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4960321/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27433784
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12228
Descripción
Sumario:The Toba Caldera has been the site of several large explosive eruptions in the recent geological past, including the world's largest Pleistocene eruption 74,000 years ago. The major cause of this particular behaviour may be the subduction of the fluid-rich Investigator Fracture Zone directly beneath the continental crust of Sumatra and possible tear of the slab. Here we show a new seismic tomography model, which clearly reveals a complex multilevel plumbing system beneath Toba. Large amounts of volatiles originate in the subducting slab at a depth of ∼150 km, migrate upward and cause active melting in the mantle wedge. The volatile-rich basic magmas accumulate at the base of the crust in a ∼50,000 km(3) reservoir. The overheated volatiles continue ascending through the crust and cause melting of the upper crust rocks. This leads to the formation of a shallow crustal reservoir that is directly responsible for the supereruptions.