Recent volcanic eruptions have well documented using seismic, geodetic, infrasound and webcams networks. However, to understand the physical process behind eruptions scientists reproduce some of these process, like lava flows, lahars and most recently ash plumes. Here, I posted an experiment conducted from a scientific team of Universität Würzburg-Germany, Bari University-Italy and the University of Iceland to mimic ash clouds of Eyjafjallajökull 2010 eruption. This experiment allowed scientist calibrate their monitor devices for future eruptions.

https://eos.org/project-updates/fire-in-the-hole-recreating-volcanic-eruptions-with-cannon-blasts

Yellowstone is one of the world’s largest volcanic systems. In the last 2.1 Ma it has had 3 major eruptions (2.1, 1.3, and 0.64 Ma) releasing an estimated 2500 km^3, 280 km^3 and 1000 km^3 of material, respectively. Yellowstone also features widespread seismicity and ground deformation rates of up to 7 cm/yr. Recently, Farrell et al. compiled an earthquake data set from 1984 to 2011 which they used to construct a 3D P-wave velocity structure of the Yellowstone system. The low P-wave velocity zone is taken to be the volcanic reservoir which is 2.5 times larger than suggested by a previous study. The goal of this study was to provide a better estimate of magmatic volume, melt distribution, and fluid state, all which influence the volcanic and earthquake hazard in the area.

This study looked at over 48,000 P-wave arrivals from more than 4,500 earthquakes. They only used events where at least 8 P-wave observations were available with uncertainties less than 0.12 s. Farrell et al. used an automatic picking method to ensure consistency in the selection of their first P-wave arrivals. They inverted the data to find the hypocenter, origin time, and 3D P-wave velocity structure. Sensitivity tests showed that they had adequate resolution to identify low-velocity bodies to depths of ~17km.

Based upon their inversion, they estimated the volume of melt in the Yellowstone system to be between 200 km^3 and 600 km^3. This suggests that there is enough material available for an eruption of similar size to the 1.3 Ma event.

For more details, check out the paper here.

“ Laboratory simulations of fluid/gas induced micro-earthquakes: application to volcano seismology”, Benson et al. , Frontiers in Earth Science, 2014.

Rock failure and pressurized fluids in volcanic systems produce two types of seismic signals, volcano-tectonic and long-period earthquakes. To understand the physics and wave radiation of these processes Benson et al., 2014 tested an analog model. The authors tested physical conditions to generate low frequency seismic signals in a laboratory experiment under known pressure, temperature, and stress and compared it results with volcanic seismic signals where pressure and stresses are unknown.

This paper presents seismograms and frequencies from lab experiments to be compared with seismic data from Mt. Etna and Nisyros volcanoes. They conclude that LP events are more likely triggered by pressure changes in the system via degassing and/or magma movement.

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/feart.2014.00032/full