Combining commercial hydrocarbon and mineral exploration data with novel academic research and modeling capabilities helps answer key questions about underground magma systems.
lava & magma
Posted inFeatures
From Lava to Water: A New Era at Kīlauea
At Kīlauea Volcano, scientists are using unoccupied aircraft to monitor the new water lake, a possible harbinger of explosive activity, that formed after the volcano’s 2018 eruption.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Gas-Rich, Transcrustal Magma Storage in the Main Ethiopian Rift
Increments of melt trapped in crystals reveal upper crustal magmas in the Main Ethiopian Rift are rich in water and other volatiles, leading to extensive diffuse degassing and hydrothermal systems.
Posted inNews
New Evidence of a Giant Lava Lamp Beneath the Ancient Pacific
Seismic surveys find evidence of a superplume in Earth’s mantle that fueled ancient megaeruptions in the Pacific.
Posted inNews
Are Geysers a Signal of Magma Intrusion Under Yellowstone?
Steamboat Geyser, the world’s tallest, is in the midst of one of its largest periods of activity. Is it linked to new magma intruding under the Yellowstone caldera?
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Fault Dips Figured in Kīlauea’s Caldera Collapse
Large-volume volcanic eruptions can create instabilities in the ground above magma chambers, leading to massive collapses and telltale calderas.
Posted inFeatures
Does Io Have a Magma Ocean?
Future space missions will further our knowledge of tidal heating and orbital resonances, processes thought to create spectacular volcanism and oceans of magma or water on other worlds.
Posted inNews
Crystal Clocks Serve as Stopwatch for Magma Storage and Travel Times
Magma stored for 1,000 years in an Icelandic volcano journeyed to the surface in just 4 days.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
The Lower Mantle May Have a Wet Bottom
Molecular dynamics calculations suggest that molten hydrogen-bearing iron peroxide (FeO2Hx) may produce the ultra-low velocity zones that occur at the core-mantle boundary.
Posted inNews
Alexander R. “Mac” McBirney (1924–2019)
This former West Point graduate and coffee grower transformed igneous petrology and volcanology.