Modeling the Temporal Evolution of the Magma Chamber at Mount Hood (Oregon, USA)

Abstract:

The evolution of shallow magma reservoirs is complex as new mass is added intermittently and phase proportions (crystals, melt and bubbles) vary because of cooling or mass removal (eruptions). One requirement for eruptions to occur is that the crystal content during storage is low enough (< 0.4-0.6) such that the magma is mobile. Thermal modeling and geochemical data suggest these chambers are mobile only a very small fraction of their lifetime. Data from uranium-series disequilibria, crystal size distributions, and zoning of trace elements in crystals collected at Mount Hood (Oregon, USA) provide constraints on the thermal evolution of this system over the past 21 kyrs years and suggest <10% of this time the magma was mobile. This system also produced at least 3 significant eruptions over the last 10 kyrs based on the stratigraphic record (~220 and ~1500, and ~7700 years ago).

Here we investigate the physical conditions of an open-system magma chamber that are in agreement with the thermal history inferred from the crystal record and with the eruption sequence. What are the magma recharge fluxes that are required to keep a system such as Mount Hood active but predominantly crystal-rich over the last 21 kyrs and what combination of processes produces the observed eruption frequency? To answer these questions we use an idealized magma chamber model to solve for the evolution of the thermodynamical state of the chamber (pressure, temperature, gas and crystal content) as new magma is injected into the chamber. Heat is lost to the surrounding colder crust, which responds visco-elastically to the pressure accumulated during recharge and volatile exsolution. If the crystal volume fraction is lower than 0.5 and chamber overpressure reaches 20 MPa we assume an eruption occurs. We analyze what type of injection (constant, periodic, magma lensing), injection rate, and magma chamber volume yields trends consistent with the timescales found at Mount Hood.