V32A-05
Stratigraphic relationships and timing of the 2012 Havre submarine silicic volcanic eruption revealed by high resolution bathymetric mapping and observations by underwater vehicles.
Wednesday, 16 December 2015: 11:35
310 (Moscone South)
Rebecca Carey1, Samuel A Soule2, Bruce F Houghton3, James D L White4, Michael Manga5, Richard J Wysoczanski6, Kenichiro Tani7, Jocelyn McPhie8, Daniel J Fornari9, Martin Jutzeler10, Fabio Caratori Tontini6, Fumihiko Ikegami11, Meghan Jones12, Arran Murch4, Kristen Fauria5, Samuel J Mitchell5, Ryan Cain Cahalan13, Chris Conway14 and Warren McKenzie3, (1)University of Tasmania, Earth Sciences, Hobart, Australia, (2)Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, United States, (3)University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, United States, (4)University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, (5)University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, (6)NIWA National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, Wellington, New Zealand, (7)National Museum of Nature and Science, Ibaraki, Japan, (8)University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia, (9)Organization Not Listed, Washington, DC, United States, (10)University of Otago, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, United Kingdom, (11)Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan, (12)Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States, (13)Georgia Institute of Technology Main Campus, Atlanta, GA, United States, (14)Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
Abstract:
The 2012 deep rhyolitic caldera eruption of Havre volcano in the Kermadec arc is the first historic observed submarine eruption that produced a pumice raft observed at the ocean’s surface. Ship-based bathymetric surveys before and after the eruption permit the intricacies of eruption styles, products and timescales to be quantified. In 2015 we mapped this submarine volcano in unprecedented detail with two submergence vehicles in tandem, facilitating a wide and comprehensive geological survey and sampling mission. These efforts and observations show highly complex and often simultaneous eruptive behavior from more than 14 vents along two 3 km-long fissures that represent massive ruptures of the caldera walls. This survey also revealed an important role for pre- and inter-eruptive periods of mass wasting processes derived from the intrusion of magma and destablisation of caldera walls. The detailed characterization of the eruption products, and quantification of timescales provides the scientific community with the first glimpse of the nature of submarine, intermediate magnitude, deep silicic caldera eruptions and permits unanswered yet first order fundamental questions of submarine eruption and transport processes to be addressed in the decades to come.
