Timescales of magma ascent during explosive eruptions: Insights from the re-equilibration of magmatic volatiles

In this thesis, I present an assessment of the viability of hydrous inclusions and mineral phases in preserving initial magmatic conditions in light of post-eruptive cooling effects. In addition, I also present an investigation of the potential of utilizing this volatile loss to estimate time scales of magma ascent during the 1974 sub-plinian eruption of Volcan de Fuego in Guatemala.;To test the possibility of systematic H2O re-equilibration in olivine-hosted melt inclusions, I designed a natural experiment using ash, lapilli, and bomb samples that cooled at different rates owing to their different sizes. Ion microprobe, laser ablation-ICPMS, and electron probe analyses show that melt inclusions from ash and lapilli record the highest H2O contents, up to 4.4 wt%. On the other hand, MIs from bombs indicate up to 30% lower H2O contents (loss of ~ 1 wt% H2O) and 10% post-entrapment crystallization of olivine. This evidence is consistent with the longer cooling time available for a bomb-sized clast, up to 10 minutes for a 3--4 cm radius bomb, assuming conductive cooling and the fastest H+ diffusivities measured in olivine (D ~ 10-9 to 10-10 m2/s).;Utilizing an established method for assessing magma ascent rates, concentration gradients of volatile species along open melt embayments within olivine crystals were measured for use as a chronometer. Assuming a constant decompression rate from the magma storage region at approximately 220 MPa to the surface, H2O, CO2 and S profiles for all embayments can be fit with a relatively narrow range in decompression rates of 0.3--0.5 MPa/s, equivalent to 11--17 m/s ascent velocity and an 8 to 12 minute duration of magma ascent from ~10 km depth. A two-stage decompression model takes advantage of the different depth ranges over which CO2 and H2O degas, and produces good fits given an initial stage of slow decompression (0.05--0.3 MPa/s) at high pressure (> 145 MPa), with similar decompression rates to the single-stage model for the shallower stage. The magma ascent rates reported here are among the first for explosive basaltic eruptions and demonstrate the potential of the embayment method for quantifying magmatic timescales associated with eruptions of different vigor.;I investigated the utility of clinopyroxene as a recorder of the initial water and magma ascent rate using natural phenocrysts erupted during the 1974 eruption of Volcan de Fuego and the 1977 eruption on Seguam Island. The partitioning of water between clinopyroxene and melt was determined by analyzing melt inclusions and the adjacent clinopyroxene host by ion microprobe. Using the DH+ values obtained from the Fuego Cpx, I showed that the difference in H2O between the lava and tephra Cpx can be attributed to post-eruption H 2O loss during the estimated ~ 13 minute emplacement of the lava flow. The results from this work indicate that iron-rich clinopyroxene from slowly-cooled basaltic lavas should not be used to reconstruct initial magmatic water contents.;The novel findings reported in this thesis are two-fold. Based on evidence from olivine-hosted melt inclusions in volcanic bombs and clinopyroxene in a pahoehoe lava flow, it is unlikely that the initial concentration of water can be preserved if a volcanic product undergoes slow post-eruptive cooling. This fact implies that a portion of the published data on H2O concentrations in olivine-hosted melt inclusions and clinopyroxene may reflect unrecognized H2O loss via diffusion and highlights the importance of reporting the type of volcanic deposit or the clast size from which a sample is extracted. The second novel finding of this thesis concerns the convergence in magma ascent rate estimates from three independent chronometers. In one of the first studies of this magma type, I report relatively fast time scales for magma ascent (~10 minutes from mid-crustal depths) for a basaltic, sub-plinian eruption. Furthermore, the similarity of the estimated timescales from melt inclusions, embayments, and clinopyroxene indicate the validity of any of these chronometers in tracking magma ascent rate. This further expansion of the methods for assessing time scales of volcanic eruptions enables researchers to pursue the complicated relationship between magmatic volatiles, ascent rate, and volcanic explosivity. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).