Underneath Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano

[Astronuc]

Hawaii's big, booming eruptions are born from just under Kilauea volcano's peak, a new study confirms.

Two small reservoirs of molten rock (magma) feed Kilauea's recent eruptions, according to analysis of chemical tracers from the last 50 years of lava flows. The results suggest that Kilauea volcano also taps a deeper source, because the shallower magma chambers are too tiny to account for all of the lava that has streamed across the island's surface since 1983.

http://news.yahoo.com/double-trouble-found-under-hawaiis-kilauea-volcano-200943176.html

Pietruszka and his co-authors located the underground magma chambers by analyzing lead isotopes in Kilauea's lava rock. The isotopes, which are atoms of lead with different numbers of neutrons, trace the lava's history as it traveled underground before erupting. "Lead isotope ratios are like fingerprints imprinted on the magma before it enters the shallow plumbing system," Pietruszka said. "When you start building up many analyses, you can see patterns in the lead isotope ratios."

Kilauea is a single volcano with two very distinct lead isotope ratios in its summit lavas, . . .

It would be interesting to review the isotopics of other volcanos, which I'm sure has been done.

 

[Bystander]

Might be interesting to look at ratios NW along the chain, as a check of time dependence of "hot-spot" composition.

 

[Ophiolite]

It would be interesting to review the isotopics of other volcanos, which I'm sure has been done.

As the researchers describe the precision of this analysis as being new, it seems unlikely that comparable work has yet been done. One could reasonably expect that this will be a technique that is added to the toolkit of igneous petrologists. What is interesting to me is that it required the geophysical and the geochemical data to zero in on the probable 'truth'. Either alone would have left multiple plausible solutions.