NSF Award
1423396
This award for Catalyzing New International Collaborations(CNIC) provides the PI, Michael Petronis, and two U.S. graduate students from New Mexico Highlands University with an opportunity to travel to the Czech Republic (CR) and initiate a collaboration with partners from the Czech Geological Survey and the Czech Academy of Sciences' Institute of Rock Structures and Mechanisms. Together the U.S.-Czech team will examine the growth of ancient volcanoes in the Jièín Volcanic Field, CR, and compare those volcanoes to ones in northern New Mexico. Their goal is to derive new paradigms for understanding the development of small volcanoes, known as cinder cones, which are the most common terrestrial volcanic feature on Earth. Through laboratory studies and field research at two or more Czech volcanic sites, the US-Czech team intends to test common models of small volcano construction that treat the magma feeder system as a simple dike or pipe-like conduit that transports magma vertically from a reservoir to the eruptive vent. Their alternative hypothesis maintains that feeder geometries beneath these apparently simple exteriors are considerably more complex. This catalytic effort is expected to establish essential ground work for follow-on cooperative research and applications to NSF-Tectonics and NSF-Petrology and Geochemistry programs with the parallel goal of involving under-represented U.S. students in futue field and laboraroty aspects of such projects, thereby contributing to the next generation of geoscientists, with early career international research experience.<br/><br/>If successful, new preliminary data should assist with defining the evolution of the anticipated, more complex magma feeder system, specifically, one that involves multiple, time-transgressive injections beneath the cone with magma transported vertically upward and downward and laterally toward and away from the central vent conduit. The team hypothesizes that magma supply rate (e.g., pulsed versus continuous), magma pressure as well as magma composition, influence the subvolcanic construction geometries and edifice deformation. Their field methods will include primary field observations of eruption products, deposit characteristics, and structural measurements, as well as sample collection. Laboratory methods are to include thin section petrology, paleomagnetic, anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility analysis, and geophysical surveys to map the subsurface structure. The new data obtained during these activities in partnership with Czech colleagues will enable preliminary assessments of magmatic flow patterns, sub-volcanic deformation (microstructures and paleomagnetism), and the subsurface structure of the volcanoes (geophysics). If the Czech Republic volcanoes yield results and data similar to that from sites previously studied by the PI, then the U.S.-Czech team maintains that this pattern of magma flow beneath small volcanoes may be established as a new norm, potentially transforming our fundamental understanding of the most abundant volcanic construct on Earth.
