Comparison of Mount Etna, Kilauea, and Piton de la Fournaise by a quantitative modeling of their eruption histories

Abstract

From published data we found characteristic relations between the amount V of erupted lava and the duration d of eruption for Mount Etna, Kilauea, and Piton de la Fournaise. The relation is similar between Mount Etna and Kilauea, where the increase of V with increasing d is slow, showing a trend of a lower flow rate for a larger eruption. For Piton de la Fournaise, however, the trend is distinctly different, showing a higher flow rate for a larger eruption. We constructed quantitative models of a magma system with reservoirs at various levels and tested hypotheses about the existence of large reservoirs under these volcanoes using the observed V‐d relations. We found that the observed V‐d relation is consistent with the presence of a large reservoir at a shallow depth under Kilauea, and with the presence of a large reservoir near the bottom of the volcanic edifice under Piton de la Fournaise. The above models for Kilauea and Piton de la Fournaise are characterized by a simple path from the mantle reservoir which leads to the shallowest reservoir connected to a hierarchy of channels with varying resistance to eruption sites. We obtained less satisfactory agreement between the observed V‐d relation and the predicted using our model for Mount Etna. Time histories of pressures in the reservoirs at various levels obtained by the modeling explain why inflation‐deflation cycles observed at Kilauea have not been reported for Piton de la Fournaise. The absence of volcano‐tectonic earthquakes with magnitude greater than ∼2.5 under Piton de la Fournaise is attributed to the simplicity of the magma path from the mantle to the shallowest reservoir and the underdeveloped rift zone, which result in a stress concentration localized only beneath the summit area.