Hierarchical organization as a diagnostic approach to volcano mechanics: Validation on Piton de la Fournaise

Abstract

Self‐organized systems are often used to describe natural phenomena where power laws and scale invariant geometry are observed. The Piton de la Fournaise volcano shows power‐law behavior in many aspects. These include the temporal distribution of eruptions, the frequency‐size distributions of induced earthquakes, dikes, fissures, lava flows and interflow periods, all evidence of self‐similarity over a finite scale range. We show that the bounds to scale‐invariance can be used to derive geomechanical constraints on both the volcano structure and the volcano mechanics. We ascertain that the present magma bodies are multi‐lens reservoirs in a quasi‐eruptive condition, i.e. a marginally critical state. The scaling organization of dynamic fluid‐induced observables on the volcano, such as fluid induced earthquakes, dikes and surface fissures, appears to be controlled by underlying static hierarchical structure (geology) similar to that proposed for fluid circulations in human physiology. The emergence of saturation lengths for the scalable volcanic observable argues for the finite scalability of complex naturally self‐organized critical systems, including volcano dynamics.