Relationships between magmatic properties and eruption magnitude of explosive eruptions at Japanese arc volcanoes during the last one hundred thousand years

Abstract

Several global databases of eruption properties have been developed in recent years, which contain eruption age, eruption magnitude, eruption style, and volcanic explosivity index. However, their examinations of the relationships between eruption and magmatic properties remain qualitative. To explore such relationships, we sampled and petrologically analyzed the eruptive products and have constructed a database of magmatic properties of erupted magmas at Japanese arc volcanoes during the last one hundred thousand years. The 43 erupted magmas were characterized not only by bulk SiO2 content, but also by preeruptive melt SiO2 (inferred from groundmass SiO2 content) and phenocryst contents, which are the second most straightforward proxies of physical and thermodynamic properties of preeruptive magmas. Sample data were collected through a unified procedure using chemical and image analyses and mass balance calculations to obtain groundmass compositions and phenocryst contents. We examined the relationships between magmatic properties and eruption magnitude, M, as the most representative eruption property. Our database includes explosive eruptions of M 3 to 8. By incorporating available literature data for 17 eruptions, we examined 60 eruptions in total. This study distinguished magmas from the bulk composition (e.g., basaltic, andesitic, dacitic and rhyolitic magmas) or melt composition (e.g., basaltic, andesitic, dacitic and rhyolitic melt-bearing magmas). Our results show that the maximum eruption magnitude gradually increases with increasing bulk SiO2 content. The maximum eruption magnitude shows a sharp increase around the compositional boundary between dacitic and rhyolitic melt-bearing magmas. For the eruptions of rhyolitic melt-bearing magmas, the maximum eruption magnitude decreases with increasing phenocryst content. The largest magnitude eruptions (M 8) were of rhyolitic melt-bearing, phenocryst-poor magmas. We compared our data for Japanese arc volcanoes with data for global volcanoes. Despite their different tectonic settings, most eruptions globally are consistent with the pattern observed for eruptions at Japanese arc volcanoes. Notable deviations are supereruptions (M > 7) of monotonous intermediate magmas that occurred more than a million years ago. Although more examination is needed, especially for smaller and effusive eruptions, the observed relationships suggest that melt SiO2 and phenocryst contents are related to maximum eruption magnitude, and should be fundamental components to characterize volcanoes and eruptions in future databases studies.