What drives centuries-long polygenetic scoria cone activity at Barren Island volcano?

Abstract

Barren Island in the Andaman Sea is an active mafic stratovolcano, which had explosive and effusive eruptions, followed by caldera formation, in prehistoric time (poorly dated). A scoria cone within the caldera, marking volcanic resurgence, was active periodically from 1787 to 1832 (the historic eruptions). Since 1991, the same scoria cone has produced six eruptions, commonly including lava flows. Links between Barren Island's eruptions and giant earthquakes (such as the 26 December 2004 Great Sumatra megathrust earthquake) have been suggested, though there is no general correlation between them. The ≥227-year-long activity of the scoria cone, named here Shanku (“cone”), is normally driven by purely magmatic processes. I present a “source to surface” model for Barren Island and Shanku, including the source region, deeper and shallow magma chambers, volcanotectonics, dyking from magma chambers, and eruptions and eruptive style as controlled by crustal stresses, composition and volatile content. Calculations show that dykes ~0.5m thick and a few hundred meters long, originating from shallow-level magma chambers (~5km deep), are suitable feeders of the Shanku eruptions. Shanku, a polygenetic scoria cone (at least 13 eruptions since 1787), has three excellent analogues, namely Anak Krakatau (40 eruptions since 1927), Cerro Negro (23 eruptions since 1850), and Yasur (persistent activity for the past hundreds of years). This is an important category of volcanoes, gradational between small “monogenetic” scoria cones and larger “polygenetic” volcanoes.