Fingerprint of silicic magma degassing visualised through chlorine microscopy

Abstract

Volatile-rich silicic magma erupts either explosively as a jet of a mixture of pyroclasts and high-temperature gas, or non-explosively to effuse lava. The bifurcation of the eruption style is widely recognised as being controlled by the efficiency of open-system gas loss from vesiculated magma during ascent. However, the fundamental question of how the gas escapes from highly viscous magma still remains unsolved because the pathways of gas flow are rarely preserved in dense lava. Here we show that such pathways are visualised in groundmass glass using high-resolution chlorine (Cl) mapping analysis on the rhyolitic lava of the Mukaiyama volcano, Japan. The results showed that the glass was highly heterogeneous in Cl content. A spatial distribution of the Cl content in the groundmass glass showed that volatiles diffused towards most bubbles, but the bubbles collapsed into the dense melt rather than growing. All observations, in combination with melt inclusion analysis, indicate that vesiculation, the formation of interconnected bubble channels, open-system gas loss via the channels, and channel collapse repeated within the period of a few days to two weeks during ascent. This cycle repeated individually in centimetre-sized portions of magma with different timing.