Earth and Planetary Science Letters 333–334 (2012) 63–69

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Earth and Planetary Science Letters

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The role of melt-fracture degassing in defusing explosive rhyolite eruptions

at volcán Chaitén
Jonathan M. Castro a,b,n, Benoit Cordonnier c,d, Hugh Tuffen e, Mark J. Tobin f, Ljiljana Puskar f,
Michael C. Martin g, Hans A. Bechtel g
a
Institute of Geosciences, Becherweg 21, University of Mainz, 55099 Mainz, Germany
b
School of Geosciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
c
Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
d
Geological Institute, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland
e
Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, LA1 4YQ, UK
f
Australian Synchrotron, 800 Blackburn Rd., Clayton, Victoria, Australia
g
Advanced Light Source, 1 Cyclotron Rd., Berkeley, CA 94720, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o abstract

Article history: Explosive volcanic eruptions of silicic magma often evolve towards non-explosive emissions of lava.
Received 18 January 2012 The mechanisms underlying this transition remain unclear, however, a widely cited idea holds that
Received in revised form shear-induced magma fragmentation plays a critical role by fostering volatile loss from fragmentary
2 April 2012
magma and through ash-filled cracks termed tuffisite. We test this hypothesis by measuring H2O
Accepted 17 April 2012
concentrations within glassy tuffisite from the 2008–2011 rhyolitic eruption at volcán Chaitén, Chile.
Editor: B. Marty
We show that while H2O concentrations decrease next to tuffisite veins and at the margins of obsidian
fragments, the depletions cannot account for the disparity in H2O between explosively and effusively
Keywords: erupted rhyolite. Tuffisite vein lifetimes derived from diffusion modeling (min to h) imply degassing
obsidian
rates that are too slow to effectively degas magma, unless the magma was entirely fragmented to mm
eruption
or smaller particles. This level of brecciation may locally develop near conduit margins, but is
explosive–effusive transition
Chaitén unrealistic for entire conduits. The primary role of melt fracturing may therefore be to provide gas-
FTIR escape pathways for more efficient degassing of permeable vesicular magma in the conduit interior.
volcanology & 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction part of this degassing mechanism is that coherent magma behaves as

The broad range of volcanic eruption styles, bound by explosive
and effusive eruptions, is underpinned by magma’s ability to shed its
volatiles whilst rising to the surface. Magma loses its dissolved
volatiles via degassing, a two-part process involving firstly, short-
path-length (10’s to 100’s mm) diffusive transfer of volatile compo-
nents into an area of lower chemical potential (e.g., a melt–bubble
interface) and then advective transport of those exsolved volatiles to
the surroundings, such as the conduit margins and atmosphere
(Eichelberger, 1995). The common progression of explosive to
effusive eruption requires that magma degassing become more
effective with time such that magma loses most of its volatiles
during transit from storage to the surface. This can happen if, for
example, syneruptive gas escape occurs through permeable mag-
matic foam that after releasing its vapor, collapses to form dense lava
(Eichelberger et al., 1986; Taylor et al., 1983; Westrich et al., 1988;
Westrich and Eichelberger, 1994; Eichelberger, 1995). The critical
n
Corresponding author at: Institute of Geosciences, Becherweg 21, University of
Mainz, 55099 Mainz, Germany. Tel.: þ 49 6131 392 4146.
E-mail address: castroj@uni-mainz.de (J.M. Castro).
a chemically open system (Newman et al., 1988), and the ‘‘opening’’
of the system occurs through the development of bubble perme-
ability (e.g., Westrich and Eichelberger, 1994; Klug and Cashman,
1996; Okumura et al., 2009) and flow of exsolved volatiles upward
and out of permeable conduit walls (Jaupart and Alle gre, 1991;
Woods and Koyaguchi, 1994).
A recent hypothesis (Gonnermann and Manga, 2003) posits
that effective, open-system degassing of magma can happen in
response to shear-induced fracturing of melt (Stasiuk et al., 1996;
Rust et al., 2004; Rust and Cashman, 2007; Tuffen et al., 2003;
Cabrera et al., 2011; Yoshimura and Nakamura, 2010). According
to this hypothesis, strain-rate dependent brittle failure of the
magma prompts diffusive degassing of cm-sized fragments com-
bined with gas flow through cracks, thereby causing the ‘‘inhibi-
tion of explosive behavior’’ (Gonnermann and Manga, 2003).
Cabrera et al. (2011) discovered evidence of this degassing
mechanism in the form of H2O-concentration depletions around
a healed microfault in an obsidian bomb and suggested that these
signatures reflect an efficient degassing mechanism that could
explain the transition from explosive to effusive eruption in silicic
volcanoes. Does shear fracturing of silicic magma really play such
an important role in syn-eruptive magma degassing and forcing

0012-821X/$ - see front matter & 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2012.04.024
64 J.M. Castro et al. / Earth and Planetary Science Letters 333–334 (2012) 63–69

Fig. 1. Tuffisite-bearing bombs collected from volcán Chaitén. Bombs are typically dense and glassy like (a) and (b), but some are vesicular as shown in (c) (sample ChR-FT-1).
Frames d–f give photomicrographic views of three superjacent frames and show the tuffisite-vein-filling material and fine structure of the fracture margin. Note the lobate
wall structures in (d); these indicate flowage of melt into the vein after it had formed from brittle deformation, and therefore signals the formation of the vein above the
calorimetric glass transition possibly due to shear-induced fracturing. Note also the microvesicular grain in (e), which also indicates viscous deformation following initial
fragmentation. Frame f shows a thin tuffisite vein transecting a pumiceous bomb (sample ChR-FT-1) containing roughly 32 percent irregular shaped vesicles by volume.

eruptive transitions? If so, the fractures and fragments should
show evidence of degassing at their margins and should have
‘‘lifetimes’’ that allow significant release of vapor on the timescale
of magma ascent and eruption. The fracturing process, further-
more, would have to repeat through cycles that allow progres-
sively more gas to bleed off the rising magma (Chouet et al.,
2005), either through upward flow or migration through perme-
able conduit walls (Jaupart and Alle gre, 1991).
Until now, testing the melt-fracture degassing hypothesis has
been hampered by a lack of observed eruptions that could provide
fresh samples and a timeline for the explosive-to-effusive transi-
tion. The 2008 eruption of volcán Chaitén provides both, the
stringent explosive-to-effusive timeline, and fresh glassy samples
spanning the entire eruption interval. On early 2 May 2008,
volcán Chaitén explosively erupted hydrous pumice, and 10 days
later, began to rapidly effuse (  20–100 m3 s  1; Pallister et al.,
2010) chemically identical lava concurrently with tephra emis-
sions (Lara, 2008) and sporadic large explosions (Smithsonian
Insitution, 2008). The lava shed more than 90% of its water by the
time it emerged (initial H2O  4 wt%; Castro and Dingwell, 2009).
Moreover, the large effusive flux (Pallister et al., 2010) suggests a
conduit-scale process was acting to degas magma, rather than a
localized mechanism near the conduit margins (Gonnermann and
Manga, 2003; Rust and Cashman, 2007).
Here we evaluate the role shear fracturing played in fostering
magma degassing and the explosive–effusive transition at Chai-
tén. Shear fracturing is manifested as tuffisite veins in obsidian
(Fig. 1), which form when the stress exceeds a critical threshold
for viscous flow (Gonnermann and Manga, 2003; Tuffen et al.,
2003). We have analyzed H2O-concentrations on tuffisite veins in
order to assess the amount and rates of degassing of magma that
would erupt effusively at volcán Chaitén.
2. Samples and methods
Tuffisites are non-welded to completely welded clastic mate-
rials filling veins in the country rock surrounding silicic conduits
and in the conduit-filling lavas themselves (Stasiuk et al., 1996;
Tuffen et al., 2003; Heiken et al., 1988; Tuffen and Dingwell,
2005). Juvenile tuffisites are common at Chaitén volcano, where
they occur as ubiquitous blocks (5–50 cm) on the crater rim and
flanks (Fig. 1). Their position atop both the Plinian fall and
column-collapse surge deposits suggests the bombs were ejected
as early as the waning stages of Plinian activity in the second
week of May 2008 (Pallister et al., 2010; Lara, 2008). At this time,
lava extrusion had begun and was punctuated by large explosions
from the same vent that fueled effusive and ash-venting activity
(La Penna, 2009, pers. comm.); these explosions likely reflect
vent-clearing blasts that mined out parcels of dense tuffisite-
bearing magma within the conduit. Tuffisite veins in these bombs
(cm’s to dm’s in length) contain moderately welded fine ash and
fine glassy lapilli. The vein walls often have lobate structures
along their margins signaling secondary flowage of melt into the
vein after it had formed (Fig. 1d). Such textural evidence supports
the interpretation that the veins formed in response to shear-
induced failure of magma (Tuffen et al., 2003).
Of 35 bombs examined on Chaitén’s rim, 28 were bore tuffisite
veins. Of these, five were selected for H2O analysis using synchro-
tron FTIR. We also analyzed H2O in obsidian from the following
deposits so that tuffisite degassing could be related to the early
and later eruptive phases: (1) Plinian-fall, (2) pyroclastic cone
formed during simultaneous sub-Plinian explosive and effusive
activity, and (3) lava formed in early May, 2008.
We measured the water concentrations in and around tuffisite
veins by SFTIR at the Infrared Microspectroscopy Beamline at the
Australian Synchrotron (AS) and Beamline 1.4.3 at the Advanced
Light Source (ALS), USA. Measurements were made on spots (3–
10 mm diameter), along line traverses, and as 2D maps. Experiments
were performed in transmission mode on doubly polished wafers
ranging in thickness from 30 to 570 mm with IR microscopes (Bruker
at the AS and NicPlan at ALS) having MCT detectors. Wafers were cut
perpendicular to the orientation of fracture walls and the tuffisite
vein was held intact by impregnation in epoxy. Background spectra
comprising the signal of a sample-free aperture were collected every
5 min. All experiments were collected with 16 to 128 scans and at
 J.M. Castro et al. / Earth and Planetary Science Letters 333–334 (2012) 63–69
4 cm  1 spectral resolution. Spot-mode measurements were made in
groups of several (5–15) closely spaced ( 10 mm) spots positioned
in discrete grains. This procedure allowed us to assess grain-scale
H2O heterogeneity, which turned out to be very little, and provided a
number of separate points to average. Sample spectra were pro-
cessed using flexi-curve and linear baseline fits to the hydrous-
component peaks. Differences in the absorbance values of hydrous
species bands were typically less than 2% between the two baseline
methods. Magmatic CO2 was not detected in any of the samples.
Absorbance values in conjunction with absorption coefficients
(Ihinger et al., 1994; Newman et al., 1986) and the Beer–Lambert
law were used to determine the concentration of each hydrous
species (H2O or OH  ) in weight fraction. Where possible, we used
the absorbance of the OH  peak at 4512 cm  1 and molecular H2O
peak at 5200 cm  1 to quantify individual and total hydrous
components. The total-H2O content inferred from these bands
was checked against the amount given by the peak at 3570 cm  1.
In most cases, there was good agreement ( o5% relative differ-
ence) between these totals. On sample wafers that were too thin
(or dry) to produce good peaks at 5200 cm  1, we used the
1630 cm  1 peak to determine the amount of molecular H2O
(Stolper, 1982), and added that to the value from the
4512 cm  1 peak to determine the total water. We only used
results in which there was o5% relative difference between the
total water content inferred from the sum of 4512 and 1630 cm  1
values and that of 3570 cm  1. Spot spacing in linear profiles was
either 5 or 10 mm and 10–30 mm in 2D maps.
3. Results
H2O and OH  concentrations plot in two distinct clusters corre-
spond to the pyroclastic obsidians, and the ensemble comprised of
lava, tuffisite bombs, and tuffisite vein ash (Fig. 2). The Plinian and
sub-Plinian pyroclasts contain more OH  at fixed total water content
than the effusive and tuffisite-bomb obsidians. This pattern reflects
distinct thermal histories corresponding to different magma ascent
(and cooling) histories (Stolper, 1989; Zhang et al., 1995). Relatively
rapid ascent of the Plinian eruptives resulted in higher quenching
temperatures, explaining their elevated OH  . By contrast, slower
magma ascent enabled protracted cooling and conversion of more
OH  to H2O in the tuffisite bombs and lava (Stolper, 1989; Zhang
et al., 1995). These interpretations are verified by cooling rate
calculations (Zhang et al., 2000) made on the Plinian, tuffisite-bomb,
and effusive obsidians (Supplementary material; Fig. S1). These data
indicate significantly higher cooling rates in Plinian pyroclastic
obsidians (500 K s  1) compared to tuffisite-bomb ( 1 K s  1) and
effusive obsidians ( 0.01 K s  1). Most importantly, the data suggest
that magma parcels corresponding to the lava and tuffisite bombs
followed similar Pressure–Temperature–time (P–T–t) paths, as their
hydrous speciations form a single trend (Fig. 2). Note that because the
total water content retained in obsidian (H2Ot; diagonal lines, Fig. 2)
is a strong function of confining pressure (P) through the H2O-
solubility relation (e.g., Newman and Lowenstern, 2002), and hydrous
speciation is strongly temperature (T) and cooling rate dependent
(Stolper, 1989), then a trend formed by a time-series of samples, such
as the tuffisite bombs and later-erupted lavas, could record the time
variation of those two variables, i.e., a P–T–t path. Thus, the glassy
tuffisite bombs, by virtue of their forming a hydrous-speciation trend
with the lava samples (Fig. 2), likely record an intermediate step in
the degassing-induced transition to effusive behavior.
Fig. 3 shows the H2O distributions in and around tuffisite
veins. Here, the H2O-content reflects the sum of molecular-H2O
and OH  -groups. In all maps, H2O decreases within 50 to 300 mm
of the crack or particle margins, consistent with diffusive degas-
sing of magmatic water into cracks (e.g., Cabrera et al., 2011;
65
Fig. 2. Hydrous speciation in Chaitén pyroclastic and effusive obsidians as deter-
mined by synchrotron-FTIR. The amount of molecular H2O and OH  groups dissolved
in the silicate glass are given on the y- and x-axes, respectively. The total water
contents are indicated by dashed diagonal guidelines on the figure. The data fall into
two distinct groups, one comprising tuffisite bombs, vein-filling ash and obsidian
lava, and the other including obsidian pyroclasts from the Plinian and sub-Plinian
activity (transitional cone). Because the proportions of OH  and molecular H2O vary
with cooling history (e.g., Stolper, 1989) whereby rapid quenching at higher
temperatures preserves larger amounts of hydroxyl water for a given total water
content, the two fields of data reflect relatively fast quenching in the explosive phases
compared to obsidian erupted as tuffisite bombs and lava. The relatively lower
amounts of hydroxyl and correspondingly higher molecular water contents in bomb,
tuffisite, and lava flow obsidians is consistent with protracted cooling and accordingly
lower closure temperatures. This interpretation supports the notion that the bombs
came from what was probably dense, partly degassed magma forming along conduit
margins and then was periodically excavated during pulses of explosive activity. The
continuity between the bomb speciation data and that of the lava flows suggests that
the formation of lava is the physical and chemical extension of the path followed by
the bomb and tuffisite magma.
Castro et al., 2005). The total H2O loss at vein and particle margins
is relatively low ( 25% of far field) and appears not to have been
sufficient to strip significant quantities of water from the melt.
However, the ability of cracks to channel gases derived distally
could have fostered outgassing, or the expulsion of previously
exsolved volatiles to the surroundings (e.g., Stasiuk et al., 1996;
Chouet et al., 2005), especially if the cracks were numerous and
remained open for a sufficient amount of time. Since the H2O-
concentration gradients developed over time, they can be used to
estimate the timescales that the veins were active and also place
bounds on the local diffusive degassing rates into cracks.
4. Discussion
H2O-concentration gradients develop because H2O-solubility
at the crack margin is lower due to a pressure drop during
fragmentation. Melt fracturing due to combined shear and tensile
stress will create such a low-pressure condition (Tuffen and
Dingwell, 2005). If shortly after cracking, the pressure within
the cavities equilibrates to near-hydrostatic (Heiken et al., 1988),
then the resultant H2O-solubility drop driving diffusion at the
crack wall can be assessed from the solubility of H2O in rhyolite
melt (Newman and Lowenstern, 2002). For example,  0.8 wt%
H2O content has a solubility pressure of  5.3 MPa (at 825 1C),
and this corresponds to a depth of about 230 m, assuming magma
density of 2300 kg m  3. If the pressure at this depth were to
decrease to hydrostatic during a cracking event, then the new
pressure would be 2.3 MPa, assuming a pressure gradient of
 0.01 MPa m  1. The associated H2O-solubility shift would favor
an equilibrium melt-H2O content of  0.53 wt%. These values
(0.8–0.53 wt%) are comparable to the values measured along the
66 J.M. Castro et al. / Earth and Planetary Science Letters 333–334 (2012) 63–69

Fig. 3. H2Ot-concentration maps across (a) tuffisite-bearing obsidian, (b) vesicular rhyolite clast in a tuffisite vein, (c) a dense obsidian fragment with a vein and,
(d) tuffisite-bearing vein. Each profile plots the total water concentration (H2Ot), which was determined either from the broad asymmetrical peak positioned at 3570 cm  1,
or from summing the individual molecular H2O and OH  groups derived from 5200 cm  1 and 4500 cm  1, respectively. Clear white areas in photomicrographs (left and
lower right frames) are dense glass whereas the dark domains are fine tuffisite ash. Colorful spots on photomicrographs indicate analysis points. Vertical dashed lines on
the profiles in (a) and (b) indicate the glass–tuffisite matrix boundaries. All maps show depletion of H2O at the margins of veins or fragments, indicating that H2O-diffusion
occurred from the melt into a low-pressure tuffisite zone.

Fig. 4. 1D-diffusion-model fits to natural H2O concentration profiles. These models correspond to 625 1C. 825 1C results are shown in Supplementary Table 1. Best-fit
diffusion times are shown by the central curve and the bounding curves differ by an order of magnitude in time. (a) CHRIMB_2LHS 7.5 hrs, (b) Tuffvein_6 1.6 hrs,
(c) CHRIMB_3RHS 4.7 hrs and (d) TVDZ_45_2 1 hrs.
 J.M. Castro et al. / Earth and Planetary Science Letters 333–334 (2012) 63–69 67

H2O profiles, reinforcing the interpretation that tuffisite veins uniformly close to 0.6 wt%. The precise degassing criterion for this
acted as low-pressure sinks for diffusive degassing. and other model runs was a 97% H2O decrease of the interval (i.e.,
We fitted H2O-concentration profiles with solutions to the 1D 0.97  0.2 wt%) marking the end of the simulation. This criterion
chemical diffusion equation in Cartesian coordinates (Castro et al., was chosen so because the sensitivity of the model decreases as
2005) in order to estimate diffusive degassing times. Diffusion is the concentration asymptotically approaches the boundary value
described by concentration at very long times. In principle, it would take
infinite time for the initial 0.8 wt% H2O to decay to the exact
@c
¼ rðDrcÞ ð1Þ 0.6 wt% limit across the full melt parcel. Degassing to lava-like
@t
levels (e.g., from  0.4 to about 0.2 wt% H2O) would take roughly
where c is the H2O concentration (wt%), t is time (s), and D twice as long as the interval from 0.8 to  0.6 wt% because of the
(m2 s  1) is the diffusion coefficient, a function of T, P, and c H2O-compositional dependence of D.
(Zhang et al., 1991; Zhang and Behrens, 2000). Eq. (1) was solved Diffusive degassing will become less effective with time,
numerically by an explicit finite-difference method. The model unless the fracture density is high. When fractures are numerous
assumes that H2O-molecules are the diffusing species, a pre-crack and closely spaced, the degassing rate is enhanced because there
melt-H2O concentration equal to the plateau value away from the are more surfaces to degas from. This point is illustrated in Fig. 5,
crack, and a fixed-H2O concentration at the stationary crack
margin equal to the low value on the profile. The H2O, once
diffused into the crack, is assumed to instantaneously flow away
from the crack so that the crack-boundary H2O concentration
remains fixed. We assume, furthermore, that the preserved
natural concentration profiles did not evolve after the eruption,
that is, we assume diffusion stopped after relatively rapid
quenching of tuffisite bombs.
We ran models at 825 and 625 1C, values which bracket the
eruption temperature (Castro and Dingwell, 2009) and the
approximate calorimetric glass transition (Giordano et al., 2008),
respectively. H2O-concentration profile model-fits (Fig. 4) range
from minutes (at 825 1C) to several tens of hours (at 625 1C; Table
S3, Supplementary material). These times ( 102–105 s) represent
possible crack ‘‘lifetimes’’ in that diffusion would have started at
the moment of fracture and continued until the bombs were
quenched upon eruption. Tuffisite-veined magma that was not
ejected may have had longer degassing intervals, but other
processes could have acted to render the veins impermeable,
such as welding or clogging with ash (Tuffen et al., 2003; Tuffen
and Dingwell, 2005).
The tuffisite vein lifetimes represent possible timescales over
which local diffusive degassing and distal gas channeling could
have taken place. Are the timescales sufficient for fracture degas-
sing to defuse explosive rhyolite eruptions? Clearly, during the
time that they were active, the veins could have allowed passage
of pressurized vapor and pyroclastic material from deeper and
distal parts of the magma, thereby relieving pressure. That the
calculated fracture lifetimes (h) are much shorter than the
duration of sustained pyroclastic venting (several days), suggests
that, if these timescales represent most fracture lifetimes, then
many cycles of fracturing, gas venting, and healing would have to
occur to effectively alleviate magma vapor overpressure in the
conduit (Stasiuk et al., 1996). It is important to note, however,
that despite the likeliness of repeated fracturing, degassing, and
healing (Tuffen et al., 2003), the mere pyroclastic origin of the
bombs suggests that the ability of tuffisite veins to act as high- Fig. 5. (A) Plot of melt-fracture degassing time versus fracture spacing for two
permeability pathways for previously exsolved vapor to escape hypothetical fracture geometries, plane-parallel (pln) and spherical (sph) and two
was at times limited and may have lead to overpressure in the eruption temperatures (see also Fig. S2). The broad vertical gray stripe is the time
between the beginning of the explosive eruption and the first appearance of lava
conduit and explosive fragmentation. at the vent based on direct observations at volcán Chaitén in May 2008. The
The effectiveness of local diffusive degassing from fractures dashed and solid lines show times to degas magma from 0.8 and 0.6 wt% H2O
depends on the pervasiveness of fracturing and the rate of across a range of fracture spacing. The time required to degas magma is indicated
degassing from those fractures. H2O-concentration profiles and by selecting a particular fracture spacing, e.g., 1 mm, and then extrapolating over
to the dashed or solid lines, and finally reading the corresponding time value on
associated model-fits indicate that diffusive degassing is both
the abscissa. Fracture degassing across the stated H2O concentration interval is
spatially limited and time consuming. For example, near-com- clearly faster when the magma is hotter and has a spherical distribution of
plete diffusive degassing of a 200 mm-wide melt parcel from fractures compared to plane-parallel fractures. In (B), a step-wise degassing
0.8 to about 0.6 wt% would require about 5  104 s ( 14 h) at history involving three intervals (from 0.8 to 0.2 wt%) and two fracture geometries
825 1C, and about 5  105 s ( 140 h) at 625 1C. These estimates is investigated. Bold and horizontal arrows show the cumulative time of degassing
for the spherical fracture networks (solid arrows) and the planar fracture networks
were determined by running the diffusion model for a sufficient (dashed). In both cases highly fractured magma (o1 mm spacing) is required to
amount of time so as to reduce the initial composition of 0.8 wt% degas melt within the timeframe observed for the explosive-to-effusive transition
H2O by approximately 0.2 wt%, so that the final composition is at volcán Chaitén.
68 J.M. Castro et al. / Earth and Planetary Science Letters 333–334 (2012) 63–69
which shows the effect of fracture spacing on the degassing time
of a 1 m cube of magma (Supplementary material). In this
simulation, two or more plane-parallel or spherical shaped cracks
are introduced in a body of melt and then the 1-D diffusion
equation is solved at the new melt–crack interfaces to track
amount of diffusive degassing from the cracks with time. The
diffusion equation is solved either in Cartesian or spherical
coordinates depending on whether plane-parallel or spherical
shaped crack geometries are modeled, respectively
(Supplementary material). We assume that once H2O diffuses
across the melt–crack interface, it instantaneously flows away
from the crack boundary. In this way, the cracks are assumed to
be infinitely permeable, which allows the H2O content in the melt
at the crack margin to stay constant, thereby upholding the
constant composition boundary condition. These conditions com-
prise the most favorable (i.e., the fastest) scenario for the melt-
fracture degassing mechanism to work because the crack-bound-
ary H2O-concentration remains constant, fostering the largest
possible composition gradient across the parcel of melt. Calcu-
lated degassing timescales are thus minimum times needed to
alleviate melt of a pre-defined amount of H2O by way of diffusive
fracture degassing. As the number of cracks increases, the crack
spacing decreases (see Supplementary Fig. S2) and so does the
degassing timescale (Fig. 5A). As seen in Fig. 5A, the time to
diffusively degas melt from 0.8 to  0.6 wt% decreases by several
orders of magnitude ( 4107– o104 s) as the plane-parallel frac-
ture spacing decreases from about 1 cm to 100 mm. Cracks having
a spherical distribution, analogous to fully brecciated magma,
degas nearly an order of magnitude faster than an arrangement of
plane-parallel cracks.
These simulations show that dense, non-vesicular magma can
effectively degas if it is thoroughly fragmented. Note, however,
that this simulation (Fig. 5A) represents only a single degassing
interval (i.e., from 0.8 to  0.6 wt%) and degassing to the level
observed in the May 2008 lava (  0.2 wt%) would require more
time and finer brecciation (Fig. 5B). At Chaitén, the  10-day-long
period (  106 s) preceding the onset of effusion establishes a time
limit for fracture degassing to operate. In Fig. 5B, we assess the
amount of time required to degas the magma from 0.8 wt% to
0.2 wt% using a series of three equal-sized degassing ‘‘steps’’:
0.8 to 0.6 wt%, 0.6 to  0.4 wt% and 0.4 to  0.2 wt%. These steps
were chosen to resemble the approximate H2O-concentration
decreases occurring in response to pressure drops within cracks
that form episodically and assuming their internal pressure
adjusts from lithostatic (or magmastatic) to hydrostatic after a
short time. We performed the calculation in this way to assess
order-of-magnitude estimates of degassing timescale to which,
we can compare to the explosive–effusive timeline at Chaitén.
The even-valued pressure drops and correspondingly equal-
spaced degassing intervals are not meant to imply that this
specific degassing pattern was followed by the magma. As seen
in Fig. 5B, degassing from 0.8 to  0.2 wt% H2O could occur within
the permitted 10-day-long timeframe if magma were fragmented
to grains smaller than  1 mm and erupting at 825 1C. This
fracture density is probably unrealistically high for an effusive
eruption anywhere within the conduit except for at its margins,
where the conditions for shear fracturing are met (Gonnermann
and Manga, 2003). The width of the fractured zone (d) in a
coherent-magma-filled cylindrical conduit can be estimated from
a formula (d ECRm0.1) provided by Gonnermann and Manga
(2003). Here, C is a constant, 0.01 Pa s  0.1, R is the conduit radius
(m) and m is the relaxed melt viscosity (Pa s). For reasonable
values of melt viscosity (106–108 Pa s) and a conduit radius of
50 m, which we estimated from aerial views of the dome in the
first week of its eruption (Smithsonian Institution, 2008), the
width of the brecciated margins would be between 1 and 3 m.
Despite the high degree of brecciation extant in this narrow zone,
fracture-degassing would not have likely lead to wholesale
degassing of the bulk magma due to the relatively localized
nature of the brecciated zone. In other words, magma in the
marginal shear zone would have contributed very little (o1 vol%)
to the large flux of dense, coherent, and degassed lava emerging
from the vent (Pallister et al., 2010; Lara, 2008).
In order for melt-fracturing to effectively degas magma, fractures
must access pockets of magma that already contain a significant
amount of exsolved volatiles, i.e., vesicular magma, as this would tap
a source of readily expulsed volatiles and create new surfaces
through which diffusive degassing could operate. These conditions
could be met if cracks propagated from the dense conduit margins
inward towards vesicular magma, or if the melt fractures nucleated
and grew in the bubbly magma itself (Okumura et al., 2010). The
presence of rare, but well-preserved tuffisites in vesicular rhyolite at
Chaitén (Fig. 1c and e) suggests that melt fracturing of bubbly
magma may indeed render degassed magma; the sample shown in
Fig. 1 is among the most degassed ( 0.1 wt%) samples collected at
Chaitén (Supplementary Table S2). We would expect these veins to
form by the same shear-induced process, only much more easily
than in dense non-vesicular magma due the presence of bubbles,
which promote non-Newtonian rheology (Llewellin et al., 2002),
strain localization (e.g., Okumura et al., 2008, 2009, 2010), reduced
magma strength (e.g., Martel et al., 2000; Okumura et al., 2010) and a
lower viscous-brittle threshold (e.g., Zhang, 1999; Okumura et al.,
2010; Laumonier et al., 2011). Whether or not this ‘‘foam-fracturing’’
mechanism could prompt effusive behavior remains an open ques-
tion. As shown by Okumura et al. (2010), moderately vesicular
rhyolite melts subjected to simple shear will fracture and degas
locally, but bulk degassing of the hydrous bubbly magma outboard of
the fracture would still require repeated, rapid and efficient healing
of early formed fractures (Yoshimura and Nakamura, 2010) followed
by fracturing in other hydrous domains.
5. Concluding remarks
To conclude, the short length scales over which diffusive-
degassing operates, and the relatively short timescales that the
fragment-laden tuffisite veins remain open means that fracturing
in rhyolite melt cannot serve as a time-effective magma degassing
mechanism. This finding belies recent suggestions that melt-
fracturing effectively promotes the oft-observed explosive-to-
effusive transition at silicic volcanoes (Cabrera et al., 2011). While
melt fracturing may facilitate local degassing of pulverized
magma strictly at the conduit margins (Gonnermann and
Manga, 2003), it could also augment lateral degassing of vesicular
magma in the conduit interior by virtue of providing long path-
ways through which gas can escape. The effectiveness of shear
fractures to alleviate volatile overpressure in conduits and stave off
explosions ultimately requires high fracture densities, textures and
geometries that foster high permeability, and long fracture lifetimes
prior to their welding shut. Future work should examine the role that
tuffisites in permeable foams play (Eichelberger et al., 1986; Fig. 1c
and f), as these may provide a faster mechanism for degassing large
volumes of melt in shallow volcanic conduits by virtue of the higher
surface area of bubbly magma, which could favor higher rates of
diffusive and advective gas loss.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Australian Synchrotron and Advanced
Light source for the beamtime required to perform this study.
Valuable field support was provided by the USGS Volcano Hazards
 J.M. Castro et al. / Earth and Planetary Science Letters 333–334 (2012) 63–69
Program and SERNAGEOMIN. The authors appreciate the con-
structive comments of Caroline Martel and an anonymous
reviewer, which greatly improved the manuscript. HT was sup-
ported by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and BC
the Marie Curie Action RHEA-254407.
Appendix A. Supporting information
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found
in the online version at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2012.04.
024.
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