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To research Latin American volcanism, volcano monitoring, and linking petrology and volcanology.
PhD project title:
Linking Petrological Data with Geophysical Monitoring Data for Tungurahua Volcano, Ecuador
Project description:
I am an igneous petrologist interested in Latin American volcanism, volcano monitoring, and linking petrology and volcanology. My research aims to tackle these themes, in collaboration with UCL, the Natural History Museum, London (NHM) and the Instituto Geofísico – Escuela Politécnica Nacional (IG-EPN) in Quito, Ecuador.
Volcano monitoring is vital for forecasting eruptions and enabling timely evacuations. While geophysical monitoring only detects surface reflections of deeper magmatic processes, petrology reveals the direct effect of these magmatic processes on the physical properties of the magma, thus contextualising geophysical monitoring data. In this project, I will conduct a retrospective petrological ash time-series analysis of the 1999-2016 eruptive period of Tungurahua volcano, Ecuador. This will help to elucidate the drivers of eruptive style transitions during this period, and illuminate any patterns between the petrological results, the inferred sub-surface magmatic processes, and the geophysical monitoring data.
I will be sampling a high-quality continuous ash record for the whole eruptive period and performing multiple petrological analyses on the same set of samples, including grain size distributions, componentry, clast morphology and textural analysis, glass and mineral chemistry analysis, and diffusion chronometry. Each method addresses processes occurring in different parts of the magmatic plumbing system, enabling a comprehensive spatial and temporal model of Tungurahua’s plumbing system to be built. Furthermore, I will directly compare how much the knowledge gained from each method would help to improve forecasts at Tungurahua, with the aim of determining which methods should be prioritised for volcano monitoring.