Satellites reveal melting of rocks under volcanic zone, deep in Earth's mantle

[rangerrebew]

Satellites reveal melting of rocks under volcanic zone, deep in Earth's mantle

July 6, 2017 by Simon Lamb And Timothy Stern, The Conversation
 
Volcanoes erupt when magma rises through cracks in the Earth's crust, but the exact processes that lead to the melting of rocks in the Earth's mantle below are difficult to study.

In our paper, published today in the journal Nature, we show how it is possible to use satellite measurements of movements of the Earth's surface to observe the melting process deep below New Zealand's central North Island, one of the world's most active volcanic regions.


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-satellites-reveal-volcanic-zone-deep.html#jCp

[SunkenCiv]

It'll become interesting if they can correlate any of their data with a sudden eruption.  Of course, each time a volcano erupts, the geology down through to the mantle is altered, making each eruption (and they are typically short-lived events) unique.  This puts all such studies back into probability calcs, which yields, "sometime in the next 50 years" or what have you.

Vesuvius last erupted at mid-century, and the Roman-era eruption wasn't even the first to bury a town -- yet people live there to this day.  Cortez was marching to take on the Aztecs the first time and wandered through Cholula, which exists in the shadow of an active volcano.  Still there.  :)