资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Building super-eruptive magma reservoirs in the cold, upper parts of Earth's crust requires a significant influx of magma over an extended period, suffcient to allow the magma to accumulate, differentiate and periodically erupt. Some models favour magma storage in a cold non-eruptible state, requiring extensive reactivation of the reservoirs before eruption, whereas others suggest storage at higher temperature and lower crystallinity, implying that magma in such reservoirs is readily eruptible. Consequently, constraining volcanic hazards requires observations directly linking magma residence timescales to the thermal state and crystallinity of storage. Here we simultaneously determine crystallization temperatures and ages of magmatic crystals of zircon and titanite in the 900 km(3) Kneeling Nun Tuff (New Mexico, USA), which allows us to place tight constraints on the long-term thermal evolution of the magma reservoir. We show that zircon and titanite crystals record more than 600,000 years of magma assembly and constrain the dominant storage conditions to low temperatures, set between the granitic solidus (680 to 700 degrees C) and the temperature of the onset of titanite crystallization (about 720 to 730 degrees C). We apply the zircon-titanite systematics to a suite of other super-eruptions and suggest that protracted low-temperature storage culminating in late-stage reheating is a widespread feature of large crystal-rich eruptions.