Feasibility of melt segregation from a crystal mush in response to the 2011-2012 eruption at Cordon Caulle, Chile.

Abstract

The 2011–2012 eruption at Cordón Caulle in Chile produced crystal-poor rhyolitic magma with crystal-rich mafic enclaves whose interstitial glass is of identical composition to the host rhyolite. Eruptible rhyolites are thought to be genetically associated with crystal-rich magma mushes, and the enclaves within the Cordón Caulle rhyolite support the existence of a magma mush from which the erupted magma was derived. Moreover, towards the end of the 2011–2012 eruption, subsidence gave way to inflation that has on average been continuous through at least 2020. We hypothesize that magma segregation from a crystal mush could be the source of the observed inflation. Conceptually, magma withdrawal from a crystal-poor rhyolite reservoir caused its depressurization, which could have led to upward flow of interstitial melt within an underlying crystal mush, causing a new batch of magma to segregate and partially recharge the crystal-poor rhyolite body. Because the compressibility of the crystalline matrix of the mush is expected to be lower than that of the interstitial melt, which likely contains some fraction of volatile bubbles, this redistribution of melt would result in a net increase in volume of the system and in the observed inflation. We use numerical modelling of subsurface magma flow and storage to show under which conditions such a scenario is supported by geodetic and petrologic observations.