Fundamentals of physical volcanology / Основы физической вулканологии

Our knowledge of the physics of how volcanoes work has expanded enormously over the past 40 years, as have our methods of studying volcanic processes. In the late 1960s, George Walker conducted experiments into the fall-out of volcanic particles from eruption clouds by using stopwatches to time the fall of pieces of tephra dropped down a stairwell at Imperial College, London. Now, technology exists which uses RADAR interferometry from satellites to monitor tiny changes in the shape of volcanoes, and broadband seismometers can detect the “heartbeat” (and “indigestion”) of volcanoes as magma moves around deep inside them. Sometimes, however, as we gain increasingly in-depth knowledge of a subject, it becomes all too easy to focus on the minute details and hard to see the fundamental principles underlying all the complex behaviours that we observe. In this book we have attempted to step back from the details, and to view volcanoes as systems governed by some basic physical principles. Our approach is to consider the physical processes that control the formation, movement and eruption of magma, starting in the source region and following the magma upwards. Our intention is to show that, for all the apparent complexity of volcanoes, a little basic physics can go a long way in explaining how they work, and that often eruptions that may at first sight look remarkably different from one another are, in fact, physically much the same.