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Disclosing the temperature of columnar jointing in lavas

Lamur, Anthony; Lavallée, Yan; Iddon, Fiona E.; Hornby, Adrian J.; Kendrick, Jackie E.; von Aulock, Felix W.; Wadsworth, Fabian B.

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Authors

Anthony Lamur

Yan Lavallée

Fiona E. Iddon

Adrian J. Hornby

Jackie E. Kendrick

Felix W. von Aulock



Abstract

Columnar joints form by cracking during cooling-induced contraction of lava, allowing hydrothermal fluid circulation. A lack of direct observations of their formation has led to ambiguity about the temperature window of jointing and its impact on fluid flow. Here we develop a novel thermo-mechanical experiment to disclose the temperature of columnar jointing in lavas. Using basalts from Eyjafjallajökull volcano (Iceland) we show that contraction during cooling induces stress build-up below the solidus temperature (980 °C), resulting in localised macroscopic failure between 890 and 840 °C. This temperature window for incipient columnar jointing is supported by modelling informed by mechanical testing and thermal expansivity measurements. We demonstrate that columnar jointing takes place well within the solid state of volcanic rocks, and is followed by a nonlinear increase in system permeability of <9 orders of magnitude during cooling. Columnar jointing may promote advective cooling in magmatic-hydrothermal environments and fluid loss during geothermal drilling and thermal stimulation.

Citation

Lamur, A., Lavallée, Y., Iddon, F. E., Hornby, A. J., Kendrick, J. E., von Aulock, F. W., & Wadsworth, F. B. (2018). Disclosing the temperature of columnar jointing in lavas. Nature Communications, 9(1), Article 1432. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03842-4

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Apr 16, 2018
Online Publication Date Apr 12, 2018
Publication Date Apr 12, 2018
Deposit Date Apr 26, 2018
Publicly Available Date Apr 26, 2018
Journal Nature Communications
Publisher Nature Research
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 9
Issue 1
Article Number 1432
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03842-4

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.





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