Jonathan Perkins
Deciphering the life history of a zombie volcano
Uturuncu Volcano, Bolivia
Uturuncu volcano in southern Bolivia is one of the fastest-inflating volcanoes in the world, yet little is known about its magmatic history or its relationship to the Altiplano-Puna Magma Body (APMB), a 150 km-wide magma reservoir that underlies the volcano and is thought to be the source of some of the largest eruptions in the Central Andes (and the world). Key to understanding the source (and thus hazard potential) of this deformation we observe is figuring out just how long it has persisted. Geomorphology provides a way to look at signals of deformation over much longer timescales than we currently observe with satellites. By measuring the displacement of fossilized landforms that flank the volcano like lake shorelines and river beds, and we can examine Uturuncu's uplift history into the Pleistocene. .
This work is part of a larger National Science Foundation Continental Dynamics Project -- more info can be found here at the PLUTONS website: http://plutons.science.oregonstate.edu/
This project recently got some coverage in the media, and some of these stories feature
interviews with Dr. Finnegan, myself, and Dr. Shan de Silva (Oregon State University).
Here are some links below.
"Zombie volcano or New Supervolcano?" Discovery News
note: The above article traces the lineage of the term "zombie volcano" from the above Discovery article to the upcoming feature film VOLCANO ZOMBIES starring Danny Trejo.
"Rapidly inflating volcano creates growing mystery" Yahoo! News
This digital elevation model was created using stereo-paired high resolution imagery from the Worldview-1 satellite.
This DEM is overlain onto line of sight displacement measurements from InSAR satellites for the past two decades. The peak uplift, if similar in pre-historic times, would tilt lake shorelines away from the volcano.
Combined GPS and photogrammetry-derived 0.5 m digital elevation model (DEM) measurements of lake shoreline elevations. Shorelines do not match the prediction deformation (shown in pink)