Rheological and Topographical Controls on Deformation Due to a Shallow Magma Reservoir

J. H. Johnson[1]
[1]University of Bristol School of Earth Sciences, Bristol, UK
Published in 2014

The use of high-resolution topography in the finite element model demonstrates that deformation from a shallow pressure source can be dramatically affected by overlying relief, not only in magnitude, but also in azimuth. This result is significant as it allows traditionally anomalous data to be evenly weighted during inversions for magma reservoir parameters.

The result that surface deformation may be either enhanced or subdued by varying the rheology of the medium in the model has profound consequences for the estimation of the depth and pressurization of a magma reservoir from field data. It means that the rheological properties must be well known for the estimations of depth and pressurization to be meaningful.