Objective With more than 500 million people living near active volcanoes worldwide, including many million in EU, improved understanding of how volcanoes work is absolutely necessary so as to be able reduce volcanic risk. The understanding of hazard-related processes once an eruption has progressed much in recent decades.No similar progress has been made in understanding the physical processes that occur inside volcanoes during unrest periods, some of which are manifest in surface deformation, landslides, caldera collapses, and eruptions. For a volcanic eruption to occur, it is normally necessary that a magma chamber becomes ruptured and a magma-filled fracture, a dyke, forms and is able to propagate to the surface.However, most dykes are non-feeders; they become arrested at depths in the volcanoes. Very many well-exposed arrested and feeder dykes are known from Tenerife, Iceland, and Italy, but many more need to be found and studied. The main aims of this research are to use field observations, analytical, and numerical models of dyke emplacement to help interpret unrest periods in active volcanoes and to assess volcanic hazards.The focus is on the following topics: the stress, thermal, and mechanical conditions which determine whether dykes injected from shallow chambers become arrested or reach the surface; the surface stress and deformation induced by a typical dyke propagating towards the surface; the thermal effects of dyke emplacement; how the eruptive fissure propagates laterally at the surface; and the role o f dykes in triggering landslides on large volcanic edifices.The results will be applied to active volcanoes in Spain, Italy and Iceland. In testing and applying the models, use will be made of existing extensive geological, geochemical, and geophysical data sets. The project results will be used to improve the understanding of the current unrest episode, such as in Tenerife since January 2004, with a view of assessing the probability of a dyke-fed eruption. Fields of science natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesgeologyvolcanologynatural sciencesmathematicspure mathematicsgeometry Keywords crustal layering crustal stresses dyke arrest dyke emplacement landslides stress fields surface deformation volcanic eruptions volcanic hazards Programme(s) FP6-MOBILITY - Human resources and Mobility in the specific programme for research, technological development and demonstration "Structuring the European Research Area" under the Sixth Framework Programme 2002-2006 Topic(s) MOBILITY-2.1 - Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowships (EIF) Call for proposal FP6-2004-MOBILITY-5 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme EIF - Marie Curie actions-Intra-European Fellowships Coordinator GEORG-AUGUST-UNIVERSITAET GOETTINGEN STIFTUNG OEFFENTLICHEN RECHTS Address Wilhelmsplatz 1 Goettingen Germany See on map Links Website Opens in new window EU contribution € 0,00
