Linking Subaqueous, Subglacial, and Subaerial Volcanism: How Water Influences Eruption Dynamics and Creation of Volcanic Products

Water is ubiquitous on Earth and interaction with magma is common, leading to processes that are only partially understood. Most of Earth’s volcanism takes place in submarine settings, particularly at mid-oceanic ridges and oceanic arcs, but the vast majority of eruptions involving water, including those occurring under ice, are unobserved, thereby limiting our understanding of the eruptive processes and mechanisms involved. Deposits from subaqueous eruptions can be used, however, to reconstruct past eruption behaviour and even inform us on past global change. External water influences the eruptive style, resulting in powerful explosions that fuel phreatomagmatic eruptions and generate fine ash that can be difficult to forecast and, at another extreme, may be implicated in devastating poorly understood violent-Strombolian events. Water also impacts the morphology, transport, and deposition of the products of volcanic eruptions, for example creating floating pumice rafts and ash aggradation in plumes, and can create landforms diagnostic of the climactic conditions.

This Research Topic addresses the latest volcanological advances concerning magma-water interactions and their distinctive landforms and eruptive products wherever they occur, in the hydrosphere, cryosphere or atmosphere. The common thread of this article collection is the involvement and impact of magma interacting with water in all its forms, including snow and ice. It seeks to improve our understanding of the different ways in which water affects volcanism, including eruptions with only minor water input but which materially transforms the resulting eruptive processes in distinctive ways. New community research efforts and recent advances in remote sensing and deep-submergence technologies are enabling fresh discoveries of water-influenced deposits that shall transform our understanding. In addition, new laboratory, field-based, theoretical, experimental and numerical models have the potential to shed light on the physical and chemical processes associated with the generation, transportation and deposition of volcanic clasts in both effusive and explosive eruptions.

We welcome original studies, short research reports, reviews and methodological articles addressing all forms of interaction between water and magma and its impacts on the resulting deposits, using field and laboratory methods, analogue experiments, numerical simulations, geophysical studies, and remote sensing. Contributions using a full range of approaches are encouraged, including field, laboratory, and modeling studies that include geochemical, geophysical, geological, and multidisciplinary perspectives. Descriptions and analysis of modern and historical eruptions are particularly welcome, as are studies focused on volcanic risk assessment, analogue modelling experiments and deciphering Earth’s environmental record.