Kikai Supervolcano Refills Magma Reservoir 7,300 Years After Giant Eruption
Updated
Updated · ScienceDaily · Oct 23
Kikai Supervolcano Refills Magma Reservoir 7,300 Years After Giant Eruption
3 articles · Updated · ScienceDaily · Oct 23
Summary
Underwater seismic surveys found a large magma-rich reservoir beneath Japan’s Kikai caldera, showing the supervolcano is rebuilding the same storage system involved in its giant eruption 7,300 years ago.
Chemical differences in a lava dome that has grown for about 3,900 years indicate the melt is newly injected from deeper crust or mantle, not leftover magma from the ancient blast.
Kobe University and JAMSTEC mapped the reservoir with airgun-generated seismic waves and ocean-bottom seismometers, using Kikai’s mostly submarine setting to run broad seafloor surveys.
The finding does not signal an imminent eruption, but offers a model for how giant calderas recharge over millennia and could sharpen monitoring of systems such as Yellowstone and Toba.