MeMoVolc consensual document: a review of cross-disciplinary approaches to characterizing small explosive magmatic eruptions

Abstract

A workshop entitled “Tracking and understanding volcanic emissions through cross37 disciplinary integration: A textural working group.” was held at the Université Blaise Pascal (Clermont-Ferrand, France) on the 6-7th November 2012. This workshop was supported by the European Science Foundation (ESF). The main objective of the workshop was to establish an initial advisory group to begin to define measurements, methods, formats and standards to be applied in the integration of geophysical, physical and textural data collected during volcanic eruptions so as to homogenize procedures to be applied and integrated during both past and ongoing events. The working group comprised a total of 35 scientists from six countries (France, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland and Iceland). The group comprised eleven advisors from the textural analysis field, eleven from deposit studies, seven geochemists and six geophysicists. The four main aims were to discuss and define: 1) Standards, precision and measurement protocols for textural analysis; 2) Identify textural, field deposit, chemistry and geophysical parameters that can best be measured and combined; 3) Agree on the best delivery formats so that data can be sheared between, and easily used by, each group; 4) Review multi-disciplinary sampling and measurement routines currently used, and measurement standards applied, by each community. The group agreed that community-wide cross-disciplinary integration, centered on defining those measurements and formats that can be best combined, is an attainable but key global focus. Consequently, we prepared a final document to be used as the foundation for a larger, international textural working group to serve as the basis of fully realizing such a pandisciplinary goal in volcanology. Thus, we here report our initial conclusions and recommendations.