The article follows the typical pop-sci presentation of "scientists are gobsmacked by thing that's obvious to laymen," but of course it's really not like that. This is the abstract of the paper:
Quantitative estimates of magma storage are fundamental to evaluating volcanic dynamics and hazards. Yet our understanding of subvolcanic magmatic plumbing systems and their variability remains limited. There is ongoing debate regarding the ephemerality of shallow magma storage and its volume relative to eruptive output, and so whether an upper-crustal magma body could be a sign of imminent eruption. Here we present seismic imaging of subvolcanic magmatic systems along the Cascade Range arc from systematically modelling the three-dimensional scattered wavefield of teleseismic body waves. This reveals compelling evidence of low-seismic-velocity bodies indicative of partial melt between 5 and 15 km depth beneath most Cascade Range volcanoes. The magma reservoirs beneath these volcanoes vary in depth, size and complexity, but upper-crustal magma bodies are widespread, irrespective of the eruptive flux or time since the last eruption of the associated volcano. This indicates that large volumes of melts can persist at shallow depth throughout eruption cycles beneath large volcanoes.
bregma 1 hours ago [-]
It would probably benefit society as a whole if the abstracts of scientific papers (not their content) eschewed sesquipedalian loquaciousness.
Here's the same abstract for the more nearly human.
This paper presents evidence and analysis that shows large magma chambers can be found under all non-extinct volcanoes on the west coast of North America.
krisoft 3 minutes ago [-]
Idk. You can always just leave out details to make things simpler. I could rewrite your version of the abstract to "Scientist find magma under volcanoes." Much simpler! Leaves out a lot from yours, but so did yours leave out a lot from theirs.
I think in this case it is important to consider the audience one is writing to. And the abstract is written to other geologist. They want to know what kind of evidence they have (purely computational? new field measurements? what kind of modality?)
While for me this sentence[1] is hard to penetrate jargon, presumably for the intended audience it is packed full of information. Same as the sentence "we persist the setting in a local sqlite database using sqlalchemy ORM" means a lot more to some dev like me than "we save the setting". You can simplify it of course, but while you make it easier to understand to a lay audience it becomes less specific to the intended and specialist audience.
1: "seismic imaging of subvolcanic magmatic systems along the Cascade Range arc from systematically modelling the three-dimensional scattered wavefield of teleseismic body waves"
beowulfey 19 minutes ago [-]
Many journals use a separate summary statement which describes the findings and significance in more ordinary terms (eLife is a good example). An abstract has a specific purpose and it is not quite meant for a public audience. It can also vary depending on the journal, with less specialized journals being written for broader audiences.
(Although I will agree this one is a bit unnecessarily verbose)
mannykannot 1 hours ago [-]
Indeed - at no point does the article quote a geologist expressing surprise at the result. There are quotes saying, in effect, that new data overthrows or requires modification of a previously-held conjecture, but that is not the same as surprise. Experts in a given field are usually well aware of how conjectural a hypothesis is, as that is where current research is focused.
sigmoid10 6 hours ago [-]
>The team found that all of the volcanoes, including dormant ones, have persistent and large magma bodies.
I always thought dormant merely means asleep - as in not currently active, but may wake up at any time. This is different from extinct volcanoes, which would actually be expected not to erupt. Crater lake in particular has well established hydrothermal activity, which strongly suggests there is still something going on below and it may erupt again in the future. Any geologists can explain what the surprising thing here is besides the apparent difficulty to distinguish dormant and extinct?
tehwebguy 2 hours ago [-]
Likely place for them to be
bell-cot 5 hours ago [-]
> ...the long-standing belief that active volcanoes have large magma bodies that are expelled during eruptions...
I'm not a geologist, and my current "knowledge" of volcanology is mostly from the GeologyHub YouTube channel - but that is completely contrary to my understanding. If a serious magma chamber is emptied during an eruption, then the volcano above it (and some of the surrounding area) will collapse into the empty chamber. Because there's no way in hell that an empty magma chamber could support the weight of its own roof.
The vast majority of volcanic eruptions - even VEI 5 ones, like Mount St. Helens in 1980 - do not work like that. The magma chamber is still there, after. It's probably shrunk a bit - volcanologists measure ground-level uplift and subsidence in centimeters, to monitor that - and is a bit depleted of volatiles (volcanic gasses, which can act a bit like the fizz in a shaken bottle of soda). That's it.
lupusreal 3 hours ago [-]
Echoing what other commenters have said, I can't square the supposedly surprised scientists with what I thought I already knew about volcanoes. Can anybody figure out where the miscommunication occurred?
Matching my layman understanding, Wikipedia says that an extinct volcano is one that no longer has a magma supply, but that dormant ones may unexpectedly become active. The article on the other hand speaks of dormant volcanoes supposedly being understood to have "empty" magma chambers, which structurally makes no sense, and should very clearly differentiate them from active volcanoes. Wikipedia says that the demarcation between dormant and active is so wishy washy that the term dormant is basically obsolete in the scientific literature. So what gives?
mapt 2 hours ago [-]
I suspect it has something to do with the concept "magma chamber", as if there is a big, singular hole underneath each volcano, rather than a loose network of multiple layers of melted & semi-melted rock spread over tens of kilometers of crust depth, organized by geological strata, which periodically melts through an obstruction or solidifies into an obstruction.
6 hours ago [-]
metalman 5 hours ago [-]
the amount of data concerning the earths internal structure is growing in leaps and bounds. The ability to discern between rock types, water, oil, gas, faults and fractures, and molten and semi molten rocks is becoming much more precise.
The fun part is that siesmologists use the earths own movements and resulting siesmic and acoustical waves to build the picture, though the scale is intimidating, beyond human capacity to know in any fine detail.Add in ground penetrating radar and
experiments useing known explosive charges, placed in precise locations, and the fine resolution just gets better.
Bet the whole geology field is having fun.
Quantitative estimates of magma storage are fundamental to evaluating volcanic dynamics and hazards. Yet our understanding of subvolcanic magmatic plumbing systems and their variability remains limited. There is ongoing debate regarding the ephemerality of shallow magma storage and its volume relative to eruptive output, and so whether an upper-crustal magma body could be a sign of imminent eruption. Here we present seismic imaging of subvolcanic magmatic systems along the Cascade Range arc from systematically modelling the three-dimensional scattered wavefield of teleseismic body waves. This reveals compelling evidence of low-seismic-velocity bodies indicative of partial melt between 5 and 15 km depth beneath most Cascade Range volcanoes. The magma reservoirs beneath these volcanoes vary in depth, size and complexity, but upper-crustal magma bodies are widespread, irrespective of the eruptive flux or time since the last eruption of the associated volcano. This indicates that large volumes of melts can persist at shallow depth throughout eruption cycles beneath large volcanoes.
Here's the same abstract for the more nearly human.
I think in this case it is important to consider the audience one is writing to. And the abstract is written to other geologist. They want to know what kind of evidence they have (purely computational? new field measurements? what kind of modality?)
While for me this sentence[1] is hard to penetrate jargon, presumably for the intended audience it is packed full of information. Same as the sentence "we persist the setting in a local sqlite database using sqlalchemy ORM" means a lot more to some dev like me than "we save the setting". You can simplify it of course, but while you make it easier to understand to a lay audience it becomes less specific to the intended and specialist audience.
1: "seismic imaging of subvolcanic magmatic systems along the Cascade Range arc from systematically modelling the three-dimensional scattered wavefield of teleseismic body waves"
(Although I will agree this one is a bit unnecessarily verbose)
I always thought dormant merely means asleep - as in not currently active, but may wake up at any time. This is different from extinct volcanoes, which would actually be expected not to erupt. Crater lake in particular has well established hydrothermal activity, which strongly suggests there is still something going on below and it may erupt again in the future. Any geologists can explain what the surprising thing here is besides the apparent difficulty to distinguish dormant and extinct?
I'm not a geologist, and my current "knowledge" of volcanology is mostly from the GeologyHub YouTube channel - but that is completely contrary to my understanding. If a serious magma chamber is emptied during an eruption, then the volcano above it (and some of the surrounding area) will collapse into the empty chamber. Because there's no way in hell that an empty magma chamber could support the weight of its own roof.
The vast majority of volcanic eruptions - even VEI 5 ones, like Mount St. Helens in 1980 - do not work like that. The magma chamber is still there, after. It's probably shrunk a bit - volcanologists measure ground-level uplift and subsidence in centimeters, to monitor that - and is a bit depleted of volatiles (volcanic gasses, which can act a bit like the fizz in a shaken bottle of soda). That's it.
Matching my layman understanding, Wikipedia says that an extinct volcano is one that no longer has a magma supply, but that dormant ones may unexpectedly become active. The article on the other hand speaks of dormant volcanoes supposedly being understood to have "empty" magma chambers, which structurally makes no sense, and should very clearly differentiate them from active volcanoes. Wikipedia says that the demarcation between dormant and active is so wishy washy that the term dormant is basically obsolete in the scientific literature. So what gives?