Seismicity and Magmatic System of the Changbaishan Intraplate Volcano in East Asia

Abstract

A high‐precision earthquake catalog is made from continuous waveform data recorded at 360 portable seismographs deployed for one month in the Changbaishan‐Tianchi volcanic area based on an automatic earthquake detection and location workflow. Then we investigate detailed 3‐D structures of P and S wave velocities (Vp and Vs) and Vp/Vs ratio of the crust beneath the study region. Our results reveal a high‐Vp/Vs zone accompanied with active volcanic earthquakes beneath the Tianchi caldera at ∼5 km depth, which may reflect a magma chamber. The intense seismic activities within 2 km depth beneath the Tianchi caldera from 2002 to 2005 occurred directly above the magma chamber revealed by this study, which could be related to upward migration of high‐pressure volatiles originating from the magma chamber. A potential middle‐crustal magma chamber might provide continuous magmatic materials feeding the upper‐crust magma chamber and lead to ruptures of surrounding rocks, resulting in two swarms of volcanic seismicity during the observation period. We deem that the diverse eruption styles of the Changbaishan volcano are closely associated with the multilevel structure of magma chambers in the upper and middle crust.

Dynamics of Explosive Eruptions of Changbaishan Volcano, NE China, since the late Pleistocene from the Composition and Texture of Pumice

“…The latest geological and geophysical studies suggested that there exist at least two main magma storages beneath the Changbaishan volcano, the upper crust magma storage and the middle crust magma storage, the depths most focus on 3-5 km and 10-15 km, respectively (Table S8; Xu et al 2012;Choi et al 2013;Iacovino et al 2016;Pan et al 2017;Andreeva et al 2018;Zhu et al 2019;Yi et al 2021;Yang et al 2021;Yan et al 2023). Our results show that there may be one comenditic and two trachytic magma batches and that eruptions tapped from different magma batches with distinct compositions.…”