Beneath the surface for new volcano imaging systems
Researchers found magma at an unexpectedly shallow depth in Iceland during a drilling experiment in 2009, underlining how much remains to be learned about the underground of volcanic systems. The Improve project team aims to take advantage of this encounter with buried magma to develop the next generation of imaging systems at volcanoes, as Dr Paolo Papale explains.
The Krafla caldera in northern Iceland is one of the most intensively studied volcanoes in the world, with sophisticated instruments and monitoring equipment providing large amounts of data about magmatic processes below the earth’s surface. Krafla holds particular interest to volcano scientists, as researchers know exactly where magma is located. “Magma was touched at Krafla during drilling operations in a 2009 experiment, which was part of the International Continental Drilling Programme,” explains Dr Paolo Papale, Research Director of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV). This 2009 experiment found magma at an unexpectedly shallow depth, just 2.1 kilometres below the earth’s surface, showing how much remains to be learned in this area. “We are still to an extent blind with respect to buried magma,” acknowledges Dr Papale. “This could have major consequences, as there are many places around the world where active volcanoes are close to highly urbanised areas.”
Improve project
This is where the Improve project, a European training network bringing together partners and beneficiaries from across Europe, comes in. The project team aims to build on this serendipitous 2009 encounter with magma at Krafla to develop improved geophysical and geochemical imaging systems. “We want to understand why existing systems still fail, and to develop new ones,” says Dr Papale, the coordinator of the project. There are nine PhD students conducting research at Krafla in the project, investigating different aspects of the underground parts of the volcanic system, which Dr Papale describes as the frontier
of volcano science. “We don’t have any direct observations of what happens underground, we only have models and inversions. We can do a lot with models, but the underground of volcanoes is still largely hidden to us, with the exception of this encounter at Krafla,” he continues. “Krafla is a unique case in terms of the potential it offers to improve our geophysical and geochemical imaging techniques.”
The project team are also working to
geothermal energy - then it rises up before cooling down and releasing energy.”
This is then extracted at geothermal power plants, providing a sustainable and renewable source of energy. However, current power plants are only scratching the surface in terms of the potential to produce geothermal energy. “Today we’re only using this very shallow geothermal energy, produced by circulating water from maybe hundreds of
“We want to reveal, image and characterise magma bodies at a higher level of detail than is currently possible, so contributing to reducing volcanic risks worldwide.”
characterise the magmatic body, alongside imaging it, building on data gathered from Krafla. This work involves several different strands of investigation. “We are studying stress distribution in the rocks around the volcano, simulating the thermo-fluid dynamics of the magmatic body, as well as looking at the thermal regime of the rocks around the magma,” outlines Dr Papale.
This will help researchers understand what the magma looks like and the surrounding geothermal system, as well as how they are coupled, which Dr Papale says holds wider relevance to geothermal energy generation.
“It’s that coupling which provides energy to the geothermal system,” he explains. “Geothermal systems work by using the energy associated with circulating fluids, rainwater which falls on the earth’s surface and which then goes down to a certain level. This shallow water is heated by magma - which is always the ultimate source of
metres or a km down into the earth’s crust, before then coming up,” says Dr Papale.
In future, the hope is to go directly to the ultimate source of geothermal energy, which is magma; research at Krafla will contribute to this long-term goal. “The Krafla Magma Testbed (KTM) has been established with the aim of being the world’s first magma observatory,” continues Dr Papale. “From the scientific point of view, we want to really gain a deeper understanding of magmatic systems. From an engineering point of view, we want to investigate the possibility of producing energy directly from magma. This would be much more efficient than the conventional ways we have of producing geothermal energy today.”
Magma observatory
A series of wells will be drilled around and inside the buried magma body at Krafla, with a number of instruments directly monitoring it. Researchers will also be able to directly sample
magma, and to conduct innovative experiments that will lead to deeper insights into magma dynamics. “For example, we’ll be able to perturb the magmatic body a little bit. We will know what’s happening below the surface, because we will induce and control it, and then we can take measurements. We aim to gain fresh insights into how to interpret signals from active volcanoes” outlines Dr Papale. This will help researchers understand where magma is, what it does, and to anticipate what it will do in the future, which is of course a major concern for those living in the vicinity of active volcanoes. “We want to use our work at Krafla to understand volcanoes in general. The Krafla Caldera is similar in many respects to Campi Flegrei for example, a calderic system in southern Italy,” says Dr Papale. This system is located very close to the city of Naples, and around 500,000 people live inside the caldera, with many more in the surrounding area. An eruption would have serious consequences, underlining the wider importance of the project’s work. “Campi Flegrei has one of the highest levels of volcanic risk in the world, some of the largest eruptions in European history have come from this volcano. It’s an active volcano and it’s been under unrest for the last 70 years, which means that it gives out signals. We know that Campi Flegrei will erupt, but we don’t know when,” stresses Dr Papale. The project’s work will help scientists
build a fuller picture of magma bodies, research which holds relevance to Campi Flegrei and several other locations across the world, not just Krafla. “For example, the city of Auckland in New Zealand sits within a large volcanic area, so that’s another area with a high volcanic risk. There are many other places close to active volcanoes,” continues Dr Papale. The project’s research will help scientists understand the volcanic risk at these different locations, with nine PhD students working at Krafla in Improve. Each is focusing on a particular theme in their research, but also gaining a deep background knowledge which will help them to collaborate with scientists across disciplinary boundaries. “We want the students to be able to talk with experts from the different fields which contribute to our understanding of volcanoes,” says Dr Papale. The aim is to equip students with a broad range of skills, so that they are ready to then take the next step in their careers. “We want the new generation of researchers to be able to take a multi-disciplinary approach,” outlines Dr Papale. “We have different levels of training. During their PhD students get high level training in their specific discipline. We also organise network schools, which are more broad training events. We want to train the students to be the main actors in their research, and to grow into the leaders of the future.”
IMPROVE Research Insight
We spoke to two PhD students in Improve, Regina Maaß and Roberto Davoli, to get an insight into their research at the Krafla Caldera.
EU Researcher: What data have you been gathering from Krafla?
Regina Maaß: IMPROVE has collected a lot of different data. For example, we deployed several seismometers in order to record tiny ground vibrations induced by earthquakes.
Roberto Davoli: In my group we’re working on subsoils and rocks in the area. We study the permeability of rocks and look at how fluid flows in the upper part of the geothermal system, which is used for geothermal energy production.
EUR: What topics are you addressing in your research?
RM: My project aims to improve imaging in heterogenous media in general using seismic waves. We recorded more than 300 earthquakes in six weeks. These are really tiny,
IMPROVE
Innovative Multi-disciplinary European Research training network on VolcanoEs Project Objectives
IMPROVE is a highly cooperative multidisciplinary network of European Research Institutes and Small-Medium Enterprises. In IMPROVE, 15 Early Stage Researchers are trained to innovative research in volcano science from monitoring and prospecting to advanced lab experiments, High Performance Computing, and Artificial Intelligence. Two volcanic target areas are Mount Etna in Sicily and the Krafla caldera in Iceland.
Project Funding
IMPROVE is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie European Training Network, with full title:
“Innovative Multi-disciplinary European Research training network on VolcanoEs”. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 858092.
Project Partners
There are 9 academic partners + 3 industrial partners in the project.
https://www.improve-etn.eu/index.php/partners/ Contact Details
Paolo Papale, Research Director
Chair, Class of Exact Sciences, Academia Europaea Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia
Sezione di Pisa, Via Cesare Battisti, 53 56125 Pisa, Italy
T: +39 050 8311931
E: paolo.papale@ingv.it
W: https://www.improve-etn.eu/ Regina Maaß
E: maass@cp.dias.ie
Roberto Davoli
E: roberto.davoli@min.uni-muenchen.de
local earthquakes with very low magnitudes.
RD: We mainly focus on lab experiments. We sample rocks from Krafla, then take them to Munich where we simulate conditions at different depths. We look at how petrophysical properties like strength and permeability are affected by pressure and temperature. We are looking at these changes in order to see how the fluid flow changes.
EUR: Could your research be applied in other areas beyond volcano monitoring?
RM: If we can develop techniques that facilitate imaging in heterogenous media, this could have implications for a diverse set of fields, as there are many applications where we want to know what the ground beneath our feet looks like. For example in installing wind turbines and monitoring groundwater.
Roberto Davoli obtained two MSc titles from the University of Granada, the first one in Geophysics and Meteorology and the second in Geology Applied to Mineral and Energy Resources. Currently he is a PhD candidate in experimental volcanology at the LudwigMaximilians-Universität München (LMU), Munich, Germany, studying the evolution of permeability in Krafla’s geothermal field and associated seismo-acoustic patterns.
Regina Maaß earned her Master’s in Geophysics from the University of Hamburg in 2022. Currently she is pursuing a PhD in Seismology at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Ireland, specialising in passive seismic imaging in heterogeneous media.
Paolo Papale is Research Director at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) of Italy. He was previously coordinator of the Italian National Program in Volcanic Hazards (2005 – 2010), and Director of the INGV Volcanoes Division (2013 – 2016).
The IMPROVE researchers exploring the Krafla volcano in northern Iceland.
Roberto Davoli Regina Maaß Paolo Papale
The desolated landscape at Krafla during the Icelandic Summer.