Deadline for Applications: Tue 28 February 2017
Funding Type: Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Supervisors: Hugh Tuffen and Jennie Gilbert (Lancaster University), Mike Heap (Strasbourg), Fabian Wadsworth (Munich)
Shallow underground magma represents both a significant hazard and a near-limitless heat source. In 2009 a geothermal borehole at Krafla volcano in Iceland accidentally intercepted shallow rhyolitic magma. This has stimulated intense interest in the potential for magma drilling to extract powerful geothermal energy and directly monitor restless volcanoes. However, the nature of the interface between magma and geothermal systems remains enigmatic, restricting our knowledge of the safety and sustainability of magma drilling.
This PhD project will provide new insight into the nature of magma-geothermal interfaces, via extensive fieldwork in Iceland combined with laboratory analysis and modelling. Fossil silicic intrusions will be characterised, employing techniques such as quantitative textural analysis, mapping of H2O in glasses, and permeability measurement. Results will lead to published papers that constrain the timescale and temperature of fluid-magma interactions, the permeability evolution of magma interacting with external fluids, and present new conceptual models of interface processes.
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