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Animation of lava flow inflation and thermal erosion model.
(To restart the animation, click the reload button in your browser). Animation designed by Rob Hill.
This model is based on current models of lava flow emplacement derived from observations of basalt flows on Kilauea, Hawaii, by Jim Kauahikaua, Ken Hon and others. Flows are emplaced initially as flat lobes, which inflate over flowing lava while cooling and freezing inwards from their margins. With time, the crust over the inflating lava ruptures, giving rise to lateral "breakouts". The central lava pathway develops as a lava tube, and is characteristically very well insulated. Lava flowing through Kilauea tubes typically loses around one degC per km of flow. Once the central lava pathway has become sufficiently well established, the temperature of the substrate rises to its solidus temperature, and the floor starts to become eroded by a combination of melting and thermomechanical abrasion. The rate of downward erosion has been measured at up to 10cm a day beneath active lava tubes on Kilauea. We believe that komatiite hosted nickel sulfide deposits form by this mechanism, but only where the substrate rocks contain a high proportion of sulfides. In this series
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