A minuscule townsfolk in New Zealand may be in a spot of geological trouble . A spate of recent earthquakes beneath the coastal small town of Matata has discombobulate geophysicists , who have been ineffectual to decide what might be cause them . Now , write in the journalScience Advances , the culprit has been find : Magma has been forcing itself through the cheekiness over the last five decades that , if it proceed , will likely culminate in the birthing of a new volcano .
New Zealand is no stranger to both considerable earthquakes and volatile volcanic activity , and Matata just lie within the Taupo Volcanic Zone , a quintuplet - shaped department of volcanic activity on the nation ’s North Island . In this regard , then , a newmagma chamberin the region is n’t entirely unexpected .
“ There is every possibility the magma body under the Bay of Plenty slide has been there for centuries , and possibly even longer , ” Ian Hamling , a researcher at GNS Science and the pencil lead generator of the study , toldStuff . However , this is a relatively fresh place for magma to be crawling up into the crust – there has n’t been any volcanic activity around Matata for the last 400,000 age .
Using both GPS information and satellite imagination , the team of investigator managed to detect a huge belt of land that look to be heading skywards . This 400 - square - kilometer ( 154 - square - mile ) funnies of the North Island , centered or so on Matata , has move up 40 centimeters ( 16 inches ) since 1950 , which explains the swarms of minuscule temblor in the country .
The fix of the magmatic upwelling , as learn on the margins of the Taupo Volcanic Zone . Ian Hamling
This roughly corresponds to there being a magma chamber 10 klick ( 6 miles ) beneath it that contains 80,000 Olympian - sized swimming pools of magma . For equivalence , theYellowstone caldera ’s magma chambercontains the equivalent weight of 240 million , so it falls right smart short of anything you ’d expect for a “ supervolcano . ”
Still , it should n’t be dismissed as being a harmless magma chamber ; after all , it ’s likely to continue fill up with magma , and this part of the world has experienced some truly devastating clap in recent times , geologically speaking . So a succeeding “ supervolcanic ” outbreak is a theoretic possibility , but at this point , it ’s hard to say how probable this scenario is .
“ Although the ultimate lot of the magma remain unreadable , ” the generator write in their study , “ its mien may represent the birth of a new magma chamber on the margins of arguably the world ’s most dynamic region of silicic volcanism , which has witnessed 25 caldera - mold bang over thelast 1.6 million old age . ”
The Bay of Plenty contain multiple volcano , and the bodily process at Matata may point the giving birth of the newest member of the family . Pictured here is Tauranga , along with an extinct volcano named Maunganui . Steve Heap / Shutterstock
Between 2004 and 2011,thousands of small earthquakeswere generated as magma forced its way of life up through the shallow Earth’s crust , and some may take this as a foretoken that aneruptionis imminent . However , a vent would only formulate over the course of hundreds of thousands of years , and there ’s even a hypothesis that it will run out of thermal energy , cool , and harden before one even appear .
With this in idea , the 650 or so inhabitants of Matata have , at present , very little to be concerned about . Hakuna matata , you could say .
In fact , get it on that these temblor were generated by magmatic activity , scientist are now capable to monitor the area and track in real - time the move of magma beneath the Earth’s surface . Not only will this aid their ability topredictfuture earthquake , but it will permit them to discover heartbeat of magma - based inflation occurring elsewhere on the North Island .
