New paper: Some Lava Flows May Not Have Been as Thick as They Appear

The observation of thick basaltic lava flows has long been explained by vertical inflation. Here we explore an additional mechanism that could also create thick lava flows, where a sequence of thinner lobes that are emplaced on top of each other could fuse into one larger flow. Our analysis suggests the formation of thick lobes and flows by merging can occur if the lobes are emplaced relatively close to each other in time.

This work is led by Jonas Katona (undergraduate researcher at Berkeley, now a PhD in applied mathematics at Yale), and is a collaborative effort with Dr. Tushar Mittal (MIT/Penn State), Dr. Michael Manga (UC Berkeley) and Dr. Steve Self (UC Berkeley).

Read the paper here.