skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Search for: All records

Creators/Authors contains: "Downs, Drew T"

Note: When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external site maintained by the publisher. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a charge during the embargo (administrative interval).
What is a DOI Number?

Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from this site.

  1. Abstract Maunaloa—the largest active volcano on Earth—erupted in 2022 after its longest known repose period (~38 years) and two decades of volcanic unrest. This eruptive hiatus at Maunaloa encompasses most of the ~35-year-long Puʻuʻōʻō eruption of neighboring Kīlauea, which ended in 2018 with a collapse of the summit caldera and an unusually voluminous (~1 km3) rift eruption. A long-term pattern of such anticorrelated eruptive behavior suggests that a magmatic connection exists between these volcanoes within the asthenospheric mantle source and melting region, the lithospheric mantle, and/or the volcanic edifice. The exact nature of this connection is enigmatic. In the past, the distinct compositions of lavas from Kīlauea and Maunaloa were thought to require completely separate magma pathways from the mantle source of each volcano to the surface. Here, we use a nearly 200-yr record of lava chemistry from both volcanoes to demonstrate that melt from a shared mantle source within the Hawaiian plume may be transported alternately to Kīlauea or Maunaloa on a timescale of decades. This process led to a correlated temporal variation in 206Pb/204Pb and 87Sr/86Sr at these volcanoes since the early 19th century with each becoming more active when it received melt from the shared source. Ratios of highly over moderately incompatible trace elements (e.g. Nb/Y) at Kīlauea reached a minimum from ~2000 to 2010, which coincides with an increase in seismicity and inflation at the summit of Maunaloa. Thereafter, a reversal in Nb/Y at Kīlauea signals a decline in the degree of mantle partial melting at this volcano and suggests that melt from the shared source is now being diverted from Kīlauea to Maunaloa for the first time since the early to mid-20th century. These observations link a mantle-related shift in melt generation and transport at Kīlauea to the awakening of Maunaloa in 2002 and its eruption in 2022. Monitoring of lava chemistry is a potential tool that may be used to forecast the behavior (e.g. eruption rate and frequency) of these adjacent volcanoes on a timescale of decades. A future increase in eruptive activity at Maunaloa is likely if the temporal increase in Nb/Y continues at Kīlauea. 
    more » « less
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available December 1, 2025
  2. Abstract Rapid-response petrological monitoring is a major advance for volcano observatories, allowing them to build and validate models of plumbing systems that supply eruptions in near-real time. The depth of magma storage has recently been identified as high-priority information for volcanic observatories, yet this information is not currently obtainable via petrological monitoring methods on timescales relevant to eruption response. Fluid inclusion barometry (using micro-thermometry or Raman spectroscopy) is a well-established petrological method to estimate magma storage depths and has been proposed to have potential as a rapid-response monitoring tool, although this has not been formally demonstrated. To address this deficiency, we performed a near-real-time rapid-response simulation for the September 2023 eruption of Kīlauea, Hawaiʻi. We show that Raman-based fluid inclusion barometry can robustly determine reservoir depths within a day of receiving samples—a transformative timescale that has not previously been achieved by petrological methods. Fluid inclusion barometry using micro-thermometric techniques has typically been limited to systems with relatively deep magma storage (>0.4 g/cm3 i.e.  > 7 km) where measurements of CO2 density are easy and accurate because the CO2 fluid homogenizes into the liquid phase. Improvements of the accuracy of Raman spectroscopy measurements of fluids with low CO2 density over the past couple of decades has enabled measurements of fluid inclusions from shallower magmatic systems. However, one caveat of examining shallower systems is that the fraction of H2O in the fluid may be too high to reliably convert CO2 density to pressure. To test the global applicability of rapid response fluid inclusion barometry, we compiled a global melt inclusion dataset (>4000 samples) and calculate the fluid composition at the point of vapor saturation ($${\mathrm{X}}_{{\mathrm{H}}_2\mathrm{O}}$$). We show that fluid inclusions in crystal hosts from mafic compositions (<57 wt. % SiO2)—likely representative of magmas recharging many volcanic systems worldwide—trap fluids with $${\mathrm{X}}_{{\mathrm{H}}_2\mathrm{O}}$$ low enough to make fluid inclusion barometry useful at many of the world’s most active and hazardous mafic volcanic systems (e.g. Iceland, Hawaiʻi, Galápagos Islands, East African Rift, Réunion, Canary Islands, Azores, Cabo Verde). 
    more » « less
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available November 1, 2025