Amplified hazard of small-volume monogenetic eruptions due to environmental controls, Orakei Basin, Auckland Volcanic Field, New Zealand

Abstract

Orakei maar and tuff ring in the Auckland Volcanic Field is an example of a basaltic volcano in which the style and impacts of the eruption of a small volume of magma were modulated by a fine balance between magma flux and groundwater availability. These conditions were optimised by the pre-85 ka eruption being hosted in a zone of fractured and variably permeable Plio-Pleistocene mudstones and sandstones. Orakei maar represents an end-member in the spectrum of short-lived basaltic volcanoes, where substrate conditions rather than the magmatic volatile content was the dominant factor controlling explosivity and eruption styles. The eruption excavated a crater ≫80 m deep that was subsequently filled by slumped crater wall material, followed by lacustrine and marine sediments. The explosion crater may have been less than 800 m in diameter, but wall collapse and wave erosion has left a 1,000-m-diameter roughly circular basin. A tuff ring around part of the maar comprises dominantly base surge deposits, along with subordinate fall units. Grain size, texture and shape characteristics indicate a strong influence of magma-water and magma-mud interactions that controlled explosivity throughout the eruption, but also an ongoing secondary role of magmatic gas-driven expansion and fragmentation. The tuff contains >70 % of material recycled from the underlying Plio-Pliestocene sediments, which is strongly predominant in the >2 ϕ fraction. The magmatic clasts are evolved alkali basalt, consistent with the eruption of a very small batch of magma. The environmental impact of this eruption was disproportionally large, when considering the low volume of magma involved (DRE < 0.003 km3). Hence, this eruption exemplifies one of the worst-case scenarios for an eruption within the densely populated Auckland City, destroying an area of ~3 km2 by crater formation and base surge impact. An equivalent scenario for the same magma conditions without groundwater interaction would yield a scoria/spatter cone with a diameter of 400-550 m, destroying less than a tenth of the area affected by the Orakei event.