What are the common dimensions of the vertical conduit on a
volcano?
Jose'
Brilha
Dear Jose',
The conduit of a volcano is a difficult thing to measure. For Hawaiian
volcanoes there are some pretty good measurements. The conduit that feed
up to the magma reservoir beneath the summit is about 1 km in diameter.
The dike that feeds up to the surface can be 1 m wide and about 1 km
long. Sometimes the dike will evolve into a cylindrical conduit a few
tens of meters across.
During the Mount St. Helens eruption earthquakes were clustered in a
volume with a radius of about 1 km (so the conduit was less than 1 km).
Steve Mattox, University of North Dakota
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