Displacement Modeling of Volcanic Magma Chambers

Volcanoes can be hazardous if increased pressure in the magma chamber becomes great enough that magma is forced upward through a crack to the ground surface and erupts. The magma chamber which lies beneath a volcano is a large underground pool of molten rock lying under the surface of the earth’s crust. The problem with the magma chamber and why it is significant is because there are unknown processes occurring inside volcanoes. Researchers have not yet understood the processes occurring inside of a volcanic magma chamber. My research is to update a mathematical displacement model which describes the magma chamber properties such as depth and volume change (e.g. inflation or deflation at surface). So far, the method used to get the displacement model to work was to move all the file structures along with the displacement program in one memory storage space in order for the program to work in Matlab. As a result, the program was able to import and export data in addition to loading geographical features of the displacement model to better understand the magma chamber for the purpose of prediction of future volcanic eruptions.