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Project details
| Title: | Eruption, destruction and seafloor ecosystem recovery – Tonga 2022 eruption of the century |
| Id: | 2653 |
| Investigator(s): | Rebecca Carey
University of Tasmania [details] |
| Description: | This multidisciplinary project examines interaction of volcanism with the solid earth, ocean and marine biosphere. The January 15th, 2022, eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (HTHH) was the most powerful of the last 110 Years. Its eruption column height of 58km lacks modern precedent, as did its multiply globe-crossing shockwave. An 850 m crater (depression) formed at the summit, a volcanogenic tsunami crossed the Pacific, and the volcano seafloor was strongly modified. A benthic survey around the volcano ~90 days post-eruption revealed devastated benthic ecosystems with few or no survivors, the baseline for examining recovery for years to come. The overarching scientific objective is to understand eruption and post-eruption magmatic and volcanic processes associated with submarine volcanoes, and the subsequent impacts on the marine biological communities using the 2022 eruption of Hunga volcano as the key case study. Detailed objectives are: 1. To calculate eruption volume and intensity of this 2022 eruption (Research Aim 1). 2. To understand sediment transport mechanisms of the 2022 eruption products (Research Aim 1). 3. To test hypotheses for the formation of the summit crater of Hunga volcano (Research Aim 2). 4. To determine the recovery dynamics of disturbed biological communities following a natural disturbance (Research Aim 3). |
| Years: | 2025 |
There are no surveys directly linked to this project.