Ben Uran is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the University of Wyoming Department of Geology and Geophysics. He was also part of a research team that recently discovered magma deep in volcanic rocks that solidified in the earth.
This magma contained almost five times more water than the magma found above ground.
“Most people had used the stuffing material that erupted on the surface to tease out what the water content [of magma] was,” Urann said.
The water content of this underground magma averages anywhere between eight and twenty percent compared to the four percent water content that is found in magma that exists above the earth.
This discovery is part of the larger research that Urann has been conducting in his postdoctoral work about earth science and, specifically, magma.
Magma is a hot fluid that flows within or beneath the earth’s crust where lava is found cooling.
Urann’s work began with a focus on a machine called a secondary ion mass spectrometer, which works to analyze the water content of different minerals within specific rocks.
Urann began by focusing mainly on rocks in mid-ocean ridges. His research has since expanded how water and other elements such as chlorine are recycled within the earth.
“We want to understand the cycling of these different chemicals through the earth system,” Urann said.
This question led Urann and his Ph.D. advisor, Veronique Le Roux (Woods Hole oceanographic institution), to study subduction zones and their role in transferring water within the earth.
But Urann and his team decided to take a different approach by seeking to understand what role the water content of magma that has been submerged deep into the earth plays in the overall recycling of water within the earth system.
Urann, along with the coauthors of this paper, focused their research on magmatic rocks found in the Himalayan mountain range, which separate India from the Tibetan Plateau.
Their research explicitly centered on subduction zones in this mountain range, which result from a collision of tectonic plates, which often causes water to be recycled back into the earth.
Some magma escapes forming subduction zone magmas, whereas some are recycled deep into the earth.
Urann began working at the Univeristy of Wyoming in October 2021.
Before coming to the University of Wyoming, Urann was a Ph.D. student at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution MA.
