Prof Eleonora Rivalta is visiting the Geo-Energy Laboratory

Prof Eleonora Rivalta is a senior scientist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam and an Associate Professor at the University of Bologna in Italy. She graduated from the University of Bologna (both a Master's and PhD in Physics) and did post-docs at the University of Hamburg and in Bologna and spent an extended research stay at Stanford with Paul Segall. Next, she worked as a lecturer at the University of Leeds, UK. Finally, she moved back to Germany where she started her ERC Starting Grant group on the physics of magma propagation. Her main interests are the mechanics of magma propagation by diking, especially modelling the influence of crustal heterogeneities and the external stress field on the expected magma trajectories, and simulating the expected geophysical observations.

The focus of the Seminar given by Prof Rivalta will describe the propagation of magmatic Dikes. This type of propagation occurs in brittle elastic rocks and is a form of hydraulic fracturing. Dikes are voluminous (>10^5 m^3) magma-filled cracks oriented roughly perpendicular to the least compressive elastic stress axis, driven by their buoyancy pressure or external stress gradients such as those induced by the flanks of a volcano. She will illustrate high-quality geophysical observations of recent dikes, focussing on deformation and seismicity. Next, her talk will present the models her students and she has developed over the years, first in 2D and, more recently, in 3D, as well as their strategy to forecast future magma pathways and the opening location of future eruptive fissures.