The interdisciplinary study of volcanic processes, which extend across all timescales and lengths, requires a multitude of approaches, ranging from analogue and numerical modelling to observations and fieldwork and extending to mathematics. A conference was held at the East African Institute for Fundamental Research, affiliated with the University of Rwanda, a country which, along with the Democratic Republic of Congo, present...

A key process in active magmatic systems is the “recharge” of deep-sourced mafic magma into cooler, more evolved, and crystal-rich shallow reservoirs; recharge may be the cause of, or response to, eruptive activity. Although compositional evidence for recharge has been extensively documented, physical models of recharge are limited, particularly processes that separate exsolving volatiles and melts from rapidly growing crystal...

The breaking apart of magma into fragments is intimately related to the eruptive style and thus the nature and footprint of volcanic hazards. The size and shape distributions of the fragments, in turn, affect the efficiency of heat transfer within pyroclastic plumes and currents and the settling velocity, and so the residence time, of particles in the atmosphere. Fundamental work relating the glass transition to the fragmentat...

Estimating the area of tephra fallout and volume of large magnitude eruptions is fundamental to interpretations of the hazards posed by eruptions of this scale. This study uses the tephra from the caldera forming eruption of Mount Mazama (Crater Lake, OR, USA) to demonstrate the challenges faced when working with large prehistoric tephra deposits and outlines the methodologies required to determine eruption volume and magnitud...

Studies of recent eruptions have improved our understanding of volcanic ash transport and deposition, but have also raised important questions about the behaviour of far‐travelled (distal) volcanic ash. In particular, it is difficult to reconcile estimates of distal ash mass and transport distance determined from eyewitness accounts, mapped deposits, satellite‐based observations and cryptotephra records. Here we address this p...

Volcanic ash is dispersed in the atmosphere according to meteorology and particle properties, including size and shape. However, the multiple definitions of size and shape for non‐spherical particles affect our ability to use physical particle properties to understand tephra transport. Moreover, although particles are often excluded from operational ash dispersion model setups, ash in tephra deposits 1000 km from source can ex...