That's because the volcano sits atop a raised portion of land that the team believes is composed of previously erupted material. "It most likely has erupted before," Lough said. Lough and her team say it's not a matter of if the newly discovered volcano will erupt, but when. "It seems to vary by volcanic complex, but most people think it's the movement of magma and other fluids that leads to pressure-induced vibrations in cracks within volcanic and hydrothermal systems." "People aren't really sure what causes DPLs," said Amanda Lough, a postdoctoral student in Wiens's lab and the first author of the study, said in a statement. The depth at which the quakes occurred, as well as their low frequency, suggests they might be so-called Deep Long Period earthquakes, or DPLs, which occur in volcanic areas. The tremors occurred at depths of about 15 to 25 miles (25 to 40 kilometers), close to the boundary between the crust and the mantle, and much deeper than normal crustal earthquakes. The earthquakes were small, with magnitudes of between 0.8 and 2.1. The instruments array detected two swarms of earthquakes about one year apart, in 20. In January 2010, scientists set up a series of seismometers, or earthquake detectors, on Marie Byrd Land, a highland region of West Antarctica. The new volcano's discovery was accidental. This water will rush beneath the ice toward the sea and feed into one of the major ice streams that drain ice from Antarctica into the Ross Ice Shelf, Wiens explained. When it erupts-which no one can predict-the volcano "will create millions of gallons of water beneath the ice-many lakes full," study leader Doug Wiens, professor of earth and planetary science at Washington University in St. (Also see "Giant Undersea Volcanoes Found Off Antarctica.") The finding, detailed in the current issue of Nature Geoscience, marks the first time that an active volcano has been discovered under the ice of the frozen continent. A newly discovered volcano found buried beneath a thick layer of ice in Antarctica could speed up ice loss and raise global sea levels when it erupts, scientists say.
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