The Laguna del Maule volcanic field in Chile has been exhibiting unrest since 2005. New GPS and InSAR data reveal a second episode of accelerated deformation beginning in late 2016 and continuing through May 2020, with an uplift rate > 290 mm/year between 2019 and 2020. To explain the spatial and temporal pattern of deformation, we apply a dynamic model of viscous magma flowing through a conduit into a fluid-filled reservoir surrounded by a heterogeneous, viscoelastic crust. A Monte Carlo procedure optimizes the ellipsoid reservoir geometry and the inlet pressure history. The two episodes of accelerating uplift are each modeled with a pressure increase rate of similar to 9 MPa/year. Since 2016, 0.10 km(3) of magma was injected into the system for a total of 0.37 km(3) since 2005.

Classical mechanisms of volcanic eruptions mostly involve pressure buildup and magma ascent towards the surface'. Such processes produce geophysical and geochemical signals that may be detected and interpreted as eruption precursors(1-3) . On 22 May 2021, Mount Nyiragongo (Democratic Republic of the Congo), an open-vent volcano with a persistent lava lake perched within its summit crater, shook up this interpretation by producing an approximately six-hour-long flank eruption without apparent precursors, followed-rather than preceded-by lateral magma motion into the crust. Here we show that this reversed sequence was most likely initiated by a rupture of the edifice, producing deadly lava flows and triggering a voluminous 25-km-long dyke intrusion. The dyke propagated southwards at very shallow depth (less than 500 m) underneath the cities of Goma (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Gisenyi (Rwanda), as well as Lake Kivu. Thisvolcanic crisis raises new questions about the mechanisms controlling such eruptions and the possibility of facing substantially more hazardous events, such as effusions within densely urbanized areas, phreato-magmatism or a limnic eruption from the gas-rich Lake Kivu. It also more generally highlights the challenges faced with open-vent volcanoes for monitoring, early detection and risk management when a significant volume of magma is stored close to the surface.

The degree to which elevated CO2 concentrations (e[CO2]) increase the amount of carbon (C) assimilated by vegetation plays a key role in climate change. However, due to the short-term nature of CO2 enrichment experiments and the lack of reconciliation between different ecological scales, the effect of e[CO2] on plant biomass stocks remains a major uncertainty in future climate projections. Here, we review the effect of e[CO2] on plant biomass across multiple levels of ecological organization, scaling from physiological responses to changes in population-, community-, ecosystem-, and global-scale dynamics. We find that evidence for a sustained biomass response to e[CO2] varies across ecological scales, leading to diverging conclusions about the responses of individuals, populations, communities, and ecosystems. While the distinct focus of every scale reveals new mechanisms driving biomass accumulation under e[CO2], none of them provides a full picture of all relevant processes. For example, while physiological evidence suggests a possible long-term basis for increased biomass accumulation under e[CO2] through sustained photosynthetic stimulation, population-scale evidence indicates that a possible e[CO2]-induced increase in mortality rates might potentially outweigh the effect of increases in plant growth rates on biomass levels. Evidence at the global scale may indicate that e[CO2] has contributed to increased biomass cover over recent decades, but due to the difficulty to disentangle the effect of e[CO2] from a variety of climatic and land-use-related drivers of plant biomass stocks, it remains unclear whether nutrient limitations or other ecological mechanisms operating at finer scales will dampen the e[CO2] effect over time. By exploring these discrepancies, we identify key research gaps in our understanding of the effect of e[CO2] on plant biomass and highlight the need to integrate knowledge across scales of ecological organization so that large-scale modeling can represent the finer-scale mechanisms needed to constrain our understanding of future terrestrial C storage.

The origin of major volatiles nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, and sulfur in planets is critical for understanding planetary accretion, differentiation, and habitability. However, the detailed process for the origin of Earth's major volatiles remains unresolved. Nitrogen shows large isotopic fractionations among geochemical and cosmochemical reservoirs, which could be used to place tight constraints on Earth's volatile accretion process. Here we experimentally determine N-partitioning and -isotopic fractionation between planetary cores and silicate mantles. We show that the core/mantle N-isotopic fractionation factors, ranging from -4 parts per thousand to +10 parts per thousand, are strongly controlled by oxygen fugacity, and the core/mantle N-partitioning is a multi-function of oxygen fugacity, temperature, pressure, and compositions of the core and mantle. After applying N-partitioning and -isotopic fractionation in a planetary accretion and core-mantle differentiation model, we find that the N-budget and -isotopic composition of Earth's crust plus atmosphere, silicate mantle, and the mantle source of oceanic island basalts are best explained by Earth's early accretion of enstatite chondrite-like impactors, followed by accretion of increasingly oxidized impactors and minimal CI chondrite-like materials before and during the Moon-forming giant impact. Such a heterogeneous accretion process can also explain the carbon-hydrogen-sulfur budget in the bulk silicate Earth. The Earth may thus have acquired its major volatile inventory heterogeneously during the main accretion phase.

The FourStar infrared camera is a 1.0-2.5 mu m (JHK(s)) near infrared camera for the Magellan Baade 6.5m telescope at Las Campanas Observatory (Chile). It is being built by Carnegie Observatories and the Instrument Development Group and is scheduled for completion in 2009. The instrument uses four Teledyne HAWAII-2RG arrays that produce a 10.9'x 10.9' field of view. The outstanding seeing at the Las Campanas site coupled with FourStar's high sensitivity and large field of view will enable many new survey and targeted science programs.

We report the detection of the first two planets from the N2K Doppler planet search program at the Magellan telescopes. The first planet has a mass of M sin i = 4.96 M-Jup and orbits the G3 IV star HD154672 with an orbital period of 163.9 days. The second planet orbits the F7 V star HD205739 with an orbital period of 279.8 days and has a mass of M sin i = 1.37 M-Jup. Both planets are in eccentric orbits, with eccentricities e = 0.61 and e = 0.27, respectively. Both stars are metal rich and appear to be chromospherically inactive, based on inspection of their Ca II H and K lines. Finally, the best Keplerian model fit to HD205739b shows a trend of 0.0649 m s(-1) day(-1), suggesting the presence of an additional outer body in that system.

Exploring the origin of Ly alpha nebulae ("blobs") at high redshift requires measurements of their gas kinematics that are impossible with only the resonant, optically thick Ly alpha line. To define gas motions relative to the systemic velocity of the blob, the Ly alpha line must be compared with an optically thin line like H alpha lambda 6563, which is not much altered by radiative transfer effects and is more concentrated about the galaxies embedded in the nebula's core. We obtain optical and near-IR (NIR) spectra of the two brightest Ly alpha blobs (CDFS-LAB01 and CDFS-LAB02) from the Yang et al. sample using the Magellan/Magellan Echellette Spectrograph optical and Very Large Telescope/SINFONI NIR spectrographs. Both the Ly alpha and H alpha lines confirm that these blobs lie at the survey redshift, z similar to 2.3. Within each blob, we detect several H alpha sources, which roughly correspond to galaxies seen in Hubble Space Telescope rest-frame UV images. The H alpha detections show that these galaxies have large internal velocity dispersions (sigma(upsilon) = 130-190 km s(-1)) and that, in the one system (LAB01), where we can reliably extract profiles for two H alpha sources, their velocity difference is Delta upsilon similar to 440 km s(-1). The presence of multiple galaxies within the blobs, and those galaxies' large velocity dispersions and large relative motion, is consistent with our previous finding that Ly alpha blobs inhabit massive dark matter halos that will evolve into those typical of present-day rich clusters and that the embedded galaxies may eventually become brightest cluster galaxies. To determine whether the gas near the embedded galaxies is predominantly infalling or outflowing, we compare the Ly alpha and H alpha line centers, finding that Ly alpha is not offset (Delta upsilon(Ly alpha) = +0 km s(-1)) in LAB01 and redshifted by only +230 km s(-1) in LAB02. These offsets are small compared to those of Lyman break galaxies, which average +450 km s(-1) and extend to about +700 km s(-1). In LAB02, we detect C II lambda 1334 and Si II lambda 1526 absorption lines, whose blueward shifts of similar to 200 km s(-1) are consistent with the small outflow implied by the redward shift of Ly alpha. We test and rule out the simplest infall models and those outflow models with super/hyperwinds, which require large outflow velocities. Because of the unknown geometry of the gas distribution and the possibility of multiple sources of Ly alpha emission embedded in the blobs, a larger sample and more sophisticated models are required to test more complex or a wider range of infall and outflow scenarios.

We present a conceptual design for a moderate resolution optical spectrograph for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). The spectrograph is designed to make use of the large field-of-view of the GMT and be suitable for observations of very faint objects across a wide range of optical wavelengths. We show some details of the optical and mechanical design of the instrument.

We review a conceptual design for a moderate resolution optical spectrograph for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). The spectrograph is designed to make use of the large field-of-view of the GMT and be suitable for observations of very faint objects across a wide range of wavelengths. We also review the status of the instrument and on-going trade studies designed to update the instrument science objectives and technical requirements.

We present coarse but robust star-formation histories (SFHs) derived from spectrophotometric data of the Carnegie-Spitzer-IMACS Survey, for 22,494 galaxies at 0.3 < z < 0.9 with stellar masses of 10(9)M(circle dot) to 10(12)M(circle dot). Our study moves beyond "average" SFHs and distribution functions of specific star-formation rates (sSFRs) to individually measured SFHs for tens of thousands of galaxies. By comparing star-formation rates (SFRs) with timescales of 10(10), 10(9), and 10(8) years, we find a wide diversity of SFHs: "old galaxies" that formed most or all of their stars early,. galaxies that formed stars with declining or constant SFRs over a Hubble time, and genuinely "young galaxies" that formed most of their stars since z = 1 This sequence is one of decreasing stellar mass, but remarkably, each type is found over a mass range of a factor of 10. Conversely, galaxies at any given mass follow a wide range of SFHs, leading us to conclude that. (1) halo mass does not uniquely determine SFHs,. (2) there is no "typical" evolutionary track, and (3) "abundance matching" has limitations as a tool for inferring physics. Our observations imply that SFHs are set at an early epoch, and that-for most galaxies-the decline and cessation of star formation occurs over a Hubble time, without distinct "quenching" events. SFH diversity is inconsistent with models where galaxy mass, at any given epoch, grows simply along relations between SFR and stellar mass, but is consistent with a two-parameter lognormal form, lending credence to this model from a new and independent perspective.