Magmas are the lungs of the Earth’s interior. During their formation deep in the Earth, they capture volatile elements, transport them through the crust and release them to the atmosphere, either through volcanic eruptions or through quiescent degassing after emplacement in the shallow crust. Redox reactions play a fundamental role in these processes. Volatile elements in magmas can have different valence states, and their speciation in the melt and gas phases can either control or be controlled by the oxidation state of the host magmas. Unravelling the main redox processes between fluids, melts and crystals in a rising magma has been a persistently difficult challenge in Earth science. This is due to the difficulty of measuring the microscale variations in the oxidation state of iron in both crystals and glasses of magmatic rocks. The reserach community is working hard to overcome this problem. We are also doing so by collaborating with several institutes (INGV Catania, University of Pisa, University of Rome La Sapienza, ESRF Grenoble, Bayerisches Geoinstitut), in order to better understand the spatial and temporal scale of redox processes within the plumbing system of basaltic volcanoes.

Some of our work relate to the detemination of Fe oxidation state in clinopyroxenes from Mt. Etna, one of the most active and most monitored volcanoes in Europe.