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Volcanic activity at Sicily's Mt. Etna, which has been rocked recently by quakes and an eruption, may become more frequent and potentially more dangerous in the future, Italian researchers say.
They said they had evidence a big pool of magma was roiling just below the surface of the volcano.
Mt. Etna last jolted to life in October with a flurry of quakes. It erupted in December, injuring 32 people in an explosion at a tourist complex.
Domenico Patane of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology and colleagues analysed 647 earthquakes that originated near Mt. Etna between 1994 and 2001.
Their analysis suggests that during this period, a huge volume of magma intruded beneath the volcano through a weak area where two fault lines intersect, causing the quakes.
The quakes caused pressure that forced magma up into a shallower reservoir, they report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
"Geophysical evidences (sic) ... indicate that a considerable quantity of magma is still accumulated beneath the volcano in the shallow storage zone," they wrote.
"Considering that the volcano has been intensely fractured during the last two flank eruptions, Mt. Etna eruptive activity could become more frequent, voluminous and potentially hazardous in the near future."
They said they had evidence a big pool of magma was roiling just below the surface of the volcano.
Mt. Etna last jolted to life in October with a flurry of quakes. It erupted in December, injuring 32 people in an explosion at a tourist complex.
Domenico Patane of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology and colleagues analysed 647 earthquakes that originated near Mt. Etna between 1994 and 2001.
Their analysis suggests that during this period, a huge volume of magma intruded beneath the volcano through a weak area where two fault lines intersect, causing the quakes.
The quakes caused pressure that forced magma up into a shallower reservoir, they report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
"Geophysical evidences (sic) ... indicate that a considerable quantity of magma is still accumulated beneath the volcano in the shallow storage zone," they wrote.
"Considering that the volcano has been intensely fractured during the last two flank eruptions, Mt. Etna eruptive activity could become more frequent, voluminous and potentially hazardous in the near future."
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