Volcanic ash supports a diverse bacterial community in a marine mesocosm.

Shallow-water coral reef ecosystems, particularly those already impaired by anthropogenic pressures, may be highly sensitive to disturbances from natural catastrophic events, such as volcanic eruptions. Explosive volcanic eruptions expel large quantities of silicate ash particles into the atmosphere, which can disperse across millions of square kilometres and deposit into coral reef ecosystems. Following heavy ash deposition, mass mortality of reef biota is expected, but little is known about the recovery of post-burial reef ecosystems. Reef regeneration depends partly upon the capacity of the ash deposit to be colonised by waterborne bacterial communities and may be influenced to an unknown extent by the physiochemical properties of the ash substrate itself. To determine the potential for volcanic ash to support pioneer bacterial colonisation, we exposed five well-characterised volcanic and coral reef substrates to a marine aquarium under low light conditions for 3 months: volcanic ash, synthetic volcanic glass, carbonate reef sand, calcite sand and quartz sand. Multivariate statistical analysis of Automated Ribosomal Intergenic Spacer Analysis (ARISA) fingerprinting data demonstrates clear segregation of volcanic substrates from the quartz and coral reef substrates over 3 months of bacterial colonisation. Overall bacterial diversity showed shared and substrate-specific bacterial communities; however, the volcanic ash substrate supported the most diverse bacterial community. These data suggest a significant influence of substrate properties (composition, granulometry and colour) on bacterial settlement. Our findings provide first insights into physicochemical controls on pioneer bacterial colonisation of volcanic ash and highlight the potential for volcanic ash deposits to support bacterial diversity in the aftermath of reef burial, on timescales that could permit cascading effects on larval settlement.

Spatial analysis of Mount St. Helens tephra leachate compositions: implications for future sampling strategies.

Tephra particles in physically and chemically evolving volcanic plumes and clouds carry soluble sulphate and halide salts to the Earth's surface, ultimately depositing volcanogenic compounds into terrestrial or aquatic environments. Upon leaching of tephra in water, these salts dissolve rapidly. Previous studies have investigated the spatial and temporal variability of tephra leachate compositions during an eruption in order to gain insight into the mechanisms of gas-tephra interaction which emplace those salts. However, the leachate datasets analysed are typically small and may poorly represent the natural variability and complexity of tephra deposits. Here, we have conducted a retrospective analysis of published leachate analyses from the 18 May 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, Washington, analysing the spatial structure of the concentrations and relative abundances of soluble Ca, Cl, Na and S across the deposits. We have identified two spatial features: (1) concentrated tephra leachate compositions in blast deposits to the north of the volcano and (2) low S/Cl and Na/Cl ratios around the Washington-Idaho border. By reference to the bulk chemistry and granulometry of the deposit and to current knowledge of gas-tephra interactions, we suggest that the proximal enrichments are the product of pre-eruptive gas uptake during cryptodome emplacement. We speculate that the low S/Cl and Na/Cl ratios reflect a combination of compositional dependences on high-temperature SO2 uptake and preferential HCl uptake by hydrometeor-tephra aggregates, manifested in terrestrial deposits by tephra sedimentation and fallout patterns. However, despite our interrogation of the most exhaustive tephra leachate dataset available, it has become clear in this effort that more detailed insights into gas-tephra interaction mechanisms are prevented by the prevalent poor temporal and spatial representativeness of the collated data and the limited characterisation of the tephra deposits. Future leachate studies should aim to extensively sample across tephra deposit limits whilst simultaneously characterising deposit stratigraphy and tephra chemistry, mineralogy and granulometry, taking steps to ensure the quality and comparability of collected leachate datasets.