John Maclennan has been trying to understand the processes that occur in the roots of Icelandic volcanoes, from mantle melting and melt transport through to mixing and crystallisation in convecting magma chambers. Much of this effort has centred on careful fieldwork and collection of suitable samples for geochemical analyses. In particular, I have made extensive use of high-precision ion probe data from melt inclusions to understand melting and mixing processes. Such geochemical data is then synthesised and combined with geophysical and geological observations to provide constraints on simple physical models of magmatic processes under Iceland.
Worked on: all Icelandic volcanoes