FRACTURING OF SEDIMENTARY ROCK AROUND MAGMATIC DIKES DUE TO

THERMAL PRESSURIZATION OF PORE FLUIDS

Meredith Townsend and David D. Pollard
Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
e-mail: mtown@stanford.edu

sequence of upper Cretaceous sandstones. Based on the

Abstract stratigraphy, Delaney and Pollard (1981) estimate that
the current land surface at Ship Rock was at about 1 km
Examination of the host rock around magmatic
depth at the time of eruption. Ship Rock itself is a
dikes at Ship Rock, NM, reveals two sets of joints in the
minette plug surrounded radially by minette dikes and
Mancos shale in the immediate vicinity of the dikes.
smaller plugs (figure 1). The dikes are typically broken
One set is parallel to the dike contact and is believed to
into multiple en echelon segments, for example the
have formed just ahead of the dike as it was
northeastern dike alone contains 34 segments. Because
propagating (Delaney et al. 1986). The other joint set is
Ship Rock is petrographically similar and only ~65 km
sub-perpendicular to the dike contact and is the focus
north of the Narbona Pass Crater (Brande et al. 2008),
of this paper. A high-resolution aerial map of a segment
we infer that like Narbona Pass, Ship Rock grew to its
of the northeastern dike at Ship Rock was made using
current size during a phreatomagmatic eruption.
Structure from Motion (SfM), where a camera attached
Ancient systems like Ship Rock that have been
to a helium balloon collects photographs, which are
exposed by erosion provide a unique opportunity to
automatically orthorectified and stitched together in
directly investigate a volcanic plumbing system.
Agisoft LLC. Measurements from this map, combined
Analysis of the structures and field relations at Ship
with other field data, shows that the joint set remains
Rock lead Delaney and Pollard (1981) to conclude that
perpendicular to the contact along the length of the
the main diatreme initiated as a planar dike. The authors
dike, even when the orientation of the dike changes.
found that there are many dikes not connected to plugs,
Furthermore there is a significant decrease in the
but nowhere are there plugs without dikes. Along many
fracture spacing towards the center of the dike. We
of the dikes, there are places of anomalous widening
interpret the joints to have formed as a result of heat
referred to as   “buds”   that   appear   to   be   juvenile   plugs  
flow from the dike, and we investigate the role of
(figure 2). The authors also note that breccias can be
thermal pore-pressurization in this process.
found along the margins of the dikes and plugs, which
Understanding the formation of these joints is critical
lead them to hypothesize that fracturing and erosion of
to our understanding of brecciation and erosion of host
host rock was responsible for conduit widening.
rock around fissure eruptions to produce sustained
eruptions through larger cylindrical volcanic vents.

Keywords:
basaltic volcanism, thermal pore pressurization,
physics-based models, heat and mass transport, rock
mechanics, Ship Rock

Field Site: Ship Rock, New Mexico

Ship Rock is part of the Navajo Volcanic Field
(NVF), a group of ultrapotassic diatremes, plugs, and
dikes located in the central Colorado Plateau (Laughlin
et al. 1985). Volcanism in this region began around 28
m.y.a and continued to at least 19 m.y.a. and was likely
contemporaneous with the uplift of the Plateau
(Laughlin et al. 1985). Petrographically, the NVF
consists primarily of basaltic tuff and tuff breccia cut by Figure 1. Ship Rock, a volcanic neck with dikes
mafic minette dikes and plugs (Delaney and Pollard extending radially away (from Pollard and Fletcher
1981). The land surface in the vicinity of Ship Rock is 2005 – photo by D.L. Baars).
the Mancos Shale, a basal transgressive mudstone that
stratigraphically underlies the Mesaverde group, a

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 made an aerial map of one of the segments of the
northeastern dike (dike segment #6) and adjacent host
rock, using new techniques from the principles of
Structure from Motion (Johnson et al. 2014, in review).
From this map, we measured orientations and
distributions of the joints and dike contact. We then use
this data to compare with models for mechanisms of
joint formation, which provide insight on the
Figure 2. Left: A bud around a segment of the paleostress conditions at the time of dike formation as
northeastern dike; Right: Geologic map of the well as the hydraulic conditions in aquifers adjacent to
same segment, showing minette dike material in intrusions. Because fracturing of the host rock is a
pink,   “monobreccia”   (brecciated   host   rock) in necessary precursor to conduit erosion and sustained
light   grey,   and   “heterobreccia”   (brecciated   host   flow through a larger vent, this work may also
rock and minette) in dark grey. contribute to hazard assessment in areas affected by
basaltic volcanism.

Dike-Parallel and Dike-Perpendicular

Joints

Two primary sets of fractures are preserved in the

Mancos shale adjacent to the dikes at Ship Rock, one
parallel to the dike contact and one perpendicular to the
dike contact (figure 3). Delaney et al. (1986) examined
dike-parallel fractures at Ship Rock and a few other
localities on the Colorado Plateau in the context of
determining whether dikes propagate through pre-
existing fractures or through fractures created during
propagation by the stress concentration at the dike tips.
From detailed mapping Delaney et al. (1986) concluded
that at Ship Rock, the dike-parallel joints are not part of Figure 3. Left: Nearly-aerial view showing dike-
a regional joint set, but occur only adjacent to the dikes parallel joints (red); Right: Nearly-aerial view
and are thus likely formed during propagation. This showing dike-perpendicular joints (red)
hypothesis is corroborated by the observation of ground
cracks that form ahead of propagating fissure eruptions
in Hawaii (e.g. Pollard et al. 1983). Delaney et al.
(1986) propose that these joints form as a result of the
bimodal distribution of maximum tensile stress around
the tip of a crack subject to an internal pressure (figure
5).
Another set of joints in the host rock is
perpendicular to the dike contact (figure 3), and a 3D
view reveals that this joint set dips nearly vertically and
is continuous through the bedding planes (figure 4).
Abutting relationships with the dike-parallel joints
suggest that the dike-perpendicular joints are younger.
Plumose structures on the fracture surfaces indicate that
Figure 4. View from the side of the dike showing
the joints propagated in a direction away from the dike
that the dike-perpendicular joints are nearly vertical
(figure 6), furthermore suggesting that the formation of and cut through bedding planes.
the joints is somehow related to the dikes.
To better understand the exact relationship between
the dikes and these dike-perpendicular joints, we have

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 Methods: Structure from Motion

An aerial map of one of the dike segments was

made using the Structure from Motion (SfM) technique.
SfM consists of semi-automated software that
reconstructs 3D models of structures based on
overlapping 2D images. With help from Kendra
Johnson of Colorado School of Mines, we followed the
workflow as described in Johnson et al. (2014, in
review). We attached a camera (16 megapixel-
resolution Nikon D5100 camera with an 11 mm
Toshiba lens and a connected Easytag GPS tagger) to a
3
harnessed helium balloon inflated to ~4 m . With the
balloon positioned about 15 m above the outcrop and
the camera set to take pictures on a 5-second interval,
we walked the balloon across the length of the dike
(~150 m). Small (~25 cm), bright-colored discs served
as ground control points with pre-calculated GPS
locations. The entire picture-taking process took about
30 minutes.
Photograph data was processed by Kendra Johnson,
who used the Photoscan Pro software by Agisoft LLC
to semi-automatically orthorectify the pictures and
stitch them together to make the map (figure 7). The
software uses both the camera’s GPS positions,
orientations, and the positions of the ground control
points to georeference and orthorectify the pictures. The
software then creates the photo mosaic by matching
Figure 5. Principal stresses in an elastic body colors in the overlapping pictures. Processed at medium
around a crack subject to unit driving pressure quality, the pixel resolution of the completed map is
(solutions from Pollard and Segall 1987)
about 1 cm. Figure 8 illustrates this resolution.
To gather data on the dike-perpendicular joint set,
lines and angles were measured on the map in
Photoshop. Specific measurements included the
apparent strike of the contact between the dike and host
rock, the apparent strike of the joints, the angle between
the contact and the joints, and the joint spacing. To
supplement the map data, which assumes that both the
contact and joints dip vertically, I also collected field
measurements of over 100 joints by hand, using the
GeoID app on my iPhone (a digital Brunton compass).
The difference between the apparent strike of the joints
from the map and the strike of the joints as measured in
Figure 6. Plumose structures on joints indicate the field is on the order of only a few degrees.
propagation away from the dike contact.

50 m
Figure 7. Completed aerial map of a dike segment along the northeastern dike at Ship Rock.

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Figure 8. Aerial map at different scales to illustrate the high resolution achieved by Structure from Motion. In
the bottom-most pictures, details in the host-rock fractures can be seen.

about 70˚ and the joints about 150˚ at the northeast tip.
Results This is consistent with the arcuate shape we can see
when viewing the dike segment as a whole (figure 7).
Furthermore, we notice that the orientation of the joints
A stereonet with the contact and joint field changes consistently with the orientation of the dike to
measurements is shown in figure 9. The dike contact remain sub-perpendicular across the length of the dike.
strikes on average 42˚ +/- 19˚ from north and dips on
average 78˚ +/- 9˚. The average strike of the joints is
133˚ +/- 20˚, and the average dip is 81˚ +/- 6˚. Thus
both the dike and the joints dip sub-vertically, and the
orientation between the joints and the dike is sub-
perpendicular. From the map data, the average apparent
strike of the dike contact is 50˚ +/- 16˚, and the average
apparent strike of the joints is 136˚ +/- 17˚. The
apparent strikes measured from the map data are thus in
good agreement with the actual strikes as measured in
the field.
Figure 10 shows the change in orientation of the
dike contact and joints with change in location along
the dike segment. At the southwest end of the dike (x/a
= -1), the contact strikes at about 50˚ and the joints at
about 130˚. Moving northeast, there is a gentle decrease
in these strikes, and then near the center of the dike the
strikes increase again to end up with the contact striking Figure 9. Stereonet showing poles to joints (blue)
and dike contacts (red).

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 most compressive stress. To find the stress trajectories,
we use the solutions from Pollard (1973) for a
pressurized elliptical hole in a homogeneous isotropic
elastic material. In this plane strain problem, two
remote stresses are applied, one parallel with the semi-
major axis of the hole and one perpendicular. Because
we further assume that the dike forms parallel to the
most compressive stress, we force the remote stress
parallel to the ellipse to be more compressive than the
remote stress perpendicular to the hole (figure 12). The
elliptical hole is subject to a uniform normal traction
(pressure) along its boundary to represent the magma
pressure in the dike.

Figure 10. Orientations of dike contact (red) and

joints (blue) with distance along the dike.

Spacing between dike-perpendicular joints was also

measured from the aerial map and plotted in figure 11.
The average distance between joints is 19 cm +/- 16.
We can see that fracture spacing is greatest at the dike
tips and decreases to a minimum at the dike center.

Figure 12. Set-up for the elliptical hole problem from

Pollard (1973). An elliptical hole filled with internal
pressure inside an homogeneous isotropic elastic
material is subject to two remote stresses.

For a given internal pressure P, the resulting stress

trajectories depend on the shape of the elliptical hole
(which we describe as the ratio of the semi-major axis a
to the semi-minor axis b), and the difference between
the two remote stresses. An example of the most
Figure 11. Dike-perpendicular joint spacing with compressive principal stress trajectories is shown in
distance along the dike. Fracture spacing decreases figure 13 for a hole with a/b = 2 subject to an internal
toward the center of the dike.
pressure of 1 MPa, a remote stress difference of 0.1
MPa, shear modulus of 1 GPa, and Poisson’s ratio of
Physical Controls on Dike- 0.25. We can see that in this case, the orientations of the
Perpendicular Joints most compressive stress trajectories are indeed
perpendicular to the boundary of the ellipse (dike) at
the very center. Moving closer to the ends, the
Stress trajectories around a pressurized
trajectories become sub-perpendicular and gradually
elliptical hole rotate to be parallel with the dike at the very tips.

The orientations of the joints are controlled by the

principal stress trajectories at the time of their
formation, where the joints would form parallel to the

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 Thermal pore-pressurization
While the stress trajectories may explain the
orientations of the dike-perpendicular joints, the sign of
stress adjacent to a pressurized hole is compressive and
thus is not sufficient to explain the formation of
opening-mode fractures. We suggest that heat transfer
from the dike can pressurize pore fluids contained in
the sedimentary host rocks; with sufficient
pressurization the host rocks can experience tensile
stresses that cause joint formation. Both the observation
of plumose structures that suggest that the joints
Figure 13. Trajectories of the most compressive
propagate in a direction away from the dike and the
stress around a pressurized elliptical hole, for an observation that fracture spacing decreases toward the
ellipse with a/b = 2, filled with 1 MPa pressure and center of the dike (presumably where heat flow is
subject to a remote stress difference of 0.1 MPa. highest) support this hypothesis.
Delaney (1982) considered one-dimensional
The joints that form perpendicular to dikes at Ship coupled heat transfer and fluid flow that would occur in
Rock most likely initiated at the contact and propagated a fluid-saturated rock adjacent to an instantaneously
away. Thus to learn more about how these joints relate emplaced magmatic intrusion. The governing equations
to the configurations of the elliptical hole model, we for this problem are (Faust and Mercer 1977; Delaney
can focus on those principal stress trajectories that are 1982):
nearest to the boundary of the ellipse. Figure 14 shows
the orientation of the second principal stress, i.e. the P
( / )
T 2
P P P T
hypothetical joint orientation, relative to the contact t t x2 x
f
x
f
x
along the upper half of the boundary of a dike with a/b T
( K / )[( C ) f / ( C )b ]
P T 2
T
T
K P 2
P
= 46, which is representative of the dike in this study. t x x x2 ( C )b T x2
The orientations were plotted for various remote stress
conditions, and we see that for trajectories to be where P is pore pressure, T is temperature, α is the
perpendicular to the dike contact, the remote stress linear thermal expansion, β is   the   compressibility,   κ   =  
difference has to be less than 0.06 times the driving kb/(ρC)b is the thermal diffusivity where kb and   (ρC)b
pressure for dike opening (σ1r – P). This implies that are the thermal conductivity and the heat capacity of the
for a driving pressure of 2 MPa (a reasonable estimate host   rock,   and   ω   =   K/ϕµβ is the hydraulic diffusivity,
for a dike ~ 2 meters wide), the difference between the where  K  is  the  permeability,  ϕ  is  the  porosity,  β  is  the  
two remote stresses would have to be less than 0.12 bulk compressibility, and µ is the dynamic viscosity of
MPa to form dike-perpendicular joints. the fluid. Analytical solutions (Delaney 1982) suggest
that pore-pressure increases from heat conducted away
from the dike can potentially reach tens of MPa.
Assuming the dikes at Ship Rock were at 1 km depth at
the time of formation, and assuming a normal lithostatic
and hydrostatic gradient, the effective stress in the host
rock around the dikes would be about 15 MPa
compression. If the host rock has a tensile strength on
the order of 10 MPa, then the pore-pressurization from
heat flow needed to break the host rock would be about
25 MPa. Thus pore pressurization from heat flow from
the dike may be sufficient to induce jointing.
The scaling employed by Delaney (1982) shows that
the increase in pressure ΔP is proportional to the
quantity AD/ β  , where A = α(Tc –Ti ), D= (κ/ω)1/2 , Tc is
the temperature of the contact and Ti is the initial
Figure 14. Orientation of most compressive stress temperature of the host rock. In general the
trajectory relative to the boundary of the elliptical compressibility and the thermal diffusivity of rocks do
hole, plotted for different remote stress conditions.
not vary by orders of magnitude (Clark 1966). The

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thermal expansion can vary by one order of magnitude orientations of the joints to remain consistently
across vastly different rock types (Jaeger et al. 2007). perpendicular to the dike contact across the length of
The hydraulic diffusivity ω, however, is the most the dike, the two remote horizontal stresses had to be no
variable and can differ by as much as 15 orders of different than 0.06 times the driving pressure for dike
magnitude because of large differences in opening. This conclusion is corroborated by the lack of
permeabilities across various lithologies (Jaeger et al. a preferred orientation of the dikes both in the vicinity
2007). Figure 15 shows how thermal pore- of Ship Rock and in the larger region of the Navajo
pressurization depends on the permeability of the host Volcanic Field.
rock. In general, lower permeability rocks will The pattern of dike-perpendicular joint spacing
experiences greater pressurization and are thus more along the dike shows a marked decrease in spacing near
likely to fail because of this process. the center of the dike, presumably where the heat flow
into the host rock was the highest. However, what
controls the precise spacing of the joints remains to be
clarified. Because jointing likely increases the
permeability of the host rock, we presume that it
becomes more and more difficult to form new joints. A
careful analysis of the interplay between pore
pressurization, fracturing, and host-rock permeability
will be necessary to fully understand the formation of
dike-perpendicular joints.
Understanding the physical processes responsible
for jointing around magmatic dikes is critical to explain
the formation of buds and larger volcanic plugs, or
analogously the transition of fissure eruptions into
larger eruptions through central vents. When fracturing
in the host rock is intense enough, pieces of the conduit
wall will be more susceptible to erosion by the flow of
magma. Because wider areas of a conduit will accept
Figure 15. Pore pressure versus host rock greater volumes of flow, this process will likely have a
permeability for A = 5e-4. Shales have a wide range “runaway” feedback that allows buds to turn into larger
of permeabilities, some of which fall within the plugs. Understanding where buds are more or less
critical range for tensile failure . likely to form (for example because of differences in
host-rock lithology) would aid hazard assessment for
Conclusions and Future Work societies affected by this style of volcanism.

We observe a consistent set of dike-perpendicular

joints in the Mancos shale host rock adjacent to dikes at References
Ship Rock, NM. From detailed mapping of the joints
around one of the dikes using techniques from Structure Brand B.D., Clarke A.B., & Semken S., 2009, Eruptive
from Motion (SfM), we conclude that the joints are conditions and depositional processes of Narbona Pass
associated with the dike and not part of a regional set. Maar Volcano, Navajo Volcanic Field, Navajo Nation,
Furthermore we infer that the joints are related to heat New Nexico (USA). Bulletin of Volcanology, v. 71, p.
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Clark, S.P., Handbook of Physical Constants: Geological
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pressurization in the formation of these joints, we plan New Mexico: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper
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pressurized elliptical hole, we find that for the

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