Taupo: an overview of New Zealand's youngest supervolcano

Taupo volcano (New Zealand) is distinguished as the source of Earth's youngest supereruption (similar to 25.5 ka), with Lake Taupo occupying the resulting caldera. Taupo has also produced eruptions of a wide variety of sizes, styles and associated landscape responses over a similar to 350 kyr period. Early Taupo (>54 ka) is poorly demarcated, merging with Maroa to the north, and is represented by widely scattered, geochemically distinct, effusive domes and explosive eruption products from vents all around the modern lake. Taupo had two independent magmatic systems from 54-25.5 ka, one that led to the Oruanui event focussed beneath the area of the modern lake and a second, northeast of the lake that has remained active to the present. Following the Oruanui supereruption, the rebuilt modern hyperactive Taupo magmatic system is primarily focussed beneath the lake and has generated 25 rhyolitic eruptions since similar to 12 ka. The young rhyolite magmas come from an evolving silicic magma reservoir, but vary widely in their eruptive sizes and destructive potential. In the modern era Taupo experiences unrest every decade or so, but uncertainties remain over the nature of the magma reservoir and the processes that drive unrest or eruptive activity that require new geophysical data and interpretations.