Impacts of a newly formed lava delta on the marine environment: Lava-induced upwelling and abrupt chlorophyll depletion during the Tajogaite eruption (La Palma, 2021)

The 2021 Tajogaite eruption in La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain) emitted vast volumes of lava during 85 days, which reached the ocean in several occasions at the western flank of the island. Most of these flows merged to create a primary lava delta, covering an area of 48 ha, with an additional 30 ha underwater. Here we characterize the effects of the lava-seawater interaction on the surrounding marine environment. The area was sampled during two multidisciplinary oceanographic cruises: the first one comprised the days before the lava reached the ocean and after the first contact; and the second took place a month later, when the lava delta was already formed but still receiving lava inputs. Physical-chemical anomalies were found in the whole water column at different depths up to 300 m in all measured parameters, such as turbidity (+9 NTU), dissolved oxygen concentration (−17.17 μmol kg−1), pHT25 (−0.1), and chlorophyll-a concentration (−0.33 mg m−3). Surface temperature increased up to +2.3 °C (28.5 °C) and surface salinity showed increases and decreases of −1.01 and +0.70, respectively, in a radius of 4 km around the lava delta. In the water column, the heated waters experimented a lava-induced upwelling, bringing deeper, nutrient-rich waters to shallower depths; however, this feature did not trigger any phytoplankton bloom. In fact, integrated chlorophyll-a showed an abrupt decrease of −41 % in just two days and −69 % a month later, compared to prior conditions. The chlorophyll-a depletion reached a distance larger than 2.5 km (not delimited).