Magnetotelluric evidence for a melt-rich magmatic reservoir beneath Mayotte

The exact nature of crustal magmatic reservoirs is elusive as they cannot be sampled in situ. The traditional view that magma chambers contain essentially molten material has recently been replaced by the transcrustal magmatic system (TCMS), in which reservoirs are mostly composed of immobile magmatic crystals with a minute fraction of more mobile melt1-3, creating a 'magmatic mush'3. Eruptions are possible if a significant portion of melt segregates into melt-rich lenses within the mush reservoir1-3. The TCMS concept is, however, a default model essentially justified by the absence of clear geophysical signatures of melt-rich magma chambers1,4, and by the rare and tentative estimates of the melt fraction in the crustal storage zones based on geochemical and textural analysis of eruptive products5,6. Here we image a bright electrical conductor at 23 ± 1 km below sea level beneath Mayotte island that we interpret as a magmatic reservoir, based on laboratory measurements of Mayotte's melt conductivity. This large magmatic reservoir (more than 200 km3) contains a high melt fraction (22-42%). Such a crystal-to-liquid ratio matches the reconstructed differentiation paths7-9 producing the melts that recently erupted at Mayotte. This reservoir is possibly connected to the system that fed the large submarine eruption of Fani Maoré in 2018-201910.