The upper Pleistocene (1.8–0.7 Ma) explosive eruptive history of Las Cañadas, ocean-island volcano, Tenerife
The upper Pleistocene (1.8–0.7 Ma) explosive eruptive history of Las Cañadas, ocean-island volcano, Tenerife
While most ocean-island volcanism is effusive, recent evidence has demonstrated that intraplate ocean island volcanoes can exhibit protracted explosive histories, with catastrophic eruption styles and hazardous behaviour more typically associated with volcanoes in continental and plate-margin settings. Tenerife is the largest explosive ocean-island volcano on Earth, with a prolonged (∼2 Ma) post-erosional history of caldera-forming, plinian and ignimbrite eruptions of evolved composition. The 0.7–1.8 Ma succession with 20 newly defined formations is reported for southern Tenerife, Canary Islands. In the last 2 Myr, the Las Cañadas volcano has produced >42 pumice-fall eruptions, 21 with extensive ignimbrites, and 12 inferred caldera collapse events. Pyroclastic density currents have repeatedly travelled more than15 km from source to the ocean, filling valleys and burying extensive interfluves. A robust whole-rock chemistry dataset, selected mineral chemistry, coupled with new 40Ar/39Ar ages of units through the pyroclastic stratigraphy, allow recognition of magmatic trends within the system on the order of 100 ky. The catastrophic explosive eruptions form three, 0.2–0.5 Myr-duration clusters (the Ucanca, Guajara and Diego-Hernandez) that do not appear to correspond simply with geochemical cycles, or to cycles of increasing eruption size or explosivity as has been previously proposed. During the clusters, large eruption frequencies averaged 1 every 20–45 kyrs. The eruption clusters were separated by hiatuses of ∼240–260 kyr, recorded by soils and unconformities, and may reflect marked changes in geographic dispersals following giant landslide breaches in Las Cañadas caldera wall. Two concurrent evolutionary magmatic trends are distinguished: one producing crystal-rich magmas, the other formed the cooler crystal-poor magmas: both spanned over a million years until 0.66 Ma, when the former ceased.
Ar/ Ar dating, Caldera collapse, Ignimbrite, Phonolitic rocks, Pyroclastic stratigraphy
Davila-Harris, Pablo
091d8c6a-62f7-44b9-9b09-9a6f1f1411aa
Branney, Michael J.
5261bd6b-5247-4aaf-bdd6-bfcb0a2bf094
Storey, M.
e2382741-b134-49cb-b4a8-07180dca8e5e
Taylor, Rex N.
094be7fd-ef61-4acd-a795-7daba2bc6183
Sliwinski, J.T.
9e2208de-c585-4b53-ada8-d529665bf2d9
April 2023
Davila-Harris, Pablo
091d8c6a-62f7-44b9-9b09-9a6f1f1411aa
Branney, Michael J.
5261bd6b-5247-4aaf-bdd6-bfcb0a2bf094
Storey, M.
e2382741-b134-49cb-b4a8-07180dca8e5e
Taylor, Rex N.
094be7fd-ef61-4acd-a795-7daba2bc6183
Sliwinski, J.T.
9e2208de-c585-4b53-ada8-d529665bf2d9
Davila-Harris, Pablo, Branney, Michael J., Storey, M., Taylor, Rex N. and Sliwinski, J.T.
(2023)
The upper Pleistocene (1.8–0.7 Ma) explosive eruptive history of Las Cañadas, ocean-island volcano, Tenerife.
Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 436, [107777].
(doi:10.1016/j.jvolgeores.2023.107777).
Abstract
While most ocean-island volcanism is effusive, recent evidence has demonstrated that intraplate ocean island volcanoes can exhibit protracted explosive histories, with catastrophic eruption styles and hazardous behaviour more typically associated with volcanoes in continental and plate-margin settings. Tenerife is the largest explosive ocean-island volcano on Earth, with a prolonged (∼2 Ma) post-erosional history of caldera-forming, plinian and ignimbrite eruptions of evolved composition. The 0.7–1.8 Ma succession with 20 newly defined formations is reported for southern Tenerife, Canary Islands. In the last 2 Myr, the Las Cañadas volcano has produced >42 pumice-fall eruptions, 21 with extensive ignimbrites, and 12 inferred caldera collapse events. Pyroclastic density currents have repeatedly travelled more than15 km from source to the ocean, filling valleys and burying extensive interfluves. A robust whole-rock chemistry dataset, selected mineral chemistry, coupled with new 40Ar/39Ar ages of units through the pyroclastic stratigraphy, allow recognition of magmatic trends within the system on the order of 100 ky. The catastrophic explosive eruptions form three, 0.2–0.5 Myr-duration clusters (the Ucanca, Guajara and Diego-Hernandez) that do not appear to correspond simply with geochemical cycles, or to cycles of increasing eruption size or explosivity as has been previously proposed. During the clusters, large eruption frequencies averaged 1 every 20–45 kyrs. The eruption clusters were separated by hiatuses of ∼240–260 kyr, recorded by soils and unconformities, and may reflect marked changes in geographic dispersals following giant landslide breaches in Las Cañadas caldera wall. Two concurrent evolutionary magmatic trends are distinguished: one producing crystal-rich magmas, the other formed the cooler crystal-poor magmas: both spanned over a million years until 0.66 Ma, when the former ceased.
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Accepted/In Press date: 2 March 2023
e-pub ahead of print date: 13 March 2023
Published date: April 2023
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
PDH was supported by a CONACYT-Mexico, PhD studentship (187323) at the University of Leicester , and a Sylvester Bradley Award from the Department of Geology, University of Leicester . Thanks to Rich Brown, Clare Maher, Peter Kokelaar and Richard Walker for valuable discussions in the field. Mike Norry for sharing his knowledge on the geochemistry of Tenerife and to Malcolm Pringle for providing Ar-data from SUERC. Laboratory assistance from Nick Marsh, Rob Wilson, Lara Blythe and Matt Jameson is kindly acknowledged. Nancy Riggs, Carles Soriano and Shan Da Silva for their comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. We are truly grateful with both two anonymous reviewers and with the handling Editor, José Luis Macías, for their thorough review and constructive comments, that highly improved the quality of this paper.
Funding Information:
PDH was supported by a CONACYT-Mexico, PhD studentship (187323) at the University of Leicester, and a Sylvester Bradley Award from the Department of Geology, University of Leicester. Thanks to Rich Brown, Clare Maher, Peter Kokelaar and Richard Walker for valuable discussions in the field. Mike Norry for sharing his knowledge on the geochemistry of Tenerife and to Malcolm Pringle for providing Ar-data from SUERC. Laboratory assistance from Nick Marsh, Rob Wilson, Lara Blythe and Matt Jameson is kindly acknowledged. Nancy Riggs, Carles Soriano and Shan Da Silva for their comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. We are truly grateful with both two anonymous reviewers and with the handling Editor, José Luis Macías, for their thorough review and constructive comments, that highly improved the quality of this paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Elsevier B.V.
Keywords:
Ar/ Ar dating, Caldera collapse, Ignimbrite, Phonolitic rocks, Pyroclastic stratigraphy
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 477701
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/477701
ISSN: 0377-0273
PURE UUID: 9c1cf475-46ab-42b8-a234-c4e35fe8de5f
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Date deposited: 13 Jun 2023 16:57
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 02:43
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Contributors
Author:
Pablo Davila-Harris
Author:
Michael J. Branney
Author:
M. Storey
Author:
J.T. Sliwinski
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