In the summer of 2014 I have had a Nuffield Foundation student, Jodie, working
with me towards a Gold CREST Award, which we blogged about the other week. Here, I’m going to talk a bit about the research she did.
Jodie looked at the Green Tuff Ignimbrite on the island of Pantelleria, Italy. The Green Tuff Ignimbrite is a rheomorphic ignimbrite
which was emplaced during an eruption about 45 thousand years ago. An
ignimbrite is the deposit from a pyroclastic density current. Rheomorphic means
that the deposit was still hot when it was formed, so that the shards of ash
welded together and was able to be deformed ductiley. Rheomorphic ignimbrites
are common on places like Gran Canaria, in the Canary Islands (where the
classic work of Schmincke & Swanson 1967 was done) and the Snake River Plain in the western US. You can get two types of rheomorphism, that which occurs during
deposition of the ignimbrite (e.g. the overriding current exerts a shear on the
underlying deposit) and rheomorphism which occurs after the deposit has been
fully formed (e.g. the deposit starts slumping under gravity). I’m avoiding
using primary vs secondary here, as actually the historical meaning of
those words and their relative timings can be difficult to disentangle. For a
very good, concise overview take a read of (Andrews & Branney 2005). Either way, rheomorphic structures within the deposit
like lineations, folds, tension gashes and rotated crystals or clasts, can tell
us about this sense of movement. Volcanologists interpret these kinematic
indicators in the same way a structural geologist would interpret verging
folds, or rotated porphyroclasts in a mylonite (e.g. Passchier & Simpson 1986). You can even determine the direction a pyroclastic density current
flowed if you map out these kinematic indicators across the ignimbrite (e.g. Andrews & Branney, 2011).
The Green Tuff eruption was said to have been a caldera forming
eruption, but the details of this have been debated. Two different calderas
have been proposed: the Cinque Denti caldera (Mahood & Hildreth 1986) and the Monastero caldera (Cornette et al. 1983; Civetta et al.
1988). These
share the same scarps to the east, west and south but while the Cinque Denti
caldera has exposed scarps in the north (the Costa di Zinedi scarp, the
Kattibucale scarp and the Cinque Denti scarp), the Monastero caldera has a
buried northern scarp. During my PhD on the Green Tuff (Williams 2010; Williams et al. 2014) I found that the Costa di Zinedi scarps, the Kattibucale scarps and
the Cinque Denti scarps were extensively draped by the Green Tuff, right down
to the bottom of the exposed caldera walls.
Schematic diagram of the development of rheomorphic structures in a syndepositional shear zone during the deposition of an ignimbrite. Taken from Andrews & Branney, 2005. |
Some of the micro-kinematic indicators seen in the thin sections from the Green Tuff Ignimbrite, including verging folds and rotated clasts (δ and σ–objects). From Dyble & Williams, 2015. |
What Jodie found was compelling evidence for upslope flow in the thin sections that she analysed. Thus, those
deposits were formed by the Green Tuff pyroclastic density current flowing up
the caldera scarps, depositing and shearing the underlying deposit as it went.
Which means that those caldera scarps must have existed before the Green Tuff
ignimbrite did, so we support the idea that those scarps had nothing to do with
the Green Tuff eruption. We think that’s pretty neat and we’re presenting the
work at the Volcanic and Magmatic Studies Group annual conference, which in January 2015 will be held in Norwich. Jodie has already made the
poster we’ll be presenting as part of the assessment required to achieve a Gold CREST Award, so we’ve decided to publish that online before the conference. I’d like to thank Jodie for some stellar research this summer,
despite only having done 1 year of Sixth Form (AS level) geology (she’s 17!), and
answering some questions I’ve been pondering for about 6 years. Hopefully, this
data will go into a couple of papers I’m working on too!
Andrews, G. & Branney, M., 2005. Folds, fabrics, and
kinematic criteria in rheomorphic ignimbrites of the Snake River Plain, Idaho:
Insights into emplacement and flow. In J. Pederson & C. . Dehler, eds. Interior
Western United States: Field Guide 6. Bouldor, Colorado: Geological Society
of America, pp. 311–327.
Andrews,
G.D.M. & Branney, M.J., 2011. Emplacement and rheomorphic deformation of a
large, lava-like rhyolitic ignimbrite: Grey’s Landing, southern Idaho. Geological
Society of America Bulletin, 123(3-4), pp.725–743.
Civetta,
L. et al., 1988. The eruptive history of Pantelleria (Sicily Channel) in the
last 50 ka. Bulletin of Volcanology, 50, pp.47–57.
Cornette,
Y. et al., 1983. Recent volcanic history of pantelleria: A new interpretation. Journal
of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 17(1-4), pp.361–373.
Dyble, J.A., Williams, R., 2015. Micro kinematic indicators in the Green Tuff Ignimbrite: can they tell us about caldera collapse? VMSG Meeting, Norwich, 5th-7th January 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1160476
Dyble, J.A., Williams, R., 2015. Micro kinematic indicators in the Green Tuff Ignimbrite: can they tell us about caldera collapse? VMSG Meeting, Norwich, 5th-7th January 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1160476
Mahood,
G. & Hildreth, W., 1986. Geology of the peralkaline volcano at Pantelleria,
Strait of Sicily. Bulletin of Volcanology, 48, pp.143–172.
Passchier,
C. & Simpson, C., 1986. Porphyroclast systems as kinematic indicators. Journal
of Structural Geology, 8(8), pp.831–843.
Schmincke,
H. & Swanson, D., 1967. Laminar viscous flowage structures in ash-flow
tuffs from Gran Canaria, Canary Islands. The Journal of Geology, 75(6),
pp.641–644.
Williams,
R., 2010. Emplacement of radial pyroclastic density currents over irregular
topography: The chemically-zoned, low aspect-ratio Green Tuff ignimbrite,
Pantelleria, Italy. University of Leicester. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.789054
Williams, R., Branney, M.J. & Barry, T.L., 2014. Temporal and spatial evolution of a waxing then waning catastrophic density current revealed by chemical mapping. Geology, 42(2), pp.107–110.
Williams, R., Branney, M.J. & Barry, T.L., 2014. Temporal and spatial evolution of a waxing then waning catastrophic density current revealed by chemical mapping. Geology, 42(2), pp.107–110.