Artigo Acesso aberto Revisado por pares

A 550‐year‐old Plinian eruption at El Chichón Volcano, Chiapas, Mexico: Explosive volcanism linked to reheating of the magma reservoir

2003; American Geophysical Union; Volume: 108; Issue: B12 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1029/2003jb002551

ISSN

2156-2202

Autores

José Luis Macías, José Luis Arce, Juan Carlos Mora, Juan Manuel Espíndola, R. Saucedo, P. Manetti,

Tópico(s)

earthquake and tectonic studies

Resumo

Some 550 years ago (1320–1433 A.D.), a powerful Plinian eruption at El Chichón Volcano in southern Mexico produced a widespread pumice fall deposit. We subdivided the deposit into three parts on the basis of structural and textural characteristics, pumice lithology and density, granulometry, and petrologic‐geochemical attributes. The deposit covers an area of 1500 km 2 within the 1‐cm isopach and has a minimum estimated bulk volume of 2.8 km 3 (1.1 km 3 dense rock equivalent (DRE)); its eruptive column reached an altitude of ∼31 km. Consideration of field evidence, the presence and nature of mafic enclaves, and chemical data strongly suggest that the 550 year B.P. eruption is linked with the intrusion of a high‐temperature basaltic magma into preexisting but stagnated trachyandesitic magma beneath El Chichón. Thorough mixing of the two magmas produced a compositionally uniform hybrid trachyandesite magma (average SiO 2 55.3 wt %), which subsequently underwent crystal growth and gas exsolution, ultimately overpressurizing the zoned magmatic system to erupt explosively. On the basis of El Chichón's known eruptive history, the intrusion‐mixing event occurred sometime after the 900 year B.P. eruption. The hybrid magma had a preeruption temperature of 820–830°C and was water undersaturated (5–6 wt % H 2 O) at pressures of ∼2–2.5 kbar.

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