Home – Home – Jornals – Russian Geology and Geophysics 2012 number 12

Geophysical and geochemical data have been analyzed jointly in order to gain better understanding of subduction-related active volcanism in Kamchatka. The velocity structure of lithosphere beneath volcanic arcs has been imaged on three scales. Regional tomography to distances of thousands of kilometers has allowed constraints on slab geometry, which changes markedly in dip angle and thickness beneath the Kuriles-Kamchatka arc, possibly, because of a change in the interplay of the subduction driving forces. Intermediate-scale regional tomography (hundreds of kilometers) has been applied to the cases of Toba caldera in Sumatra, Mount Merapi in Java, and volcanoes in the Central Andes and provided evidence of magma conduits marked by low-velocity zones that link the suprasubduction volcanic arcs with clusters of earthquake hypocenters on the slab top. Local tomography resolves the shallow structure immediately under volcanoes and the geometry of respective melting zones. An example time-lapse (4D) seismic model of the crust beneath the Klyuchevskoy group of volcanoes has imaged a decade-long history of anomalous velocity zones and their relation with the activity cycles of Bezymyanny and Klyuchevskoy Volcanoes. As modeling shows, andesitic Bezymyanny and basaltic Klyuchevskoy Volcanoes have different feeding patterns during their eruption cycles: The former feeds directly from the mantle, while the material coming to the latter passes through a complicated system of intermediate chambers. The local tomography model has been applied as reference to interpret the available major- and trace-element data from the Klyuchevskoy and Bezymyanny Volcanoes. The lava compositions of the two volcanoes have becoming ever more proximal since 1945 in many major and trace elements, while some parameters remain different. Paroxysmal eruptions of Bezymyanny for several recent decades correlate with the time when Klyuchevskoy erupted lavas with high percentages of high-Mg basalts. The difference in the evolution trends of the Kamchatka volcanic rocks may be due either to fractional crystallization or to the presence of concentrator minerals in the source, titanomagnetite, orthopyroxene, rutile, garnet, and plagioclase being especially active as to uptake of some elements. The natural compositions of rocks have been compared in this context with published experimental data. According to the seismic-velocity structure and lava compositions analyzed jointly, there are five levels of crystallization beneath the studied volcanoes, while the number and spatial patterns of magma sources are different for two types of andesitic volcanoes.