Settlement of Volcanic Cones

  • SUZUKI Takasuke
    Institute of Geosciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Chuo University

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Other Title
  • 火山体の荷重沈下
  • カザンタイ ノ カジュウ チンカ

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Abstract

One of the fundamental differences between volcanic cone and non-volcanic mountains such as folded mountains is that the latter itself is a part of the earth’s crust, while the former is taken as a heavy load which is laid upon the pre-existing earth’s crust within a short geological time and is durable for several tens of thousands of years. In this respect, a volcanic cone resembles an ice sheet, a huge building and a large dam. It is, therefore, postulated that volcanic cone settles down by its own weight. From this point of view, characteristics of the subsidence of some strato-volcanic cones in Japan and Indonesia (Table 1) are comprehensively discussed in this paper. The results are summarized as follows. The settlement of volcanic cone causes various deformations at the foot of volcanic cone such as ring fault, thrust and the circular anticlinally uplifted ridge, all of which tend to encircle the volcanic cone settled. Based on the modes of these deformations at the foot, the settlement of volcanic cone is classified into three types ; 1) fault type, 2) fold type, and 3) mixed type. They are schematically shown in Fig. 5. Which type among the three takes place seems to depend on the nature of the basal rocks beneath the volcanic cone (Table 1 and Fig. 5). The fault type occurs in the case where Pliocene sedimentary rocks are thinner than about two hundreds meters in thickness and also most of the basal rocks are composed of Tertiary sedimentary rocks older than Pliocene. On the contrary, in the case where Pliocene sedimentary rocks are thicker, generally several hundreds to thousands meters, the fold type or the mixed type results. Magnitude of settlement is of order of one to two hundreds of meters in the depth settled. Rate of settlement of Iizuna volcano, which belongs to the fold type, is estimated to be of order of about four millimeters per year. Distance from the center of volcanic cone to the circular deformed feature (D), which is thought to show the magnitude of deformation originated by the settlement, is proportional to the relative height of volcanic cone (H), which can be taken as the substitute for the weight of volcanic cone (Fig. 6). Such relationship between D and H is also found in the case of guyot, which is surrounded by circular moat or ridge (Fig. 5), but not found in the case of collapse calderas as shown in Fig. 6.

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