Textures, Structures and Processes of Volcanic Successions: Examples from Southern Central Andes (Northwestern Argentina 22º-28ºS)

COIRA B.L.; CISTERNA, C.E.

Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

Lugar: Cham; Año: 2020 p. 166

978-3-030-52010-6

The Central Andes provides an excellent natural laboratory for studying the processes associated with the subduction of oceanic crust beneath a continental margin.The onset of Andean magmatic cycle is considered to have taken place in Late Triassic‒Early Jurassic Period (Dalziel 1986) although subduction had already commenced in the Late Carboniferous Period after the passive margin configuration. The volcanic activity has been essentially continuous from that time to the present days (Coira et al. 1982; Jordan et al. 1983, 1997; Ramos 1988; Mpodozis and Ramos 1989; Kay et al. 1991, 1999; Kay and Abbruzzi 1996) offering examples whose analysis open new perspectives in the understanding of volcanicprocesses linked to active continental margins as the Central Andes. In the same regional context are not less important the ancient volcanic records forming the Ordovician sequences that outcrop along the Puna and Famatina System. Their study gives the opportunity to understand the evolution of the southwestern active margin of Gondwana during the Paleozoic.As a result of our research carried out over the last 40 years on volcanism (Cenozoic to Paleozoic) of the Southern Central Andes, especially of the northwestern Argentina, we have collected illustrative material, on both modern and ancient volcanic successions, which show a great diversity of types of rocks and processes, reflecting the particular conditions resulting from the conjunction of lithospheric structures, tectonic history, and magmatism, during the evolution of the Andean continental margin. We believe that taking into account together in a book the Textures, structures and processes of volcanic successions: examples from Southern Central Andes (Northwestern Argentina)?will allow to get through the Central Andean volcanism from the Lower Paleozoic to the Cenozoic times in the framework of their processes, eruptive mechanisms, and geodynamic conditions, awakening the interest of volcanologists and specialists in Earth Sciences.For the purposes of the treatment of the different types of volcanic successions to be considered in the book, the more representative volcanism records of the Southern Central Andes have been selected that took place during the Cenozoic as caldera complexes, composite volcanoes (stratovolcanoes), silicic dome complexes, and in monogenetic mafic centers as well as in the Paleozoic times as submarine‒viisubaerial volcanism. The analysis of the Paleozoic ancient volcanic successions, in which recognition of the original rock type can be difficult by the effects ofdeformation, metamorphism, and alteration, is a subject of particular attention.In the present book, the description of distinctive cases of Southern Central Andes volcanism provides to the readers useful tools to be applied in the analysis and interpretation of volcanic successions linked to the evolution of active continental margin.