International Lithosphere Program; Publ. No. 0104

"Don Swanson has adopted a detailed, field-oriented approach to studying problems of great volcanologic importance across a range of compositions and scales. This volume emphasizes the role of field volcanology as a window into better understanding volcanic processes, past and present, and highlights those places and processes where Swanson's insights have been particularly impactful"--

Central-Southern Italy and the Tyrrhenian Sea are the sites of extensive Plio-Quaternary magmatic activity. The rock compositions include crustal anatectic granites and rhyolites, tholeiitic, calc-alkaline, shoshonitic volcanics, and potassic to ultrapotassic and Na-alkaline volcanics. This very wide compositional variation makes Italian magmatism one of the most complex petrological issues, the understanding of which is a challenge for modern petrology and geochemistry. This book summarises the petrological, geochemical and volcanological characteristics of Italian Plio-Quaternary volcanism, and discusses petrogenetic hypotheses and possible geodynamics settings. The book is written for petrologists and geochemists, but fundamental geochemical information is well presented and the use of excessive jargon is avoided, making the book readable to a wide audience of Earth scientists.

This memoir is the first to review all of Antarctica’s volcanism between 200 million years ago and the Present. The region is still volcanically active. The volume is an amalgamation of in-depth syntheses, which are presented within distinctly different tectonic settings. Each is described in terms of (1) the volcanology and eruptive palaeoenvironments; (2) petrology and origin of magma; and (3) active volcanism, including tephrochronology. Important volcanic episodes include: astonishingly voluminous mafic and felsic volcanic deposits associated with the Jurassic break-up of Gondwana; the construction and progressive demise of a major Jurassic to Present continental arc, including back-arc alkaline basalts and volcanism in a young ensialic marginal basin; Miocene to Pleistocene mafic volcanism associated with post-subduction slab-window formation; numerous Neogene alkaline volcanoes, including the massive Erebus volcano and its persistent phonolitic lava lake, that are widely distributed within and adjacent to one of the world’s major zones of lithospheric extension (the West Antarctic Rift System); and very young ultrapotassic volcanism erupted subglacially and forming a world-wide type example (Gaussberg).

This impressive scientific resource presents up-to-date information on ten thousand years of volcanic activity on Earth. In the decade and a half since the previous edition was published new studies have refined assessments of the ages of many volcanoes, and several thousand new eruptions have been documented. This edition updates the book’s key components: a directory of volcanoes active during the Holocene; a chronology of eruptions over the past ten thousand years; a gazetteer of volcano names, synonyms, and subsidiary features; an extensive list of references; and an introduction placing these data in context. This edition also includes new photographs, data on the most common rock types forming each volcano, information on population densities near volcanoes, and other features, making it the most comprehensive source available on Earth’s dynamic volcanism.

Accompanying CD-ROM, entitled Supplementary materials to Stratigraphy and geology of volcanic areas, includes three geologic maps in Adobe Acrobat PDF files.

Details information about volcanoes found in the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Canada.