SANTAMARIA , Santiago

Despite the multiple efforts to understand the temporal evolution of the Ecuadorian Volcanic Arc, the evolutionary history of the oldest volcanic edifices remained poorly studied. The Paris-Saclay University, the Instituto Geofísico of the Escuela Politécnica Nacional and the French Instituto de Investigación para el Desarrollo carried out an...

The eruptive chronology of arc volcanoes consists of construction stages usually punctuated by large collapse events affecting the edifice. In this paper, we reconstruct the eruptive chronology of Carihuairazo volcano, a Middle Pleistocene edifice from the Ecuadorian segment of the Andean Northern Volcanic Zone. This study is based on extensive...

In the northern Andes, the Ecuadorian arc presents a large number of Quaternary volcanoes, spread over a rather restricted area. The origin of this volcanic clustering is not well understood, and only a few chronological data older than the Holocene are available in northern Ecuador to document the arc development stages. In this study, we...

New K-Ar ages obtained on juvenile pumice glass shards indicate that the Chalupas ignimbrite, one of the main Pleistocene tephra markers of the Ecuadorian arc, was emplaced at 216 ± 5 ka. Morphology and major and trace element contents of the glass shards are similar to those of ash layers from deep-sea cores and allow correlation between...

Major eruptions in the Andes are mainly characterized by the emission of large volumes of gas and volcanic ash. The plume may reach the stratosphere and be transported by winds. In Ecuador, the prevailing winds are westward, and the volcanic ash, also called tephra, is transported towards the Pacific Ocean. Vallejo (2011) studied tephra layers...