Geochronology and petrogenesis of the Holocene volcanism of El Hierro,Canary Islands

El Hierro is, together with La Palma, the youngest island of the Canarian Archipelago. Both islands are in the shield stage of their volcanic growth, which implies a high volcanic activity during the Holocene period. The submarine eruption occurred in October 2011 in the SSE rift of El Hierro evidenced the active volcanic character of the island. Even so, despite the numerous scientific works published following the submarine eruption (most of them centered to understand such volcanic event), there is still a lack of precise knowledge about the Holocene subaerial volcanism of this island. The LAJIAL Project focuses on solving this knowledge gap in order to verify the hypothesis that the Holocene volcanism in El Hierro follows a pattern with quiescence periods of 1000 to 2000 years between eruptive periods. The research of the most recent volcanism of the island, the last 11,700 years of the Holocene, covers a long enough period whereas it is close to the present day. Thus, this period is the best to model the eruptive processes that will allow us to evaluate the future scenarios of the eruptive dynamics in El Hierro. The Project LAJIAL combines methodologies of geological mapping, geomorphology, GIS, chronostratigraphy, paleomagnetism, petrology and geochemistry to solve the Holocene eruptive recurrence rate in El Hierro, and to constrain the rift model of intraplate ocean volcanic islands.

Paneles ‘Volcanes en movimiento: El Hierro y La Palma’ via digital csic