Radiocarbon dating and tephrochronology in Kamchatka

We discuss results of 14C dates obtained from areas of young volcanoes in Kamchatka. We apply these dates to reconstructing regional volcanic activity during the Holocene

Radiocarbon dating of large Holocene volcanic events within South Kamchatka (Russian Far East)

Radiocarbon dating is widely used when studying recent volcanic activity in the Kamchatka Peninsula due to the abundance of organic matter that is associated with the volcanic deposits. Here, we present the results of 14C dating of major volcanic events within the active South Kamchatka volcanic zone. South Kamchatka includes 8 recently active volcanic centers (stratovolcanoes, calderas, and large craters) that have been erupting during the Holocene. Their tephras represent useful markers for both the southern part of the peninsula and the Northern Kurile Islands. Since these marker tephra layers facilitate stratigraphic and tephrochronological studies in this area, it was important to determine their ages. We have obtained 73 new individual 14C dates on paleosol, peat, charcoal, and wood associated with the marker tephra layers, then complemented these data with 37 earlier published dates and analyzed the resulting data set. We selected the reliable dates and then obtained average 14C ages of marker tephra layers. The details of these procedures, as well as brief descriptions of South Kamchatka Holocene eruptions and their tephra beds, are presented in the paper

Great explosive eruptions on Kamchatka during the last 10,000 years: Self-similar irregularity of the output of volcanic products

Temporal irregularity of the output of volcanic material is studied for the sequence of large (V ≥ 0.5 km3, N = 29) explosive eruptions on Kamchatka during the last 10,000 years. Informally, volcanic productivity looks episodic, and dates of eruptions cluster. To investigate the probable self-similar clustering behavior of eruption times, we determine correlation dimension Dc. For intervals between events 800 and 10,000 years, Dc ≈ 1 (no self-similar clustering). However, for shorter delays, Dc = 0.71, and the significance level for the hypothesis Dc < 1 is 2.5%. For the temporal structure of the output of volcanic products (i.e., for the sequence of variable-weight points), a self-similar “episodic” behavior holds over the entire range of delays 100–10,000 years, with Dc = 0.67 (Dc < 1 at 3.4% significance). This behavior is produced partly by the mentioned common clustering of event dates, and partly by another specific property of the event sequence, that we call “order clustering”. This kind of clustering is a property of a time-ordered list of eruptions, and is manifested as the tendency of the largest eruptions (as opposed to smaller ones) to be close neighbors in this list. Another statistical technique, of “rescaled range” (R/S), confirms these results. Similar but weaker-expressed behavior was also found for two other data sets: historical Kamchatka eruptions and acid layers in Greenland ice column. The episodic multiscaled mode of the output of volcanic material may be a characteristic property of a sequence of eruptions in an island arc, with important consequences for climate forcing by volcanic aerosol, and volcanic hazard

The 7600 (14C) year BP Kurile Lake caldera-forming eruption, Kamchatka, Russia: stratigraphy and field relationships

The 7600 14C-year-old Kurile Lake caldera-forming eruption (KO) in southern Kamchatka, Russia, produced a 7-km-wide caldera now mostly filled by the Kurile Lake. The KO eruption has a conservatively estimated tephra volume of 140–170 km3 making it the largest Holocene eruption in the Kurile–Kamchatka volcanic arc and ranking it among the Earth’s largest Holocene explosive eruptions. The eruptive sequence consists of three main units: (I) initial phreatoplinian deposits; (II) plinian fall deposits, and (III) a voluminous and extensive ignimbrite sheet and accompanying surge beds and co-ignimbrite fallout. The KO fall tephra was dispersed over an area of >3 million km2, mostly in a northwest direction. It is a valuable stratigraphic marker for southern Kamchatka, the Sea of Okhotsk, and a large part of the Asia mainland, where it has been identified as a f6 to 0.1 cm thick layer in terrestrial and lake sediments, 1000–1700 km from source. The ignimbrite, which constitutes a significant volume of the KO deposits, extends to the Sea of Okhotsk and the Pacific Ocean on either side of the peninsula, a distance of over 50 km from source. Fine co-ignimbrite ash was likely formed when the ignimbrite entered the sea and could account for the wide dispersal of the KO fall unit. Individual pumice clasts from the fall and surge deposits range from dacite to rhyolite, whereas pumice and scoria clasts in the ignimbrite range from basaltic andesite to rhyolite. Ignimbrite exposed west and south of the caldera is dominantly rhyolite, whereas north, east and southeast of the caldera it has a strong vertical compositional zonation from rhyolite at the base to basaltic andesite in the middle, and back to rhyolite at the top. Following the KO eruption, Iliinsky volcano formed within the northeastern part of the caldera producing basalt to dacite lavas and pyroclastic rocks compositionally related to the KO erupted products. Other post-caldera features include several extrusive domes, which form islands in Kurile Lake, submerged cinder cones and the huge silicic extrusive massif of Dikii Greben’ volcano