Role of conduit shear on ascent of the crystal-rich magma feeding the 800-year-b.p. Plinian eruption of Quilotoa Volcano (Ecuador)

We have characterized pumice products belonging to the climactic phase of the 800-year-b.p. Quilotoa eruption. Bulk rock compositions, petrography, mineral, and glass chemistry and textural investigations were performed on the three end-member pumice types, namely white, gray, and mingled pumices. All the investigated pumice clasts are dacites characterized by the same bulk rock composition and mineralogical assemblage, but glass compositions and bulk textures change according to different pumice types. White pumice has higher crystallinity (~48 wt%), abundant euhedral pheno/microphenocrysts, no groundmass microlites, the most evolved glass compositions (7478 wt% SiO2), and heterogeneous vesicle populations marked by deformed and highly coalesced vesicles with thin walls. Gray pumice exhibits lower crystallinity (2936 wt%), abundant broken and/or resorbed crystals, ubiquitous groundmass phenocryst fragments and microlites, the widest range of glass compositions (6978 wt% SiO2), and quite homogeneous poorly deformed and coalesced vesicles with thicker walls. Mingled pumices are characterized by the alternation of bands or patches with white and gray pumice compositional and textural characteristics. We attribute heterogeneities in glass compositions and crystal and vesicle textures to processes occurring within volcanic conduits as magma is ascending to the surface. In particular, the above observations and results are consistent with an origin of a gray magma by heating of the original white magma in a strongly sheared region of the conduit because of a mechanism of viscous dissipation and crystal grinding and resorption at the conduit walls. The less viscous gray magma, therefore, would enable the onset and preservation of a high mass flux of the eruption otherwise difficult to explain for highly viscous crystal-rich dacitic magmas.

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