Abstract
El Hierro, which is currently in its shield stage of evolution, provides an ideal starting point to explain the progressive development of the typically long-lived Canary Islands. The island of El Hierro is the youngest (1.12Ma), smallest (268km2), and westernmost of the Canaries. The most characteristic feature of the island is its truncated trihedral shape, with three convergent ridges of volcanic cones that are separated by wide, horseshoe-shaped embayments. The geology of El Hierro is representative of an oceanic island in the early stage of development. Most of the island is mantled by recent cinder cones and lavas, and it is barely incised by erosional canyons. The internal structure of the island, in turn, has been exhumed by gigantic landslides, revealing overlapping volcanic edifices that successively developed and then collapsed. These features provide one of the best possible geological scenarios to investigate the relationships between rift zones and giant lateral collapses in an oceanic shield volcano.
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