Distribution, structure, and formation of Holocene lava shields in Iceland

Abstract

Lava shields in Iceland are monogenic shield volcanoes mostly composed of primitive basalts, picrite and olivine tholeiite. The Holocene shields are restricted in space and time: in space they are essentially confined to the North and West Volcanic Zones; in time they are essentially confined to the early part of the Holocene. The volcanic zones are characterised by volcanic systems, that is, 5–20 km wide and 40–150 km long swarms of tectonic fractures and volcanic fissures where most of the Holocene volcanotectonic activity takes place. However, most lava shields are not located inside the volcanic systems but rather at their margins or in between systems. In addition to the lavas of the shields being more primitive than those issued from nearby volcanic fissures, the average volume of a shield is an order of a magnitude larger than that of the lava from a fissure. Here we present the results of new field observations of Holocene shields and provide numerical models to explain their location, time of formation, primitive composition, and large volumes. We made models with varying ice-sheet size and thickness (glacial load), the ice resting on a mechanically layered crust, and studied the stress effects that the load would have on a double magma chamber, that is, a small, shallow crustal chamber at 3 km depth and a deep-seated reservoir at 20 km depth (the base of the crust). Such a pair of chambers is typical for volcanic systems and associated central volcanoes (composite volcanoes) in Iceland. For an ice sheet covering an entire volcanic zone or more, that is, 100 km or wider, the ice-induced compressive stress extends to the deep-seated reservoir and into the upper mantle. Consequently, such a loading suppresses magma accumulation in the reservoir and associated volcanism. During the late-glacial period, when the ice sheet is only 20 km wide, the glacial load generates tensile stresses around the deep-seated reservoir, increases its fracture porosity and magma content, and extends the reservoir laterally and vertically into the upper mantle. Consequently, when the lava shields (and, somewhat earlier, the tablemountains) were erupted, much more melt or magma was available to feed a single eruption than during the later part of the Holocene. And because of the greater vertical extent of the reservoir, this magma tended to be hotter and more primitive than that issued in later-formed fissure eruptions. Also, the stress field generated at the end of the glacial and in the early Holocene favoured dyke injections at the marginal parts of, or in between, the volcanic systems, thereby explaining the location of the lava shields.