New Data Relating to the Age, Material Composition, and Geological Structure of the Central Kamchatka Depression (CKD). Part 1. Rock Classification. Age, Petrology, and Isotope Geochemistry

Abstract

This paper presents new data on the age and isotope geochemistry for plateau effusive rocks sampled from the Central Kamchatka Depression and Nikolka Volcano. We have compared these materials with data on rocks sampled in the Klyuchevskaya Group of Volcanoes, as well as from Shiveluch, Kharchinsky, Zarechnyi, Nachikinsky, and Bakening volcanoes, and from an “NEB-adakite” Pliocene shield volcano in the interfluve between the Ozernaya Kamchatka and the Pravaya Kamchatka rivers. We show that the relatively “advanced,” in the sense of evolution, (mostly alkaline) compositions of rocks sampled from Nachikinsky, Bakening, and Nikolka volcanoes, as well as from the Pliocene shield edifice, have isotope characteristics that are significantly different from those for the Klyuchevskaya Group of Volcanoes. This type of rock is typical of the CKD as a rifting structure. The rocks in the Klyuchevskaya Group of Volcanoes are not typomorphic for this structure and reflect the phase of ordinary orogenic volcanism that has involved a much larger area. The Miocene plateau effusive rocks are only different from the rocks of this group in having a slightly higher potassium alkalinity. Rocks of the rifting type can be recognized, not only by their higher alkalinity, but also by a definite relationship among microcomponents: Ti/V > 0.004, Nb/Y > 0.28, Dy/Yb > 2.00, La/Yb > 6.5, Sm/Yb > 2.4, Lu/Hf < 0.08. Along with the isotope characteristics, these relationships suggest the existence of a common deep-seated asthenospheric mantle reservoir for the parent melts. The area of junction between the Kuril–Kamchatka and the Commander-Islands–Aleutian island arc system is marked by a higher fluid enrichment (the cerium REE group) in melts for rocks of some volcanoes, viz., Shiveluch, Kharchinskii, and Zarechnyi.