New evidence of the Green Tuff deposits and post-caldera, recent explosive volcanic activity at Pantelleria volcano (Sicily Channel, Italy) recorded in near-vent marine areas

Abstract

The record of the explosive activity of Pantelleria volcano is well documented by several distal tephra collected in various areas in and around the Mediterranean, while few tephrochronological studies exist on proximal marine areas. In this paper, we investigate three selected coring sites from the northern shoulder of the Pantelleria graben, about 15–30 km from the island, in near-vent position with respect to that volcanic source. Our multiproxy analyses revealed nine tephra layers, totally composed of juvenile materials, mostly ash and pumice fragments, as well as a coarse-grained tephra deposit at the bottom of one of the cores. The major element composition of glass shards indicates a very homogeneous geochemical composition for the tephra layers, suggesting their primary origin. Using litho-stratigraphic and paleoenvironmental proxies, we associated the tephra layers to the latest (<∼13.7 ka) explosive activity of Pantelleria. The coarse-grained deposit, instead, due to its distinctive composition is considered to represent the near-vent, marine equivalent of the distal Y-6 tephra layer, related to the ∼45 ka old co-ignimbrite fallout deposit of the Green Tuff event. The geochemical characterization of such deposit, mostly rhyolitic and partly trachytic, appears to enlarge the bimodal composition recorded in other distal tephra (Y-6) reported in the literature, highlighting the potential of near-vent record in providing additional information on the eruptive history.