New Seismic and Tomography Data in the Southern Part of the Harghita Mountains (Romania, Southeastern Carpathians): Connection with Recent Volcanic Activity

Abstract

The southern part of the southeastern Carpathians represents the site of the most recent volcanic eruptions of the entire Carpathian-Pannonian region. The products of these eruptions range from 42 to 10 Ka radiocarbon ages in the South Harghita Mountains (high K calc-alkaline rocks with adakite-like features), and at 1.2–0.6 Ma K–Ar ages in the Persani Mountains (alkali basalts). They were emplaced in a post-collisional regime. Ciomadul volcano is located at the southernmost part of the NW–SE oriented Călimani-Gurghiu-Harghita range crossing the inner part of the southeastern Carpathians and in the rough proximity of the Vrancea seismic zone (at ca. 60 km toward NW). Its magma generation is attributed to geodynamic events closely related to the seismogenic area. A number of particular geophysical and geochemical features located in the study region, including (1) the abrupt attenuation of the seismic waves originating from the Vrancea intermediate-depth foci, (2) the most intense heat-flow anomaly in Romania, (3) the most prominent 3He/4He anomaly measured in natural “postvolcanic” gas emanations, are all in favor of the hypothesis of a still existing hot local magma chamber. Data acquired during recent seismic monitoring of the Vrancea zone and its neighborhoods suggest an enhancement of the local seismicity beneath the southern edge of the South Harghita Mts., both at crustal and subcrustal levels. At the same time, recent tomography images obtained using local earthquake data correlate well with the presence of a vertically extended low-velocity zone coming from the upper mantle to the assumed magmatic chambers located in the crust. The present data, supporting the presence of an active crustal magma chamber beneath Ciomadul, allow us to consider that future volcanic activity at this volcano cannot be discarded.