Quantitative Size Classification of Scoria Cones: The Case of Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain)

Abstract

Monogenetic volcanoes are the most abundant volcanic structures on the Earth's surface. Thousands of them exist in different tectonic contexts (e.g., subduction zones, intraplate areas, and divergent boundaries), appearing in groups forming volcanic fields. Tenerife, the largest and highest island of the Canarian archipelago, started to form about 14 million years ago (Ma), as a result of a complex eruptive history and a varied geomorphological evolution, including shield-building stages, volcanic rifts, stratovolcanoes, and monogenetic cones. Tenerife is an active, volcanic, oceanic island, where the last eruption occurred in 1909. In this paper, we propose a methodology for calculating the size of monogenetic basaltic volcanoes based on morphometric parameters, as well as a classification of the size of the volcanoes through the study of 297 scoria cones of Tenerife. Morphometric techniques, based mainly on height (Hco), volume (Vco), and area (Aco), were used together with correlations between different morphological parameters. The result is a simple quantitative classification, easy to use for estimating the size of monogenetic volcanoes. Of the monogenetic basaltic volcanoes of Tenerife, 98.98% fit into this classification, which distinguishes between large (Hco >200; Vco >0.1; Aco >0.5), medium (Hco >100 to <200; Vco >0.01 to <0.1; Aco >0.2 to <0.5), and small (Hco <100; Vco <0.01; Aco <0.2) volcanoes. There is a strong correlation between the size of cinder cones and their age: the more recent scoria cones are smaller in size than the older ones. This relationship supports suggestions by other researchers that eruptions have decreased in magnitude and the volume of available magma has become smaller. The results obtained by calculating the size of the scoria cones of Tenerife make possible the extrapolation of this technique to other insular or continental monogenetic volcanic fields.