The Plio–Quaternary Ambon arc, Eastern Indonesia

Abstract

Plio–Quaternary lavas and granites have been collected from Ambon, Seram, Kelang, Haruku, Saparua, Ambelau and Banda Api islands, Eastern Indonesia. They include low-K calc-alkaline basalts, andesites, dacites and rhyolites and high-K calc-alkaline andesites, dacites, rhyolites and granites. All these rocks present the usual chemical characteristics of island-arc magmas. The high-K suite of Ambon is mostly represented by cordierite-bearing dacites (known as ambonites) and granites. Low-K and high-K magmas were emplaced in neighbouring islands or even in the same island (Ambon), often concomitantly, during two magmatic pulses at 5–3.2 Ma and 2.3–1 Ma, respectively. We propose that the low-K suite results from the evolution of basaltic magmas derived from mantle melting above the Western Irian Jaya plate which subducts along the Seram trough. Intermediate and acidic rocks of the high-K suite (e.g. ambonites) are thought to derive from low-K mafic magmas through massive assimilation of the Seram–Ambon continental crust, as originally proposed by Van Bemmelen in 1949. The timing of magmatic events and the geochemical features of the studied lavas are clearly different from those of the southern part of the Banda arc, in which the low-K suite is lacking. In agreement with earlier seismic evidence for two different slabs subducting beneath the Seram–Ambon continental block and beneath the southern Banda arc (from Wetar to Manuk), respectively, we propose to recognise a new Plio–Quaternary island arc, i.e. the Ambon arc, extending west–east from Ambelau to the Banda Archipelago active low-K volcanoes through Kelang, southwestern Seram, Ambon, Haruku and Saparua.