Genesis and Eruptive Dynamics of the Garnet-Bearing Rhyolites from the Ramadas Volcanic Centre (Altiplano-Puna Plateau, Central Andes, Argentina).

Abstract:

Ramadas volcanic centre (6.6 Ma) is a monogenetic calderic depression, now largely obliterated, almost coeval with the Late Miocene outbreak of highly explosive silicic activity in the Altiplano-Puna plateau. Ramadas erupted a rather complex suite of garnet-bearing, rhyolitic pyroclastic rocks, dominated by a >35 km³ fall deposit and preceded by the emplacement of a lag breccia containing abundant metasedimentary lithics and garnet-tourmaline leucogranites. During the waning stage of the eruption, small volume phreatomagmatic deposits formed a small tuff-ring, followed by a lava coulée emplacement. Volcanological data together with textural features of typical tube pumice evidence a volatiles-rich, plinian eruption. Petrographic and textural studies on juveniles confirm the presence of euhedral garnet as dominant phase and identify micrometric metaigneous fragments (Qtz+Bt+Kfs+Mt+Tur). BSE imaging and microprobe analyses on glasses, garnets and accessory mineral phases (zircon and monazite) provide further data to understand the genesis and eruptive conditions of these atypical rhyolites, geochemically different from those outcropping in the same region. Garnets display a homogeneous, unzoned almandine-spessartine composition (Alm_72-71Sps_24-23Pyr_0-1Grs_4-3) and are contained in a glassy rhyolitic magma with peraluminous character, HREE depleted and relative LREE enriched. It’s known that primary igneous garnets are rare and can only develop under restricted conditions. Additionally, the presence of Zr and Mnz is associated with both magmatic and high-T metamorphic processes. Although more data need to be collected, our study and preliminary modelling point to the occurrence of thermal metamorphism shifting to partial melting of Fe-MnO-rich metapelitic rocks (or even re-melting of older acid volcanics), with final extraction of volatiles-rich rhyolitic melts, able to produce a plinian eruption. Here, Alm-Sps garnet could represent the peritectic product of the melting reactions at P≤ 5 Kbar and T= 550-800°C.