V23B-3104
STRATIGRAPHY OF REFORMA CALDERA, BAJA CALIFORNIA SUR, MEXICO
Tuesday, 15 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Laura García Sánchez1, Jose Luis Macias2, Lady Susana Osorio2, Antonio Pola2, Denis Ramón Avellán2, Jose Luis Arce1, Ricardo Saucedo3, Juan Manuel Sánchez4, Felipe García-Tenorio2, Guillermo Cisneros2, Gabriela Reyes-Agustín2, Silvestre Cardona2 and Adrian Jimenez5, (1)Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico, (2)UNAM, Morelia, Mexico, (3)Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, Instituto de Geología, San Luis Potosi, Mexico, (4)IPN, CIIEMAD, Mexico City, Mexico, (5)UMSNH Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, Michoacan, Mexico
Abstract:
The Reforma caldera is located at ~35 km to the northwest of Santa Rosalía in the central part of the Baja California peninsula. It has 10 km in diameter and a maximum height of 1200 masl in the center and between 100 and 500 masl in its slopes. Reforma is within a tectonic zone affected by two fault systems: A NW-SE normal fault system linked to the opening of the Gulf of California, and a NNW-SSE and NW-SE strike-slip fault system associated with an active Riedel system. Reforma was built upon Cretaceous granites that outcrop at the caldera center, Miocene to Pliocene volcano-sedimentary rocks of the Comondú group, and Miocene marine sediments of the Santa Rosalía basin. On top of these rocks outcrop at least four submarine to subaerial ignimbrites interbedded with marine fossiliferous beds and the lower Pleistocene deposits associated to the Reforma caldera. These deposits are formed by a ignimbrite that shifts to different lithofacies that change gradually their welding, here dubbed basal, transitional, intermediate, and upper (all of then enriched in black fiammes), followed by a pumice-rich, white fiammes, and vitrophyre lithofacies, which are distributed around the 9 km wide caldera and have been associated to the caldera formation episode. Deposits related to post-caldera volcanism are andesite-basaltic lava flows erupted along the caldera rim through localized feeding dikes and andesitic and rhyolitic domes, and scoria cinder cones exposed inside and outside the caldera. On top of these deposits rest the middle Pleistocene Aguajito caldera deposits.
