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Sediments on Volcanic Islands — On the Importance of the Exception

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Sediments and Environmental Geochemistry

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Abstract

Sediments of the Middle Atlantic Islands are discussed along with their position relative to volcanic events. They can be subdivided into prevolcanic, synvolcanic, and postvolcanic sediments.

Small-scale outcrops of prevolcanic sediments occur on some of the Cape Verde Islands and the Canary Islands. They comprise deep-water suites which must have been uplifted to their present position by volcano-tectonic processes. Their rocks include sandstones, siltstones, claystones, marlstones, limestones, and chert of Upper Jurassic to probably Eocene age on the Cape Verde Islands, and Lower Cretaceous to Oligocene on the Canary Islands, the latter already contain submarine volcanics. Most of the rocks are turbidites which originated at the adjacent African continent.

The synvolcanic sediments are essentially biocalcarenites which occur on every group of the Middle Atlantic Islands. They were formed after the islands had reached a position close to sea-level during the Neogene; most of them seem to belong to the Upper Miocene and Pliocene. They occur within or above lava streams and pyroclastic deposits and were once the only means for dating the island’s volcanism. Some of them still expose the original mineralogy of the biogenic components, i. e. aragonite and high-magnesium calcite. Their diagenesis depends on the geologic situation. Meteoric cementation with drusy mosaic calcite and meniscus cements occurs where carbonate sands had been piled up to form dunes. Submarine and beach-rock cements are mainly micritic or even-rim, high-magnesium calcite. Recent dolomitization of some occurrences seems to follow the seepage-refluxion model but an influence from overlying basaltic lava streams is also possible, as well as a mixing of fresh- and seawater. Regressive diagenesis occurs in such carbonates which came again in contact with seawater after having been subject to meteoric influence.

Much of the carbonates belong to marine terraces; their levels cannot be taken as a means of determining their age since eustatic sea-level changes interfere with the vertical ups and downs of the islands. The processes of carbonate formation and diagenesis seem to continue today, including the formation of caliche. Detailed studies are lacking for almost all Middle Atlantic Islands except for some of the Canary Islands and Porto Santo.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geographisches Institut, Abteilung Geologie, Universität Mannheim, D-6800, Mannheim 1, Germany

    Peter Rothe

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  1. Peter Rothe
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Sedimentforschung, Universität Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 236, D-6900, Heidelberg, Germany

    Dietrich Heling

  2. Lehrstuhl für Geologie, Universität Mannheim, Postfach 10 34 62, D-6800, Mannheim 1, Germany

    Peter Rothe

  3. Arbeitsbereich Umweltschutztechnik, TU Hamburg-Harburg, Eißendorfer Str. 40, D-2100, Hamburg 90, Germany

    Ulrich Förstner

  4. Geologisch-Paläontologisches Institut, Universität Kiel, Ludwig-Meyn-Str. 10, D-2300, Kiel 1, Germany

    Peter Stoffers

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Rothe, P. (1990). Sediments on Volcanic Islands — On the Importance of the Exception. In: Heling, D., Rothe, P., Förstner, U., Stoffers, P. (eds) Sediments and Environmental Geochemistry. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-75097-7_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-75097-7_3

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