Weizhou Island Volcano Landscape

This is a volcanic landscape on Weizhou Island in the Beibu Gulf south of Beihai City, Guangxi Province. This island is composed of volcanic rocks, including volcanoes composed of erupted magma and low flat volcanoes that was formed by phreatomagmatic eruptions. One of the low flat phreatomagmatic craters has been submerged by seawater, but the tuff ring wall is still clearly exposed. The profile of the basal surge tuff at the volcano’s base shows typical cross-bedding, wavy bedding, rockfall subsidence structures and syndepositional slump structures. There are also abundant marine erosion features, such as sea caves, sea cliffs, wave-cut channels, wave-cut platforms, sand beaches, rock embankments and terraces. The stacks are the result of the marine erosion of basalt blocks that fell onto the basal surge tuff during the eruption. These basalt blocks sit on the tuff and look like stacks or discs (Fig. 10).

Fig. 10

A crater submerged in water on Weizhou Island