The A.D. 1835 eruption of Volcán Cosigüina, Nicaragua: A guide for assessing local volcanic hazards

William E. Scott; Cynthia A. Gardner; Graziella Devoli; Antonio Alvarez

doi:10.1130/2006.2412(09)

Home/Archive/USGS

USGS · 70176918

The A.D. 1835 eruption of Volcán Cosigüina, Nicaragua: A guide for assessing local volcanic hazards

William E. Scott·Cynthia A. Gardner·Graziella Devoli·Antonio Alvarez

View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

The January 1835 eruption of Volcán Cosigüina in northwestern Nicaragua was one of the largest and most explosive in Central America since Spanish colonization. We report on the results of reconnaissance stratigraphic studies and laboratory work aimed at better defining the distribution and character of deposits emplaced by the eruption as a means of developing a preliminary hazards assessment for future eruptions. On the lower flanks of the volcano, a basal tephra-fall deposit comprises either ash and fine lithic lapilli or, locally, dacitic pumice. An overlying tephra-fall deposit forms an extensive blanket of brown to gray andesitic scoria that is 35–60 cm thick at 5–10 km from the summit-caldera rim, except southwest of the volcano, where it is considerably thinner. The scoria fall produced the most voluminous deposit of the eruption and underlies pyroclastic-surge and -flow deposits that chiefly comprise gray andesitic scoria. In northern and southeastern sectors of the volcano, these flowage deposits form broad fans and valley fills that locally reach the Gulf of Fonseca. An arcuate ridge 2 km west of the caldera rim and a low ridge east of the caldera deflected pyroclastic flows northward and southeastward. Pyroclastic flows did not reach the lower west and southwest flanks, which instead received thick, fine-grained, accretionary-lapilli–rich ashfall deposits that probably derived chiefly from ash clouds elutriated from pyroclastic flows. We estimate the total bulk volume of erupted deposits to be ∼6 km 3 . Following the eruption, lahars inundated large portions of the lower flanks, and erosion of deposits and creation of new channels triggered rapid alluviation. Pre-1835 eruptions are poorly dated; however, scoria-fall, pyroclastic-flow, and lahar deposits record a penultimate eruption of smaller magnitude than that of 1835. It occurred a few centuries earlier—perhaps in the fifteenth century. An undated sequence of thick tephra-fall deposits on the west flank of the volcano records tens of eruptions, some of which were greater in magnitude than that of 1835. Weathering evidence suggests this sequence is at least several thousand years old. The wide extent of pyroclastic flows and thick tephra fall during 1835, the greater magnitude of some previous Holocene eruptions, and the location of Cosigüina on a peninsula limit the options to reduce risk during future unrest and eruption.

Explore related subjects

GSA Special Papers Article

Source-reported bounding extent: 12.62559781052759° to 13.145015081626015° latitude; -87.7642822265625° to -87.3028564453125° longitude. This indicates report coverage, not an exact sampling location. View area on OpenStreetMap.

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeX RIS

William E. Scott, Cynthia A. Gardner, Graziella Devoli, Antonio Alvarez. 2006. The A.D. 1835 eruption of Volcán Cosigüina, Nicaragua: A guide for assessing local volcanic hazards. https://doi.org/10.1130/2006.2412(09)

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related USGS reports

USGS2022

Magmatism, migrating topography, and the transition from Sevier shortening to Basin and Range extension, western United States

The paleogeographic evolution of the western U.S. Great Basin from the Late Cretaceous to the Cenozoic is critical to understanding how the North American Cordillera at this latitude transitioned from Mesozoic shortening to Cenozoic extension. According to a widely applied model, Cenozoic extension was driven by collapse of elevated crust supported by crustal thicknesses that were potentially double the present ~30–35 km. This model is difficult to reconcile with more recent estimates of moderate regional extension (≤50%) and the discovery that most high-angle, Basin and Range faults slipped rapidly ca. 17 Ma, tens of millions of years after crustal thickening occurred. Here, we integrated new and existing geochronology and geologic mapping in the Elko area of northeast Nevada, one of the few places in the Great Basin with substantial exposures of Paleogene strata. We improved the age control for strata that have been targeted for studies of regional paleoelevation and paleoclimate across this critical time span. In addition, a regional compilation of the ages of material within a network of middle Cenozoic paleodrainages that developed across the Great Basin shows that the age of basal paleovalley fill decreases southward roughly synchronous with voluminous ignimbrite flareup volcanism that swept south across the region ca. 45–20 Ma. Integrating these data sets with the regional record of faulting, sedimentation, erosion, and magmatism, we suggest that volcanism was accompanied by an elevation increase that disrupted drainage systems and shifted the continental divide east into central Nevada from its Late Cretaceous location along the Sierra Nevada arc. The north-south Eocene–Oligocene drainage divide defined by mapping of paleovalleys may thus have evolved as a dynamic feature that propagated southward with magmatism. Despite some local faulting, the northern Great Basin became a vast, elevated volcanic tableland that persisted until dissection by Basin and Range faulting that began ca. 21–17 Ma. Based on this more detailed geologic framework, it is unlikely that Basin and Range extension was driven by Cretaceous crustal overthickening; rather, preexisting crustal structure was just one of several factors that that led to Basin and Range faulting after ca. 17 Ma—in addition to thermal weakening of the crust associated with Cenozoic magmatism, thermally supported elevation, and changing boundary conditions. Because these causal factors evolved long after crustal thickening ended, during final removal and fragmentation of the shallowly subducting Farallon slab, they are compatible with normal-thickness (~45–50 km) crust beneath the Great Basin prior to extension and do not require development of a strongly elevated, Altiplano-like region during Mesozoic shortening.

Nevada↗

USGS2022

Downhill from Austin and Ely to Las Vegas: U-Pb detrital zircon suites from the Eocene–Oligocene Titus Canyon Formation and associated strata, Death Valley, California

In a reconnaissance investigation aimed at interrogating the changing topography and paleogeography of the western United States prior to Basin and Range faulting, a preliminary study made use of U-Pb ages of detrital zircon suites from 16 samples from the Eocene–Oligocene Titus Canyon Formation, its overlying units, and correlatives near Death Valley. The Titus Canyon Formation unconformably overlies Neoproterozoic to Devonian strata in the Funeral and Grapevine Mountains of California and Nevada. Samples were collected from (1) the type area in Titus Canyon, (2) the headwaters of Monarch Canyon, and (3) unnamed Cenozoic strata exposed in a klippe of the Boundary Canyon fault in the central Funeral Mountains. Red beds and conglomerates at the base of the Titus Canyon Formation at locations 1 and 2, which contain previously reported 38–37 Ma fossils, yielded mostly Sierran batholith–age detrital zircons (defined by Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous peaks). Overlying channelized fluvial sandstones, conglomerates, and minor lacustrine shale, marl, and limestone record an abrupt change in source region around 38–36 Ma or slightly later, from more local, Sierran arc–derived sediment to extraregional sources to the north. Clasts of red radiolarian-bearing chert, dark radiolarian chert, and quartzite indicate sources in the region of the Golconda and Roberts Mountains allochthons of northern Nevada. Sandstones intercalated with conglomerate contain increasing proportions of Cenozoic zircon sourced from south-migrating, caldera-forming eruptions at the latitude of Austin and Ely in Nevada with maximum depositional ages (MDAs) ranging from 36 to 24 Ma at the top of the Titus Canyon Formation. Carbonate clasts and ash-rich horizons become more prevalent in the overlying conglomeratic Panuga Formation (which contains a previously dated 15.7 Ma ash-flow tuff). The base of the higher, ash-dominated Wahguyhe Formation yielded a MDA of 14.4 Ma. The central Funeral Mountains section exposes a different sequence of units that, based on new data, are correlative to the Titus Canyon, Panuga, and Wahguyhe Formations at locations 1 and 2. An ash-flow tuff above its (unexposed) base provided a MDA of 34 Ma, and the youngest sample yielded a MDA of 12.7 Ma. The striking differences between age-correlative sections, together with map-based evidence for channelization, indicate that the Titus Canyon Formation and overlying units likely represent fluvial channel, floodplain, and lacustrine deposits as sediments mostly bypassed the region, moving south toward the Paleogene shoreline in the Mojave Desert. The profound changes in source regions and sedimentary facies documented in the Titus Canyon Formation took place during ignimbrite flareup magmatism and a proposed eastward shift of the continental divide from the axis of the Cretaceous arc to a new divide in central Nevada in response to thermal uplift and addition of magma to the crust. This uplift initiated south-flowing fluvial systems that supplied sediments to the Titus Canyon Formation and higher units.

Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah↗

USGS2022

Tephrochronology of the Miocene Monterey and Modelo Formations, California

Tuff beds have been known in the Miocene Monterey and Modelo Formations since the initial descriptions; however, age control and correlation is predominantly biostratigraphy. Here we combine tephrochronology and biostratigraphy in order to provide numerical age control for eight sedimentary sequences of the Monterey and Modelo Formations from Monterey, California to Orange County, California. We correlate 38 tuffs and tephra beds in the Monterey and Modelo Formations to 26 different dated tuffs found mainly in non-marine sequences in Nevada, Idaho and New Mexico. We also include geochemical data for an additional 19 tuffs in the Monterey and Modelo Formations for which there are no known correlative tuffs and geochemical data for 11 additional tuffs in other units that will add to the Miocene tephrostratigraphy. The identified tuffs range in age from 16 to 7 Ma with 31 tuffs erupted from volcanic centers of the Snake River Plain of northern Nevada to eastern Idaho. Twelve other tuffs erupted from the Southern Nevada Volcanic Field, one from the Sonoma Volcanic Field, north of San Francisco, and the eruptive source of 12 other tuffs is uncertain. These tuffs provide useful correlations of marine sequences deposited at varying depths along offshore Miocene California and possible insight into the distribution of air-fall tephra from so-called super eruptions

GSA Special Papers↗