著者

穴井 千里 宮縁 育夫 宇津木 充 吉川 慎 望月 伸竜 渋谷 秀敏 大倉 敬宏

出版者

特定非営利活動法人 日本火山学会

雑誌

火山 (ISSN:04534360)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.66, no.3, pp.171-186, 2021-09-30 (Released:2021-10-29)

参考文献数

29

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Nakadake volcano, the current active center of the Aso central cones (Kyushu), is one of the most active volcanoes in Japan. It has been active since ca. 22-21 cal ka, and has formed the old edifice (22-21 cal ka), the young edifice (around 5 cal ka) and the youngest pyroclastic cone (until present). The lava flows from the young edifice spread on the flank of the volcano several times around 5 cal ka. These lavas are supposed to give stratigraphic markers for constructing the eruptive history of Nakadake volcano, but the similarity in chemical composition and lithology hampers distinguishing and correlating them. We have conducted a paleomagnetic study to distinguish and correlate the lavas since the paleomagnetic secular variation (PSV) provides a high-resolution age information. If lava units have a temporal difference of more than 50 years, they could be distinguished by their paleomagnetic directions. The samples were collected from 9 lava flows and 8 agglutinate layers (welded scoria-fall deposits) and were subjected to the paleomagnetic and rock-magnetic measurements. These samples, from visual inspection, appear to be influenced by chemical alteration in the surface of the outcrop by sulfides of volcanic gases. To check a rock-magnetic effect of the chemical alteration of the lavas and agglutinates, thermomagnetic analyses were made on chip samples from the top (surface of rock) and bottom (inside of rock) of the collected paleomagnetic cores. The thermomagnetic analyses indicate that the core top and bottom samples show the same behaviors, in spite of the difference in color, and the carriers of magnetization of each core are titanium rich (titanium content, x, is about 0.6) and poor (x is about 0.1-0.2) titanomagnetites. The natural remanent magnetization of each sample shows a simple, single vector component in alternating field demagnetization experiments, which well defines the primary component. Site mean directions can be categorized into three different direction groups. These data suggest that the eruption producing lava flows and/or agglutinates occurred at three different ages. Furthermore, the paleomagnetic directions of one group is not consistent with the directions of the eruptive ages of Nakadake young edifice assigned from the previous stratigraphic studies. Comparing these directions with the paleomagnetic secular variation curve which has been drawn from basaltic volcanoes in the northwestern part of Aso central cones, the ages of the direction groups can be assigned to around 6.0-4.3 cal ka and 3.5 cal ka, respectively. This result demonstrates that paleomagnetic studies can greatly contribute for establishing the eruptive histories of volcanos.