Facies architecture and origin of a submarine rhyolitic lava flow‐dome complex, Ponza, Italy

Abstract

The Islands of Ponza and Gavi (western Pontine Archipelago, Italy) preserve parts of a subaqueously emplaced, high‐silica (75–77% SiO 2 ) rhyolitic lava flow that overlies the margins of three older domes. Exposures of the lava alone cover 24 km 2 , and with a thickness of 150 m exposed in the cliffs, the preserved volume of the lava flow is 3.6 km 3 , and the original volume is likely to have exceeded 7 km 3 . The lava flow consists of coherent obsidian and several hyaloclastite facies, including in situ and clast‐rotated breccias and sandstones, which all exhibit gradational relationships. The coherent obsidian occurs as separate domains and is often flow banded. Although flow folds occur, the banding is generally subhorizontal, dipping gently to the NNE. The hyaloclastite, representing 90% of the lava by volume, has a diffuse layering varying from 0.5 to 2 m in thickness. This layering also dips gently to the NNE and is marked in places by alternation of some coherent horizons, coarse and finely fragmented in situ hyaloclastite, pumiceous hyaloclastite, and clast‐rotated hyaloclastite. The layering is laterally continuous and consistent in orientation over most of the 13 km length of Ponza: the subhorizontal orientation of the flow banding and presence of resedimented deposits in the upper parts of the sequence indicate that the unit is a lava flow. The resedimented deposits comprise both proximal and distal deposits of debris flows and turbidity currents initiated by gravitational instability of the upper and marginal parts of the lava flow and include stratified monomictic obsidian breccias and bedded vitric siltstones and sandstones. The lava flow has been intruded and crosscut by rhyolitic bodies of various ages, including discordant, coherent to internally fractured contemporaneous rhyolite bodies, and late, penecontemporaneous dikes with glassy margins and alteration haloes.