Precursors to a continental-arc ignimbrite flare-up: Early central volcanoes of the San Juan Mountains, Colorado, USA
Authors: Lipman P.W. , Zimmerer M.J. , Gilmer A.K. 
Published: December 2023

Our newly acquired and recently published map, geochronologic, and compositional data for early intermediate-composition central volcanoes in the northeastern San Juan Mountains provide insights about the broad magmatic precursors to the large continental-arc ignimbrite flare-up in the mid-Cenozoic Southern Rocky Mountain volcanic field (SRMVF). Initial volcanism migrated from central Colorado to northern New Mexico ca. 40–29 Ma, as part of a more regional trend of southward-progressing mid-Cenozoic magmatism in the U.S. segment of the North American Cordillera. Within the San Juan locus, which represents the largest preserved erosional remnant of the SRMVF and site of most intense eruptive activity, new 40Ar/39Ar and U-Pb zircon ages show that eruptions at many individual edifices began nearly concurrently, at ca. 35 Ma, with peak activity at 34–32 Ma. Broadly similar precursor effusive volcanism characterizes other major loci of continental-arc ignimbrite magmatism along the western American cordilleras, but none of these sites records early volcanism as voluminous, spatially widespread, well exposed, or compositionally diverse as the San Juan locus in Colorado.

Early San Juan volcanism was larger in volume than the later ignimbrites, constituting about two thirds the total erupted. Early lava and breccias are as much as 700–900 m thick where exposed along eroded flanks of the San Juan Mountains; drill holes have penetrated sections as thick as 2600 m. The early volcanoes were dominantly andesitic, with lesser dacite and minor rhyolite. Such volcanism is widely interpreted as initiated by basaltic magma from the mantle, but mid-Cenozoic basalt is almost nonexistent at the San Juan locus—an absence inferred to be due to extensive lower-crustal assimilation and fractionation. The early volcanic rocks are calc-alkaline and typical of high-K continental-arc volcanism; they become modestly more alkalic and enriched in trace elements such as light rare earth elements, Zr, Nb, and Th from the San Juan locus northeastward into central Colorado. Such variations may reflect synmagmatic crustal thickening and deeper levels of primary magma generation concurrent with assembly of upper-crustal magma bodies that could support large ignimbrite eruptions. Substantial uncertainties remain for growth histories of the early volcanoes, however, because of unexposed lower parts of edifices, eroded upper parts, and limited availability of mineral phases that could be dated reliably.

Although the early volcanoes are widely distributed within the SRMVF, many are clustered at sites of subsequent ignimbrite calderas. The precursor edifices are inferred to record incubation stages in construction of overall translithospheric batholithic-scale magmatic systems. Prolonged processes of incremental magma generation, accumulation, fractionation, and solidification intermittently generated sufficient liquid to erupt large ignimbrites. Maturation of focused eruptions and intrusions was prolonged, 5 m.y. or more, prior to the culminating ignimbrite at some centers in the San Juan Mountains. Some large-volume ignimbrites and related calderas, including the ~5000 km3 Fish Canyon Tuff and associated La Garita caldera, formed as much as several million years later than peak growth of associated precursor volcanoes, recording a sustained interval of diminished eruptive activity as the magma reservoir increased in volume and evolved to more silicic compositions capable of supporting a subsequent large ignimbrite eruption.

Dike configurations at early volcanoes that were active nearly concurrently in the SRMVF vary from symmetrically radial to more parallel trends. The contrasting dike geometries are inferred to record possible multiple fluctuations from compressive to weakly extensional regional stress, concurrent with destabilization of the prior flat-slab plate configuration that triggered mid-Cenozoic ignimbrite flare-ups along the Cordilleran margin of the North American plate. These apparent fluctuations in regional stress preceded development of substantial extensional strain in the Southern Rocky Mountain region; outflow ignimbrite sheets of the SRMVF spread across subsequent horst-and-graben structures of the Rio Grande rift without complementary thickness variations.