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Report on Zavaritzki Caldera (Russia) — March 1989


Zavaritzki Caldera

Scientific Event Alert Network Bulletin, vol. 14, no. 3 (March 1989)
Managing Editor: Lindsay McClelland.

Zavaritzki Caldera (Russia) Gas emission near the 1957 dome; caldera lake

Please cite this report as:

Global Volcanism Program, 1989. Report on Zavaritzki Caldera (Russia) (McClelland, L., ed.). Scientific Event Alert Network Bulletin, 14:3. Smithsonian Institution. https://doi.org/10.5479/si.GVP.SEAN198903-290180



Zavaritzki Caldera

Russia

46.9178°N, 151.9518°E; summit elev. 612 m

All times are local (unless otherwise noted)


During a 14 January overflight, strong gas emission was observed near the 1957 dome, in the N part of the caldera. A lake occupied the caldera center.

Geological Summary. The Zavaritzki volcano on Simushir Island in the central Kuril Islands contains three nested calderas 10, 8, and 3 km in diameter. The steep-walled youngest caldera was formed during the Holocene and includes several young cones and lava domes near the margins of Biryuzovoe Lake. The current lake surface is at ~40 m elevation with the bottom ~30 m below sea level, but lacustrine sediments overlying pumice deposits indicate that the surface of an earlier caldera lake lay at 200 m above sea level. A small 500-m-diameter scoria cone, sketched by Gorshkov (1958, CAVW) that reportedly grew between 1916 and 1931, formed a peninsula extending into the lake from the NE caldera wall. Explosive eruptions in 1957 removed the cone and filled much of the NW part of the lake, including emplacement of a 350-m-wide, 40-m-high dome.

Information Contacts: G. Steinberg, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.