Holocene volcanic activity at Koniuji Island, Aleutians

Reconnaissance mapping and 40Ar/39Ar age determinations establish an eruptive chronology for Koniuji Island in the central Aleutian island arc. Koniuji is a tiny 0.95 km2 island that rises only 896 ft above the Bering Sea. Previous accounts describe Koniuji as a mostly submerged, deeply eroded, dormant stratovolcano. However, new 40Ar/39Ar ages constrain the duration of subaerial eruptive activity from 15.2 to 3.1 ka. Furnace incremental heating experiments on replicate groundmass separates from two samples of a 30–50 m thick basaltic andesite flow at the southernmost point of the island gave a weighted mean 40Ar/39Ar age of 15.2 ± 5.0 (2σ). The next phase of eruptive activity includes a series of 5.8–4.6 ka basaltic andesitic to andesitic lava flows preserved along the western shoreline. The basal lavas contain numerous mafic enclaves and dioritic cumulates suggesting a major disturbance in the plumbing system during the initial stages of emplacement. The 5.8–4.6 ka lavas are truncated by an andesitic dome complex that includes hornblende-bearing domes, flows and pyroclastics which extruded into the center of the island and comprise the majority of the subaerial eruptive volume. An angular block from within the dome complex yielded 40Ar/39Ar age of 3.1 ± 1.9 ka, thereby making it one of the youngest island arc volcanics to be dated using the 40Ar/39Ar method. Overall, the 40Ar/39Ar data indicate that Koniuji is a nascent stratovolcano that has only recently emerged above sea level, not a glacially-eroded, long-lived volcanic complex like those found on many other central Aleutian Islands.