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The dykes and structural setting of the volcanic front in the Lesser Antilles island arc

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Abstract

The orientations of dykes from many of the islands of the Lesser Antilles island arc have been mapped. Most of these dykes can be interpreted in terms of local or regional swarms derived from specific volcanoes of known age, with distinct preferred orientations. Dykes are known from all Cenozoic epochs except the Palaeocene, but are most common in Pliocene, Miocene and Oligocene rocks. A majority of the sampled dykes are basaltic, intrude volcaniclastic host rocks and show a preference for widths of 1–1.25 m. Locally, dyke swarms dilate their hosts by up to 9% over hundreds of metres and up to 2% over distances of kilometres. The azimuths of dykes of all ages show a general NE-SW preferred orientation with a second NW-SE mode particularly in the Miocene rocks of Martinique. The regional setting for these minor intrusions is a volcanic front above a subduction zone composed of three segments: Saba-Montserrat, Guadeloupe-Martinique, St. Lucia-Grenada. The spacing of volcanic centres along this front is interpreted in terms of rising plumes of basaltic magma spaced about 30 km apart. This magma is normally intercepted at crustal depths by dioritic plutons and andesitic/dacitic magma generated there. Plumes which intersect transverse fracture systems or which migrate along the front can avoid these crustal traps. Throughout its history the volcanic front as a whole has migrated, episodically, towards the backarc at an average velocity of about 1 km/Ma. The local direction of plate convergence is negatively correlated with the local preferred orientation of dykes. The dominant NE-SW azimuth mode corresponds closely to the direction of faulting in the sedimentary cover of the backarc and the inferred tectonic fabric of the oceanic crust on which the arc is founded. A generalised model of the regional stress field that controls dyke intrusion outside of the immediate vicinity of central volcanic vents is proposed, in which the maximum horizontal stress parallels the volcanic front except in the northern segment where subduction of the Barracuda Rise perturbs the stress field. There is also evidence of specific temporal changes in the stress field that are probably due to large scale plate kinematics.

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  1. NERC Unit for Thematic Information Systems, Department of Geography, University of Reading, Whiteknights, RG6 2AB, Reading, UK

    G. Wadge

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Wadge, G. The dykes and structural setting of the volcanic front in the Lesser Antilles island arc. Bull Volcanol 48, 349–372 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01074466

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