Volcanism in Antarctica: 200 Million Years of Subduction, Rifting and Continental Break-up
CONTAINS OPEN ACCESS

This memoir is the first to review all of Antarctica's volcanism between 200 million years ago and the Present. The region is still volcanically active. The volume is an amalgamation of in-depth syntheses, which are presented within distinctly different tectonic settings. Each is described in terms of (1) the volcanology and eruptive palaeoenvironments; (2) petrology and origin of magma; and (3) active volcanism, including tephrochronology. Important volcanic episodes include: astonishingly voluminous mafic and felsic volcanic deposits associated with the Jurassic break-up of Gondwana; the construction and progressive demise of a major Jurassic to Present continental arc, including back-arc alkaline basalts and volcanism in a young ensialic marginal basin; Miocene to Pleistocene mafic volcanism associated with post-subduction slab-window formation; numerous Neogene alkaline volcanoes, including the massive Erebus volcano and its persistent phonolitic lava lake, that are widely distributed within and adjacent to one of the world's major zones of lithospheric extension (the West Antarctic Rift System); and very young ultrapotassic volcanism erupted subglacially and forming a world-wide type example (Gaussberg).
Chapter 7.3 Mount Melbourne and Mount Rittmann
Correspondence: salvatore.gambino@ingv.it
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Published:May 27, 2021
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CiteCitation
Salvatore Gambino, Pietro Armienti, Andrea Cannata, Paola Del Carlo, Gaetano Giudice, Giovanni Giuffrida, Marco Liuzzo, Massimo Pompilio, 2021. "Chapter 7.3 Mount Melbourne and Mount Rittmann", Volcanism in Antarctica: 200 Million Years of Subduction, Rifting and Continental Break-up, J. L. Smellie, K. S. Panter, A. Geyer
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Abstract
Mount Melbourne and Mount Rittmann are quiescent, although potentially explosive, alkaline volcanoes located 100 km apart in Northern Victoria Land quite close to three stations (Mario Zucchelli Station, Gondwana and Jang Bogo). The earliest investigations on Mount Melbourne started at the end of the 1960s; Mount Rittmann was discovered during the 1988–89 Italian campaign and knowledge of it is more limited due to the extensive ice cover. The first geophysical observations at Mount Melbourne were set up in 1988 by the Italian National Antarctic Research Programme (PNRA), which has recently funded new volcanological, geochemical and geophysical investigations on both...
- Antarctica
- buried features
- Cenozoic
- dates
- deformation
- explosive eruptions
- fumaroles
- geochemical methods
- geochronology
- Holocene
- lithostratigraphy
- major elements
- Mount Melbourne
- Quaternary
- seismicity
- stratovolcanoes
- tectonics
- tiltmeters
- trace elements
- Victoria Land
- volcanic risk
- volcanism
- volcanoes
- Mount Rittmann