Kawah Ijen volcanic activity: a review

Abstract

Kawah Ijen is a composite volcano located at the easternmost part of Java island in Indonesia and hosts the largest natural acidic lake in the world. We have gathered all available historical reports on Kawah Ijen's activity since 1770 with the purpose of reviewing the temporal evolution of its activity. Most of these observations and studies have been conducted from a geochemical perspective and in punctuated scientific campaigns. Starting in 1991, the seismic activity and a set of volcanic lake parameters began to be weekly available. We present a database of those measurements that, combined with historical reports, allow us to review each eruption/unrest that occurred during the last two centuries. As of 2010, the volcanic activity is monitored by a new multi-disciplinary network, including digital seismic stations, and lake level and temperature measurements. This detailed monitoring provides an opportunity for better Editorial responsibility: G. Giordano C. Caudron ( ) ·

Opal-A in Glassy Pumice, Acid Alteration, and the 1817 Phreatomagmatic Eruption at Kawah Ijen (Java), Indonesia

“…Some of the early history of exploration of the volcano was covered by Caudron et al (2015), from which this summary of the recent history of Kawah Ijen is abstracted. Colonial visitors described the lake as early as 1789, and sulfur from the crater was used for the manufacture of gunpowder in the late 18th Century.…”

“…Presumably, this final burst provided the phreatomagmatic debris found coating the surface of the entire Kawah Ijen crater and deposited at the top of the lahar sediments found in the drainage of the Banyu Pahit. Caudron et al (2015) concluded that the total erupted volume far exceeded any difference in crater size before and after 1817, and that a significant volume must therefore have erupted as magma.…”

“…Though the andesite could have been emplaced and quenched years earlier, it is also possible that it ascended in the very earliest part of the 1817 magmatic eruption. Some of the lahar was emplaced about 10 days after the start of the eruption, so it is possible that a significant amount of alteration could have taken place at the lake bottom by deep lake water over the intervening time (lake-bottom temperatures are ∼50 • C as measured over the past century; Delmelle and Bernard, 1994;Takano et al, 2004;Caudron et al, 2015). Further mudflows were emplaced as late as mid-February.…”

“…After the 1817 eruption, the Banyuwangi Plain was covered in sulfur-bearing mud (Caudron et al, 2015), and acid springs are present on the northern crater rim of Kawah Ijen sourced from native sulfur-bearing phreatic sediments ( Figure S1). Surprisingly, we found no direct evidence for native sulfur in the Ijen pumices or laharic sediments during EDS analysis of the Ijen eruption products.…”

Rock Magnetic, Petrography, and Geochemistry Studies of Lava at the Ijen Volcanic Complex (IVC), Banyuwangi, East Java, Indonesia

“…The processes have been described by Caudron et al [29]. Post caldera volcanic centers can be divided into two groups: Intra Caldera (IC) and Caldera Rim (CR) [27].…”