The Caldera of Mount Bambouto: Volcanological Characterization and Classification

Abstract

Mount Bambouto culminates at 2744 m (Meletan Mountain) where an elliptical caldera of 16 × 8 km is found. Although that caldera has been a subject of numerous scientific works, complementary studies were needed to bring out additional data used to classify it through the Caldera DataBase of Geyer and Marti (2008). It emerges that Bambouto Caldera codes are 2 and 203 because it is respectively located in Africa and Central Africa according to the numbering system developed in the Catalog of Active Volcanoes of the World. The collapse type of the caldera is piecemeal; this relies on the fact that the caldera floor is uneven. Several rocks crop out in the caldera; accordingly, its code is B, I, T, P, and Ig viz. basalts, intermediate rocks, trachytes, phonolites, and ignimbrites. Bambouto depression is the ignimbrite caldera because it is associated with thick ignimbrite sheer, that ruled its collapse. The chemical analysis of rocks reveals that the magmatic series of Bambouto Caldera is of alkaline type. It has been built through the continental rifting of extensional type (RC-EXT). The collapse process has been followed by post-caldera protrusion of trachytic and phonolitic domes; then, its codes are TypeS and type-MS.