Geology and 40Ar/39Ar Geochronology of Akutan Volcano, Eastern Aleutian Islands

⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar dating and new whole-rock geochemical analyses are used to establish an eruptive chronology for Akutan volcano, Akutan Island, in the eastern Aleutian island arc. Akutan Island (166° W, 54.1° N) is the site of long-lived volcanism and the entire island comprises volcanic rocks as old as 3.3 Ma (Richter et al., 1998, USGS Open-File 98-135). Our current focus is on the 225 km² western half of the island, which is home to the Holocene active cone, Holocene to latest Pleistocene satellite vents, and underlying middle Pleistocene volcanic basement rocks. Eruptive products span the tholeiitic-calc-alkaline boundary, are medium-K, and range from basalt to dacite. Furnace incremental heating experiments on groundmass separates of 38 samples resulted in 29 ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar ages. The remainder did not yield radiogenic ⁴⁰Ar contents and are likely Holocene in age. The oldest ages (1251×10 and 1385×12 ka) are from a wedge of flat-lying dissected lavas north of the Holocene cone; these likely represent the upper part of the volcanic basement that underlies the entire island. Above a major unconformity lie basaltic andesite to dacite lavas that range from 765× 4 to 522×8 ka. The eroded remnants of the source volcano for these flows appears to crop out as a series of variably hydrothermally altered breccias and domes 5 km east-northeast of the current summit. A 625 m-tall eroded basaltic center, Lava Peak, sits 6 km northwest of the summit; its deeply incised western flank exposes lava flows and a plug. Two flows are dated at 598×16 and 602×15 ka. A high ridge 1.5 km south of the summit is made of oxidized, mostly andesitic lavas 284-249 ka old; these are presumably the remnants of an eruptive center located near the current cone. Flat Top Peak, 3.5 km southwest of the summit, produced almost exclusively basalts and six dated lavas range from 155×8 to 98×18 ka. Lavas from Flat Top (1065 m asl) are deeply eroded suggesting extensive ice cover during marine isotope stages 4-2. Cascade Bight, an eruptive center 4.5 km southeast of the caldera, has apparently been active in the Holocene as two experiments on basaltic andesite lavas yielded no radiogenic argon. Holocene lavas are also exposed along the upper walls of the ~1,600 yr old summit caldera (Waythomas, 1999, Bull Volc, v. 61, p. 141-161), including dissected 1296 m-tall Akutan Peak (the current summit), as well as low on the north and west flanks of the Akutan edifice. Holocene lavas, including those from Cascade Bight as well as Lava Point satellite vent on the NW coast, all fall along a single tholeiitic, basalt-to-dacite evolutionary trend that has lower K than Pleistocene lavas. Our results show that the focus of volcanism has shifted within the western half of Akutan Island over the last ~600 ka, and that on occasion multiple volcanic centers have been active over the same time period, including within the Holocene.