The History of Volcanic Action in the Phlegræan Fields

Open Access
Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
I. INTRODUCTION. The scene that discloses itself to the observer who enters the Bay of Naples by the so-called Boeca Grande, presents three parts, each characterized by distinct features. On the right, masses of calcareous pink and white rock rise up into the Island of Capri from the foam-flecked waters of the Mediterranean, and stretch through Sorrento and Amalfi to the cloud-capped Apennine. On the left, a vast succession of undulating ridges of tawny-coloured tuff begins, first at the Island of Ischia, and then, extending through Vivara and Procida, spreads out into the gentle declivities upon which Naples is built. In the central background looms grand and solemn the smoking peak of Vesuvius. Just as these three components of the landscape are diverse in aspect, so too are they diverse in geological origin and constitution. The island of Capri and the peninsula of Sorrento are made up of a gigantic pile of dolomitic and calcareous deposits of Upper Triassic (Hauptdolomit) and of Cretaceous (Urgonian-Turonian) age.Upon these rest in places a tbw insignifcant patches of Eocene-Miocene Flysch. Vesuvius is a typical volcano of concentric accumulation (vulcano a recinto), almost entirely built up of leucotephritic, fragmental, and lava-form materials. Between Naples and Ischia lies a vast and complex assemblage of extinct craters, which have erupted much fragmental material but little lava, generally of a trachy-andesitic character, though exceptionally the crater of Vivara has disgorged a basaltic magma. This region, more especially that portion of it lying between Naples, Cuma, and Miseno,received from

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: