The Teide Volcano, Tenerife, Canary Islands

Abstract

The Teide Volcano rises 3,718 m a.s.l. and 7,500 m above the seafloor and is the world’s third-highest volcanic structure. The last eruptions of this active volcanic system occurred in the Early Middle Ages in the Teide stratocone summit and in the western rift zone in 1909. The explicitness of the Teide’s volcanism led von Buch and von Humboldt to abandon Neptunism in favour of Plutonism, a crucial step in the progress of modern geology and volcanology. The Teide volcanic complex comprises a spectacular volcanic system that includes mafic eruptions from active rift zones and a pair of felsic stratocones encircled by peripheral lava domes. This volcanic system is nested within the depression originated by a giant landslide that occurred about 200 ka ago. The gravitational collapse favoured the emplacement of shallow felsic magma chambers under the main stratovolcanoes, interacting with the deeper mafic magmas that feed the rift zones. This led to a continuous compositional progression in a bimodal basanite–phonolite series, with the mafic terms at the distal ends of the rifts and the felsic component in the central stratocones. Compositional differences are reflected in the diversity of eruptive mechanisms and in the variety of volcanic landforms and structures and their associated landscapes. The Teide Volcano was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2007 as a site of extraordinary natural beauty and exceptional geological values, which provides highly significant evidence helping to understand geological processes in the evolution of oceanic volcanic islands.