Balagan-Tas ( sah, Балаҕан Таас, russian: Балаган-Тас) is a cinder cone

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the Crust (geology), crust of a Planet#Planetary-mass objects, planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and volcanic gas, gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Ear ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

. It was discovered by V.A. Zimin in 1939 and is one of the main features of the

Moma Natural Park Moma Natural Park or Moma Nature Park (russian: Момский природный парк, ''Momsky Pryrodny Park''; sah, Аан Айылгы, ''Aan Aiylgy'') is a protected area of the Momsko-Chersk Region of Yakutia in the upper part of the Mo ...

Description

This volcano is located in the

Chersky Range The Chersky Range (, ) is a chain of mountains in northeastern Siberia between the Yana River and the Indigirka River. Administratively the area of the range belongs to the Sakha Republic, although a small section in the east is within Magadan ...

, in the

Moma River The Moma (russian: Мома; sah, Муома) is a river in Yakutia in Russia, a right tributary of the Indigirka. The length of the river is , the area of its drainage basin is . The extinct cinder cone volcanoes Balagan-Tas and Uraga-Tas ar ...

valley and is the only clearly Quaternary volcano in the area; the existence of another volcano active in the 1770s has not been confirmed. The supposed Indighirsky volcano may be actually Balagan-Tas. Its location has often been given incorrectly. Balagan-Tas is a volcanic cone with a crater of which little remains. It covers a surface area of . The crater is wide and deep, the cone is high and has a base diameter of . It may be considered a

composite volcano A stratovolcano, also known as a composite volcano, is a conical volcano built up by many layers (strata) of hardened lava and tephra. Unlike shield volcanoes, stratovolcanoes are characterized by a steep profile with a summit crater and peri ...

. The volcano has generated three lava flows which cover a surface area of . They reach a thickness of . The volcano has erupted

alkali basalt Alkali basalt or alkali olivine basalt is a dark-colored, porphyritic volcanic rock usually found in oceanic and continental areas associated with volcanic activity, such as oceanic islands, continental rifts and volcanic fields. Alkali basalt ...

s typical for rift zone volcanoes. Its composition has been characterized as

hawaiite Hawaiite is an olivine basalt with a composition between alkali basalt and mugearite. It was first used as a name for some lavas found on the island of Hawaii. It occurs during the later stages of volcanic activity on oceanic islands such as Ha ...

Titanium dioxide Titanium dioxide, also known as titanium(IV) oxide or titania , is the inorganic compound with the chemical formula . When used as a pigment, it is called titanium white, Pigment White 6 (PW6), or CI 77891. It is a white solid that is insolub ...

contents of 3.81% have been measured. The helium-3/

helium-4 Helium-4 () is a stable isotope of the element helium. It is by far the more abundant of the two naturally occurring isotopes of helium, making up about 99.99986% of the helium on Earth. Its nucleus is identical to an alpha particle, and consis ...

ratios approach these associated with

mantle plume A mantle plume is a proposed mechanism of convection within the Earth's mantle, hypothesized to explain anomalous volcanism. Because the plume head partially melts on reaching shallow depths, a plume is often invoked as the cause of volcanic hot ...

s. Balagan-Tas lies on an

anticline In structural geology, an anticline is a type of fold that is an arch-like shape and has its oldest beds at its core, whereas a syncline is the inverse of an anticline. A typical anticline is convex up in which the hinge or crest is the ...

. It is associated with

faulting In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

. Further it is related to the Moma- Zoryansk

rift In geology, a rift is a linear zone where the lithosphere is being pulled apart and is an example of extensional tectonics. Typical rift features are a central linear downfaulted depression, called a graben, or more commonly a half-grabe ...

and the

Gakkel ridge The Gakkel Ridge (formerly known as the Nansen Cordillera and Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge) is a mid-oceanic ridge, a divergent tectonic plate boundary between the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate. It is located in the Eurasian Basin of the ...

, which extends to the

Laptev sea The Laptev Sea ( rus, мо́ре Ла́птевых, r=more Laptevykh; sah, Лаптевтар байҕаллара, translit=Laptevtar baỹğallara) is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is located between the northern coast of Siberia, t ...

. The

De Long Islands The De Long Islands ( rus, Острова Де-Лонга, r=Ostrova De-Longa; sah, Де Лоҥ Aрыылара, translit=De Loñ Arıılara) are an uninhabited archipelago often included as part of the New Siberian Islands, lying north east of ...

and a potentially Quaternary dyke complex of the Viliga river may also be related. This tectonic activity is related to the interaction between the

Eurasian Plate The Eurasian Plate is a tectonic plate that includes most of the continent of Eurasia (a landmass consisting of the traditional continents of Europe and Asia), with the notable exceptions of the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian subcontinent and ...

and the

North American Plate The North American Plate is a tectonic plate covering most of North America, Cuba, the Bahamas, extreme northeastern Asia, and parts of Iceland and the Azores. With an area of , it is the Earth's second largest tectonic plate, behind the Pacif ...

. Other volcanoes are found in the neighbourhood. Northwest of Balagan-Tas lies the Uraga Khaya volcano; it is located and is a lava dome formed by rhyolite. Its age is unclear, potassium-argon dating has yielded an age of 16.6 mya but its appearance indicates it may be considerably younger. A further volcano may exist northwest of this centre. A

liparite Rhyolite ( ) is the most silica-rich of volcanic rocks. It is generally glassy or fine-grained (aphanitic) in texture (geology), texture, but may be porphyritic, containing larger mineral crystals (phenocrysts) in an otherwise fine-grained matri ...

dome named Majak is located at , but it may be the same as Uraga Khaya and the coordinates wrong. Potassium-argon dating of Balagan-Tas has yielded an age of 266,000 ± 30,000 years ago, comparable to Anyuj volcano. Other sources consider the volcano late

Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togeth ...

in age, or even as active during historical time.

Hot spring A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a spring produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater onto the surface of the Earth. The groundwater is heated either by shallow bodies of magma (molten rock) or by c ...

s are found southeast of Balagan-Tas. They reach temperatures of , which together with the other activity indicates a hot

upper mantle The upper mantle of Earth is a very thick layer of rock inside the planet, which begins just beneath the crust (at about under the oceans and about under the continents) and ends at the top of the lower mantle at . Temperatures range from appr ...

. If reports of activity of the supposed Indighirsky volcano in the 1770s refer to Balagan-Tas, this volcano may have had historical activity, one of the few outside of

Kamchatka The Kamchatka Peninsula (russian: полуостров Камчатка, Poluostrov Kamchatka, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and west ...

in continental Asia.

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Description

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Further reading