Platanar Volcano is located in the
Cordillera Central Central Cordillera refers to the New Guinea Highlands.
Cordillera Central, meaning ''central range'' in Spanish, may refer to the following mountain ranges:
* Cordillera Central, Andes (disambiguation), several mountain ranges in South America
** ...
mountain range. Part of a complex that covers and is dominated by
Porvenir Volcano
Porvenir Volcano is an inactive volcano, of stratovolcano type, in Costa Rica. Located in San Carlos canton of Alajuela, 3km from the related Platanar Volcano and part of the Cordillera Central mountain range. It is within the Juan Castro B ...
at . It is located within the
Juan Castro Blanco National Park
Juan Castro Blanco National Park is a National Park, part of the Arenal Huetar Norte Conservation Area, in the northern part of Costa Rica.
Location
Located about 100 km north of San José, to the east of Ciudad Quesada in Alajuela Pro ...
.
Physical aspects
It has a destroyed crater to the northwest.
Prehistoric lava flows on its western flank;
one of them, the so-called Florida flow, was perhaps created by Platanar's most recent activity. Cerro Porvenir has a truncated caldera at the summit with a cone inside.
Both of these are part of a composed
stratovolcano
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 per ...
of
Upper Pleistocene age that on Platanar's side overlies the remains of Palmera's collapsed
caldera
A caldera ( ) is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcano eruption. When large volumes of magma are erupted over a short time, structural support for the rock above the magma chamber is ...
, of probable
late Pleistocene
The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as Upper Pleistocene from a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division of ...
age.
Platanar has erupted lavas ranging from
basalts to
andesites in composition.
Social and economic activities
The western flanks of both volcanoes are used for
dairy farming. In 1968 on Cerro Platanar were converted into a National Forest.
Recent activity
On 30 March 1997 there were six earthquakes on the south flank, the strongest being of magnitude 2.7. A previous seismic swarm in April 1980 had lasted for 2–3 weeks.
References
{{Central American volcanoes
Stratovolcanoes of Costa Rica
Mountains of Costa Rica
Pleistocene stratovolcanoes