Cerro Walther Penck (also known as Cerro Cazadero or Cerro Tipas) is a massive complex volcano in the

Andes The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S ...

, located in northwestern

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, at the Puna de Atacama. It is just southwest of Ojos del Salado, the highest volcano in the world. Walther Penck itself is perhaps the third highest active volcano in the world.

Vulcanism

View of the main summit from central summit plateau

The complex covers a surface area of , it consists of

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 ...

es,

lava dome In volcanology, a lava dome is a circular mound-shaped protrusion resulting from the slow extrusion of viscous lava from a volcano. Dome-building eruptions are common, particularly in convergent plate boundary settings. Around 6% of eruptions on ...

s, and lava flows. There are reports of fumarolic activity, and de Silva and Francis (1991) considered that the volcano was last active in the Holocene. Crater lakes with a smell of

sulfur Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...

were reported in 2013. The Tipas-Cerro Bayo complex was active 2.9-1.2 million years ago with

dacite Dacite () is a volcanic rock formed by rapid solidification of lava that is high in silica and low in alkali metal oxides. It has a fine-grained (aphanitic) to porphyritic texture and is intermediate in composition between andesite and rhyolite. ...

s and

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

s. Magma composition is typical for Andean

es. Tomographic studies of the underlying crust indicate a pattern of seismic attenuation beneath Tipas.

Elevation

It has an official height of 6658 meters, however, based on the

elevation The elevation of a geographic location is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface (see Geodetic datum § Vert ...

provided by the available Digital elevation models,

SRTM The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) is an international research effort that obtained digital elevation models on a near-global scale from 56°S to 60°N, to generate the most complete high-resolution digital topographic database of Ea ...

(6663m),

ASTER Aster or ASTER may refer to: Biology * ''Aster'' (genus), a genus of flowering plants ** List of ''Aster'' synonyms, other genera formerly included in ''Aster'' and still called asters in English * Aster (cell biology), a cellular structure shap ...

(6627m),

filled with ASTER (6663m), TanDEM-X(6699m), and also a handheld GPS survey by

Maximo Kausch Maximo Kausch (born March 1981 in Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-lar ...

on 04/2013 (6688 meters), Walther Penck is about 6670 meters above sea level. The height of the nearest

key col In topography, prominence (also referred to as autonomous height, relative height, and shoulder drop in US English, and drop or relative height in British English) measures the height of a mountain or hill's summit relative to the lowest contou ...

is 6019

meters The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its prefi ...

. so its prominence is 651

. Walther Penck is listed as mountain, based on the Dominance system and its dominance is 9.76%. Its parent peak is Ojos del Salado and the

Topographic isolation The topographic isolation of a summit is the minimum distance to a point of equal elevation, representing a radius of dominance in which the peak is the highest point. It can be calculated for small hills and islands as well as for major mountain ...

is 9.8 kilometers. This information was obtained during a research by

Suzanne Imber Suzanne Mary Imber (born May 1983) is a British planetary scientist specialising in space weather at the University of Leicester. She was the winner of the 2017 BBC Two television programme ''Astronauts, Do You Have What It Takes?''.

in 2014.

External links

Elevation information about Walther PenckWeather Forecast at Walther PenckInformation about Cazadero

References

* * Mountains of Argentina Polygenetic volcanoes Stratovolcanoes of Argentina Lava domes Six-thousanders of the Andes Pleistocene stratovolcanoes {{Catamarca-geo-stub

Vulcanism

Elevation

See also

External links

References