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Nuevo Mundo volcano
The Nuevo Mundo volcano is a stratovolcano, lava dome and a lava flow complex between Potosi and Uyuni, Bolivia, in the Andes rising to a peak at .
History
The first mountaineering in the area was before 1903, by a Frenchman, Georges Courty, whose notes led to the mysterious entry in the 1987 book Mountaineering in the Andes by Jill Neate, Nuevo Mundo, 6020 m, location uncertain.Neate, Jill (1987) Mountaineering in the Andes: a sourcebook for climbers Expedition Advisory Centre, London, England, ISBN 0907649335
German geologist Frederic Ahlfeld, an avid mountaineer, moved to Bolivia in 1924. He began exploring the mountains in Potosi Department after World War II, climbing a number of the peaks. In a letter to historian Evelio Echevtia in 1962, Ahlfeld stated that because of Nuevo Mundos supposed height, one of the two Cerro Lipez peaks might be a possible candidate for Monsieur Courtys mysterious mountain. Brain, Y. (1999) "Climbs and Expeditions: Bolivia" American Alpine Journal p.323 However, in 1969, in Ahlfeld's book Geografia Fisica de BoliviaAhlfeld, Federico E. (1969) Geografia de Bolivia: geografia fisica Editorial Los Amigos del Libro, La Paz, OCLC 2903813, Ahlfeld presented a drawingAhlfeld Geografia Fisica de Bolivia p.158 of a Nuevo Mundo (5438 m.) with its descriptionAhlfeld Geografia Fisica de Bolivia p. 156-157, and at a location southwest of Potosi and just north of the small village of Potoco, far away from Cerro Lipez.
At the end of the 1990s, Toto Aramayo, Yossi Brain and Dakin Cook undertook the search for Nuevo Mundo, and they found Ahlfelds Nuevo Mundo at Latitude:1947'0"S, Longitude: 6629'0"W. The Bolivian government and the USGS recognize this as the correct identification of Nuevo Mundo, although some maps still as of 2007 labeled Cerro Lipez as Nuevo Mundo.
Geology
Nuevo Mundo is a complex eruption center on the edge of the Los Frailes Plateau with a stratovolcano which is capped by cinder cones (mostly of ash and pumice). At the base level there are two lava flows (of a viscous dacite) that erupted along a north-south fault. Apparently at the same time there were block-and-ash flows to the east. Later a highly explosive Plinian eruption produced an ash fall that extended over 200 km to the east, as far as Potosi. This eruption was quite recent, but it predated the arrival of the Spanish in 1533. While earlier eruption centers, such as the Kari-Kari caldera created the Los Frailes Plateau, Nueva Mundo overlaid those Los Frailes plateau deposits in the Holocene with huge ignimbrite deposits, which are mostly pyroclastic dacite and andesite.
See also
List of volcanoes in Bolivia
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Nuevo Mundo volcano
