Structural controls of the Domuyo geothermal field, Southern Andes (36°38′S), Argentina

Unrest at Domuyo Volcano, Argentina, Detected by Geophysical and Geodetic Data and Morphometric Analysis

“…Therefore, even though the existence of seismic activity within the DVC area was confirmed from this dataset, only a qualitative description can be made. The activity focused on the southwestern slope of the DVC and coincided with hydrothermal and neotectonic activity [20,38]. Three events (yellow squares in Figure 3) nucleate near the summit portion of the DVC.…”

“…The Domuyo Volcanic Center (DVC) (36 • 37' S-70 • 26' W) is a dome complex 4702 m high located in the southern Central Andes of Argentina. This volcanic center (SI_VNUM 357067 [19]) hosts a number of dacitic lava domes and monogenetic basaltic centers and is the site of intense geothermal activity associated with regional extensional and transtensional structures [20]. The NE flank of the summit is truncated by an amphitheater 4 km wide that hosts a central dome-like structure.…”

“…Finally, neotectonic activity has been described in association with the thermal manifestations [20,38]. These consist mainly of normal faults associated with limited amounts of lateral slip that cut through the Early Quaternary ignimbritic facies on the western slope of the DVC.…”

“…These consist mainly of normal faults associated with limited amounts of lateral slip that cut through the Early Quaternary ignimbritic facies on the western slope of the DVC. Based on geologic mapping, some of these structures were interpreted as neotectonic [20,39], but modern multi-parametric monitoring and analyses of the unrest episode has not been achieved yet. To define a geometric source model that can reproduce and explain the unrest pattern that has been detected over the DVC, in this work, we present an analysis of different data sets, including seismic data, interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR), and gravimetric and magnetic terrestrial data, and then we develop a synthesis that also considers a surface morphology analysis.…”

“…Magnetic maps are illustrated in Figure 7 and show the total anomaly, the results of pole reduction, and the analytic signal superimposed with the neotectonic normal faults studied by Galetto et al [20] and the hydrothermal activity. The data revealed a concentric arrangement of anomalies that reflected the main structures segmenting the basement of the DVC.…”