The Ituwa Surge deposits of the Holocene Ngozi caldera, Mbeya Region, Tanzania

Abstract

The Ituwa Surge deposits belong to the Holocene Ngozi volcano (volcano number 222164 of the Smithsonian Institute Global Volcanism Program; Siebert et al. 2010) of the Rungwe Volcanic Province (RVP; Harkin 1960; Lenhardt and Oppenheimer 2014). They are named after their type locality and place of best exposure, the village of Ituwa in the Mbeya Region of southwestern Tanzania. Volcanism within the RVP started approximately 9 Ma ago and can be divided into a Late Miocene (*9.2–5.4 Ma), a Late Pliocene-Early Pleistocene (*3–1.6 Ma) and a Mid-Pleistocene-recent (\*0.6 Ma) phase (Ebinger et al. 1989, 1993; Ivanov et al. 1999).