Ring complexes in the Peninsular Ranges Batholith, Mexico and the USA: magma plumbing systems in the middle and upper crust

Subvolcanic ring complexes are unusual in that they preserve a rapidly frozen record of intrusive events. This sequential history is generally lost or complicated in plutons owing to mixing and mingling in a dynamic state. Thus, subvolcanic ring complexes are more like erupted rocks in their preservation of instantaneous events, but the self-contained nature of the complexes allows detailed structural and chemical work to be conducted in environments where the relative timing between individual magmatic events is commonly well preserved. We suggest that development of subvolcanic ring complexes in the western Peninsular Ranges Batholith (PRB) involved the following three-stage generalized sequence: (1) fracturing of the roof above a buoyant or overpressured magma chamber, which resulted in moderately inward-dipping conical fractures that locally hosted cone sheets; (2) subsequent loss of magma from the chamber, combined with degassing of the melt, which facilitated collapse of the roof along near-vertical ring faults that locally hosted ring dikes; and (3) resurgence of the chamber, and/or intrusion of a broadly cogenetic nested pluton, which locally destroyed evidence for the earlier history of the system. This sequence has been repeated twice in one of the ring complexes that we have identified, which resulted in nested intrusive centers. Calderas, subvolcanic ring complexes and plutons may represent progressively deeper sections through linked magma plumbing systems, and the systematic occurrences of these features in the western PRB are consistent with progressively deeper along-strike exposures of the batholith from south to north over a distance greater than 250 km. In addition to subvolcanic complexes in the western PRB, deeper crustal levels exposed in the transition zone between eastern and western parts of the batholith preserve ring complexes emplaced at depths of up to 18 km. Occurrence of these deeper-level complexes suggests either that caldera subsidence can extend to mid-crustal levels or that other processes can produce ring complexes.