U-series zircon age constraints on the plumbing system and magma residence times of the Changbai volcano, China/North Korea border

Abstract The Changbai (or Baitoushan, Paektu) volcano on the China/North Korea border is best known for its climactic caldera-forming eruption of 100 km3 of comendite materials 1000 years (1 ka) ago. The polygenetic Changbai volcano also erupted moderate-volume pre-caldera comendite lava at ~ 4 ka and small-volume post-caldera trachyte ignimbrite at ~ 0.3 ka. Here we report 238U–230Th disequilibrium ages of zircons from lavas and ignimbrites of the pre-caldera (~ 4 ka), syn-caldera (1 ka), and post-caldera (~ 0.3 ka) events. The zircon isochron ages are 12.2 ± 1.1 ka (2σ) for the 4-ka comendite lava and 12.2 ± 1.7 ka for the 1-ka comendite ignimbrite. Zircons from the 0.3-ka trachyte ignimbrite exhibit 3 respective peaks at 2.6 ± 1.8 ka, 130 ± 10 ka and > 230 ka. The indistinguishable zircon ages for the 4-ka pre-caldera eruption of comendite lava and the 1-ka caldera-forming eruption of comendite pumice and ignimbrite suggest that the 4-ka lava provides an early sampling of a much larger magma body at depth and thus serves as a kind of petrologic early-warning signal. In addition, the 4-ka lava may represent the lowest-temperature magma in the roof zone of a thermally zoned magma chamber that usually escapes first. The distinctive multi-modal zircon age distributions of the 0.3-ka trachytic eruption, however, reveal that this post-caldera eruption tapped a different magma body and indicate that Changbaiʹs magmatic plumbing system had changed after the 1-ka caldera-forming climactic eruption. Our results suggest very short zircon and magma residence times for the Changbai volcano (8 kyr for the 4-ka eruption, 11–12 kyr for the 1-ka eruption and 2.3 kyr for the 0.3-ka eruption).