Clinopyroxene and Fe-Ti oxides for correlating the ash from Changbaishan Millennium eruption.

Volcanic glass compositions and tephra layer age are critical for anchoring their sources and correlating among different sites; however, such work may be imprecise when the tephra has varied compositions. The ash from Changbaishan Millennium eruption (940s AD), a widely distributed tephra layer, has been detected in the far-east areas of Russia, the Korean Peninsula, Japan, and in Greenland ice cores. There are some debates on the presence of this tephra from sedimentary archives to the west of Changbaishan volcano, such as lake and peat sediments in the Longgang volcanic field. In this paper, major element compositions for clinopyroxene and Fe-Ti oxides were performed on proximal tephra from Changbaishan and the Millennium eruption ash record in Lake Sihailongwan. Clinopyroxene and Fe-Ti oxides microlites from Sihailongwan show augite- ferroaugite and titanmagnetite compositions, similar to those from dark pumice in Changbaishan proximal tephra, but different from the light grey pumice, which has ferrohedenbergite and ilmenite microlite compositions. This result implies that the tephra recorded in Sihailongwan was mainly from the trachytic eruptive phase of the Millennium eruption, and the rhyolitic eruptive phase made a relatively small contribution to this area. Analyzing clinopyroxene and Fe-Ti oxides microlites is a new method for correlating tephra layers from Changbaishan Millennium eruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]