Tuff
Tuff is a type of rock made of volcanic ash ejected from a vent during a volcanic eruption. Following ejection and deposition, the ash lithifies into solid rock. Rock that contains greater than 75% ash is considered tuff, while rock containing 25% to 75% ash is described as tuffaceous. A pyroclastic rock containing 25–75% volcanic bombs or volcanic blocks is called tuff breccia. Tuff composed of sandy volcanic material can be referred to as volcanic sandstone.
Tuff is a relatively soft rock, so it has been used for construction since ancient times. Because it is common in Italy, the Romans used it often for construction. The Rapa Nui people used it to make most of the moai statues on Easter Island.
Tuff can be classified as either igneous or sedimentary rock. It is usually studied in the context of igneous petrology, although it is sometimes described using sedimentological terms.
Tuff is often erroneously called tufa in guidebooks and in television programs, but tufa is a form of travertine.
Volcanic ash
The material that is expelled in a volcanic eruption can be classified into three types:- Volcanic gases, a mixture made mostly of steam, carbon dioxide, and a sulfur compound
- Lava, the name of magma when it emerges and flows over the surface
- Tephra, particles of solid material of all shapes and sizes ejected and thrown through the air
Volcanic ash is further divided into fine ash, with particle sizes smaller than 0.0625 mm in diameter, and coarse ash, with particle sizes between 0.0625 mm and 2 mm in diameter. Tuff is correspondingly divided into coarse tuff and fine tuff. Consolidated tephra composed mostly of coarser particles is called lapillistone or agglomerate or pyroclastic breccia rather than tuff.
Volcanic ash can vary greatly in composition, and so tuffs are further classified by the composition of the ash from which they formed. Ash from high-silica volcanism, particularly in ash flows, consists mainly of shards of volcanic glass, and tuff formed predominantly from glass shards is described as vitric tuff. The glass shards are typically either irregular in shape or are roughly triangular with convex sides. They are the shattered walls of countless small bubbles that formed in the magma as dissolved gases rapidly came out of solution.
Tuffs formed from ash consisting predominantly of individual crystals are described as crystal tuffs, while those formed from ash consisting predominantly of pulverized rock fragments are described as lithic tuffs.
The chemical composition of volcanic ash reflects the entire range of volcanic rock chemistry, from high-silica rhyolitic ash to low-silica basaltic ash, and tuffs are likewise described as rhyolitic, andesitic, basaltic, and so on.
Transport and lithification
The most straightforward way for volcanic ash to move away from the vent is as ash clouds that are part of an eruption column. These fall to the surface as fallout deposits that are characteristically well-sorted and tend to form a blanket of uniform thickness across terrain. Column collapse results in a more spectacular and destructive form of transport, which takes the form of pyroclastic flows and surges that characteristically are poorly sorted and pool in low terrain. Surge deposits sometimes show sedimentary structures typical of high-velocity flow, such as dunes and antidunes. Volcanic ash already deposited on the surface can be transported as mud flows when mingled with water from rainfall or through eruption into a body of water or ice.Particles of volcanic ash that are sufficiently hot will weld together after settling to the surface, producing a welded tuff. Welding requires temperatures in excess of. If the rock contains scattered, pea-sized fragments or fiamme in it, it is called a welded lapilli tuff. Welded tuffs can be of fallout origin, or deposited from ash flows, as in the case of ignimbrites. During welding, the glass shards and pumice fragments adhere together, deform, and compact together, resulting in a eutaxitic fabric. Welded tuff is commonly rhyolitic in composition, but examples of all compositions are known.
A sequence of ash flows may consist of multiple cooling units. These can be distinguished by the degree of welding. The base of a cooling unit is typically unwelded due to chilling from the underlying cold surface, and the degree of welding and of secondary reactions from fluids in the flow increases upwards towards the center of the flow. Welding decreases towards the top of the cooling unit, where the unit cools more rapidly. The intensity of welding may also decrease towards areas in which the deposit is thinner, and with distance from source.
Cooler pyroclastic flows are unwelded and the ash sheets deposited by them are relatively unconsolidated. However, cooled volcanic ash can quickly become lithified because it usually has a high content of volcanic glass. This is a thermodynamically unstable material that reacts rapidly with groundwater or seawater, which leaches alkali metals and calcium from the glass. New minerals, such as zeolites, clays, and calcite, crystallize from the dissolved substances and cement the tuff.
Tuffs are further classified by their depositional environment, such as lacustrine tuff, subaerial tuff, or submarine tuff, or by the mechanism by which the ash was transported, such as fallout tuff or ash flow tuff. Reworked tuffs, formed by erosion and redeposition of ash deposits, are usually described by the transport agent, such as aeolian tuff or fluvial tuff.
Occurrences
Tuffs have the potential to be deposited wherever explosive volcanism takes place, and so have a wide distribution in location and age.High-silica volcanism
Rhyolite tuffs contain pumiceous, glassy fragments and small scoriae with quartz, alkali feldspar, biotite, etc. Iceland, Lipari, Hungary, the Basin and Range of the American southwest, and New Zealand are among the areas where such tuffs are prominent. In the ancient rocks of Wales, Charnwood, etc., similar tuffs are known, but in all cases, they are greatly changed by silicification and by devitrification. The frequent presence of rounded corroded quartz crystals, such as occur in rhyolitic lavas, helps to demonstrate their real nature.Welded ignimbrites can be highly voluminous, such as the Lava Creek Tuff erupted from Yellowstone Caldera in Wyoming 631,000 years ago. This tuff had an original volume of at least. Lava Creek tuff is known to be at least 1,000 times as large as the deposits of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, and it had a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 8, greater than any eruption known in the last 10,000 years. Ash flow tuffs cover of the North Island of New Zealand and about of Nevada. Ash flow tuffs are the only volcanic product with volumes rivaling those of flood basalts.
The Tioga Bentonite of the northeastern United States varies in composition from crystal tuff to tuffaceous shale. It was deposited as ash carried by wind that fell out over the sea and settled to the bottom. It is Devonian in age and likely came from a vent in central Virginia, where the tuff reaches its maximum thickness of about.
Alkaline volcanism
Trachyte tuffs contain little or no quartz, but much sanidine or anorthoclase and sometimes oligoclase feldspar, with occasional biotite, augite, and hornblende. In weathering, they often change to soft red or yellow claystones, rich in kaolin with secondary quartz. Recent trachyte tuffs are found on the Rhine, in Ischia and near Naples. Trachyte-carbonatite tuffs have been identified in the East African Rift. Alkaline crystal tuffs have been reported from Rio de Janeiro.Intermediate volcanism
Andesitic tuffs are exceedingly common. They occur along the whole chain of the Cordilleras and Andes, in the West Indies, New Zealand, Japan, etc. In the Lake District, North Wales, Lorne, the Pentland Hills, the Cheviots, and many other districts of Great Britain, ancient rocks of exactly similar nature are abundant. In color, they are red or brown; their scoriae fragments are of all sizes from huge blocks down to minute granular dust. The cavities are filled with many secondary minerals, such as calcite, chlorite, quartz, epidote, or chalcedony; in microscopic sections, though, the nature of the original lava can nearly always be made out from the shapes and properties of the little crystals which occur in the decomposed glassy base. Even in the smallest details, these ancient tuffs have a complete resemblance to the modern ash beds of Cotopaxi, Krakatoa, and Mont Pelé.Mafic volcanism
Mafic volcanism typically takes the form of Hawaiian eruptions that are nonexplosive and produce little ash. However, interaction between basaltic magma and groundwater or seawater results in hydromagmatic explosions that produce abundant ash. These deposit ash cones that subsequently can become cemented into tuff cones. Diamond Head, Hawaii, is an example of a tuff cone, as is the island of Ka'ula. The glassy basaltic ash produced in such eruptions rapidly alters to palagonite as part of the process of lithification.Although conventional mafic volcanism produce little ash, such ash as is formed may accumulate locally as significant deposits. An example is the Pahala ash of Hawaii island, which locally is as thick as. These deposits also rapidly alter to palagonite, and eventually weather to laterite.
Basaltic tuffs are also found in County Antrim, Skye, Mull, and other places, where Paleogene volcanic rocks are found; in Scotland, Derbyshire, and Ireland among the Carboniferous strata, and among the still older rocks of the Lake District, the southern uplands of Scotland, and Wales. They are black, dark green, or red in colour; vary greatly in coarseness, some being full of round spongy bombs a foot or more in diameter; and being often submarine, may contain shale, sandstone, grit, and other sedimentary material, and are occasionally fossiliferous. Recent basaltic tuffs are found in Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Jan Mayen, Sicily, the Hawaiian Islands, Samoa, etc. When weathered, they are filled with calcite, chlorite, serpentine, and especially where the lavas contain nepheline or leucite, are often rich in zeolites, such as analcite, prehnite, natrolite, scolecite, chabazite, heulandite, etc.