Fig.1

Fig.2

Fig.3

Khodutkinsky Crater is a monogenetic vent, which produced a large explosive eruption KHD about 2500 years BP. Khodutkinsky Crater is located at the northwestern foot of Khodutka volcano, about 6 km away from its summit, but significantly differs from the latter in composition of the erupted products: while Khodutka lavas are low-potassic basaltic andesite-andesite, KHD products are hornblende-bearing mid-potassic rhyodacite. We tend to regard Khodutkinsky crater as a separate volcano rather than a flank vent of the Khodutka volcano.  

Khodutkinsky Crater consists of two coalesced craters, 0.9 and 0.6 km across. The larger crater is filled with a rhyodacite extrusive dome, the smaller one is occupied by a lake. The KHD eruption produced more than 1.5 km³ of tephra, which formed fall and pyroclastic flow deposits. Air-fall was dispersed mainly to southwest and  is one of the best markers for the Holocene South Kamchatka stratigraphy (Figs.2, 3).     

Literature

Melekestsev IV, Braitseva OA, Bazanova LI, Ponomareva VV, Sulerzhitsky LD (1996) A particular type of catastrophic explosive eruptions with reference to the Holocene subcaldera eruptions at Khangar, Khodutka  Maar, and Baraniy Amfiteatr volcanoes in Kamchatka. Volcanology and Seismology, 18, 135-160.

Zaretskaia NE, Ponomareva VV (in preparation) Holocene marker ash horizons in South Kamchatka.

Braitseva OA, Melekestsev IV, Ponomareva VV, Sulerzhitsky LD (1995) The ages of calderas, large explosive craters and active volcanoes in the Kuril-Kamchatka region, Russia. Bull Volcanol 57 (6): 383-402

Braitseva OA, Ponomareva VV, Sulerzhitsky LD, Melekestsev IV, Bailey J (1997) Holocene key-marker tephra layers in Kamchatka, Russia. Quaternary Research 47/2: 125-139

Braitseva OA, Sulerzhitsky LD, Ponomareva VV, Melekestsev IV (1997) Geochronology of the greatest Holocene explosive eruptions in Kamchatka and their imprint on the Greenland glacier shield. Transactions (Doklady) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Earth science sections. 352/1: 138-140