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San Salvador volcano, El Salvador
A cable car line to San Jacinto on the SE side of the city of San Salvador provides access to this impressive vista of the massive compound volcano of the same name towering above the sprawling capital city of El Salvador.
The flat-topped peak at the left is Boqueron stratovolcano, which has grown within a 6-km-wide caldera formed by collapse of the older El Picacho volcano (the peak at the right) and another volcano to the NW.
Most of the four historical eruptions recorded at San Salvador since the 16th century have originated from flank vents.
The massive compound San Salvador volcano dominates the landscape west of El Salvador's capital city of San Salvador.
The dominantly andesitic Boqueron stratovolcano has grown within a 6-km-wide caldera, whose rim is partially exposed at Picacho and Jabali peaks, that formed by collapse of an older San Salvador volcano about 40,000 years ago.
The summit of Boqueron is truncated by a steep-walled crater 1.5 km wide and about 500 m deep that formed during a major eruption about 800 years ago.
It contained a crater lake prior to an eruption during 1917 that formed a small cinder cone on the crater floor; a major north-flank lava flow also erupted in this year.
Three fracture zones that extend beyond the base of San Salvador volcano have been the locus for numerous flank eruptions, including two that formed maars on the WNW and SE sides.
Most of the four historical eruptions recorded since the 16th century have originated from flank vents, including two in the 17th century from the NW-flank cone of El Playon, during which explosions and a lava flow damaged inhabited areas.
PHOTO SOURCE:Photo by Steve Nelson, 1986 (Tulane University).
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