Page 273 - Volcano and Geothermal Tourism

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Figure 17.2 Puy de Dôme (left) and Puy de Côme
Source: Malcolm Cooper
(24 to 65 million years), and the volcanism that place about 4000BCE near Besse-en-Chandesse
formed the most visited areas of France in terms of and included the powerful explosions that formed
volcano geotourism, the area of the Chaîne des Puys the Lac Pavin maar.
near Clermont Ferrand, is just 5–10,000 years old. In the Massif Central as a whole there are
The Chaîne des Puys, prominent in the approximately 450 extinct volcanoes (Scarth and
development of volcanology as an Earth science Tanguy, 2001); the major ones in the Auvergne
(Brule-peyronne and Lecuyer, 1998; Cattermole, region are listed in Table 17.3.
2001), are a north–south oriented chain of basaltic The Puy-de-Dôme is a large lava dome at
and trachytic cinder cones, basaltic maars and 1464m and one of the youngest volcanoes in the
trachytic lava domes in France’s Massif Central Chaîne des Puys region of the Massif Central
that has been active into the Holocene period (approximately 10,000 years old), whose last
(Global Volcanism Program, 2010), and are the eruption has been dated at approximately 5760BCE.
major subject of this chapter. The chain is about The Puy-de-Dôme département (local government
40km long, and the identified volcanic features area) is named after the volcano, which itself has
include 48 cinder cones, 8 lava domes and 15 recently been listed as one of just six ‘Grand Sites
maars and explosion craters. Its highest point is the of France’. There is a roman temple, an observatory
lava dome of Puy-de-Dôme (Figure 17.2), which and other buildings on the summit. The entire
is located near the middle of the chain and about region is famous in the history of volcanology
10km from the regional centre of Clermont (Brule-peyronne and Lecuyer, 1998; Cattermole,
Ferrand. Development of the present-day Chaîne 2001), as it was the subject of the pioneering
des Puys began about 68,000BCE, and was largely research of English geologist George Scrope
completed by the beginning of the Holocene starting in the 1820s. In 1827 he published Memoir
(12,000BCE). Holocene eruptions constructed on the Geology of Central France, Including the Volcanic
lava domes such as the Puy de Dôme, whose Formations of Auvergne, the Velay and the Vivarais,
growth was accompanied by pyroclastic flows, which was later republished in a revised form in
cinder cones, lava flows, and maars (Bril, 1998, The Geology and Extinct Volcanoes of Central France
p121–125). The latest documented activity took (Scrope, 1858). These books were the first widely

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