Day 2, Locality 8

8) Old Malounda Bridge, Kamara Potamos Canyon, Eucalyptus Grove section; hillside cliff and viewpoint.

Walking across the fields to the eucalyptus grove brings us to the edge of the Kamara Potamos canyon.

Many volcanic features can be seen in the canyon wall opposite the viewpoint. Here in the volcanic sequence lava tubes and megapillows can be seen, with thin horizontal sheet flows, and some angled, dyke-like lava feeders. Some lava tubes are seen to terminate in megapillows, and some seem to feed short flows.

Dark areas identified between pillows are hyaloclastites. The complexity of volcanic forms and their relationships with one another again testify to the fluctuating balance between magma supply, rate of extrusion, and rate of extension. Again, the sheet flows could indicate times when magma supply was abundant, with rapid extrusion rate and extension, probably as fissure eruptions on the axial graben floor. Pillows could form later in the cycle, with waning magma supply or extension rate, as isolated pillow volcanoes.

The yellow-buff sediments on top of the volcanic sequence, and forming the plateau surface, are Pliocene marine gravels of the Nicosia Formation. They represent erosion of the shallower parts of the ophiolite complex further west, and redeposition of eroded material eastwards and northwards into the Mesaoria basin, as a series of alluvial fan-deltas into deeper waters. Their presence in the Pliocene indicates continued uplift of the ophiolite crust, the highest parts of which could have emerged as islands by this time.