Las Cañadas caldera, Tenerife, Canary Islands: A review, or the end of a long volcanological controversy

The Las Cañadas caldera is one of the best exposed volcanic calderas in the world and one of the few known evolved alkaline volcanoes. It truncates the pre-Teide-Pico Viejo central volcanic edifice, the Las Cañadas edifice, which started to take shape at the end of the formation of a large basaltic shield that forms the main part of island of Tenerife. Historically, the origin of the Las Cañadas caldera has been controversial, as it has been interpreted as the result of either multiple vertical collapses or due to a giant sector collapse. The available stratigraphical, structural, volcanological, geochronological, and geophysical data, as well as its comparison to other well-known collapse calderas should not offer any doubt as to its direct relationship with a long history of phonolitic explosive volcanism. However, the existence of large landslide events on Tenerife, which have significantly modified the flanks of the Las Cañadas volcano, have also been used as a potential explanation for the origin of the Las Cañadas depression. This contribution reviews the available information on the Las Cañadas caldera, the causes of this controversy, and rationalises the most plausible explanation for the origin of Las Cañadas caldera based on the current evidence gathered from all previous studies