Summary
This paper describes the reasoning that lies behind the construction of the field boundaries in the Total Alkali-Silica diagram (TAS) for the chemical classification of volcanic rocks. It shows that by utilizing nomenclature in common use by petrologists in combination with a large computer database of geochemical analytical information derived from the published literature, it was possible to construct a Total Alkali-Silica diagram for volcanic rocks of only 15 fields, which has straight-line boundaries and necessitates the definition of only 11 points to construct the diagram. One of the principal constraints on the positioning of the boundaries between the various named fields was to minimize the degree of overlap between adjacent fields.
Zusammenfassung
Diese Arbeit beschreibt die Überlegungen die zur Konstruktion des Total Alkali-SilicaDiagramms (TAS) zur chemischen Klassifikation der Vulkanite führten. Es wird gezeigt, daß durch die Kombination der geläufigen petrographischen Nomenklatur mit der geochemischen Information einer grossen computerisierten Datensammlung publizierter Gesteinsanalysen ein Alkali-Kieselsäurediagramm mit nur 15 Namensfeldern für vulkanische Gesteine konstruiert werden konnte. Die Felder haben gerade Begrenzungslinien und benötigen nur 11 definierte Punkte zur Einteilung. Eine der
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formerly: University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
As approved by the IUGS Subcommission on the Systematics of Igneous Rocks.
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Le Bas, M.J., Le Maitre, R.W. & Woolley, A.R. The construction of the Total Alkali-Silica chemical classification of volcanic rocks. Mineralogy and Petrology 46, 1–22 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01160698
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01160698