Holocene explosive volcanism of the Jan Mayen (island) volcanic province, North-Atlantic Eirik Gjerløw a,b,d, ⁎, H. Haflidason a,c , R.B. Pedersen a,d a Department of Earth Science, University of Bergen, Allégaten 41, N-5007 Bergen, Norway b Nordic Volcanological Center, Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Iceland, Sturlugata 7, 101 Reykjavik, Iceland c Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, University of Bergen, Allégaten 41, N-5007 Bergen, Norway d Centre for Geobiology, University of Bergen, Allégaten 41, N-5007 Bergen, Norway abstract article info Article history: Received 5 February 2016 22 April 2016 Accepted 25 April 2016 Available online 30 April 2016 The volcanic island Jan Mayen, located in the Norwegian–Greenland Sea, hosts the active stratovolcano of Beerenberg, the northernmost active subaerial volcano in the world. At least five eruptions are known from the island following its discovery in the 17th century, but its eruptive history prior to this is basically unknown. In this paper two sediment cores retrieved close to Jan Mayen have been studied in detail to shed light on the Holocene history of explosive volcanism from the Jan Mayen volcanic province. Horizons with elevated tephra concentrations were identified and tephra from these was analysed to determine major element chemistry of the tephra. The tephra chemistry was used to provide a link between the two cores and the land based tephra records from Jan Mayen Island. We managed to link two well-developed tephra peaks in the cores by their geo- chemical composition and age to Jan Mayen. One of these peaks represents the 1732 AD eruption of Eggøya while the other peak represents a previously undescribed eruption dated to around 10.3 ka BP. Two less prominent tephra peaks, one in each core, dated to approximately 2.3 and 3.0 ka BP, also have a distinct geochemical char- acter linking them to Jan Mayen volcanism. However, the most prominent tephra layer in the cores located close to Jan Mayen and numerous other cores along the Jan Mayen ridge is the 12.1 ka BP Vedde Ash originating from the Iceland volcanic province. We find that the Holocene volcanism on Jan Mayen is much less explosive than vol- canism in Iceland, and propose that either low amounts of explosive volcanic activity from the summit region of Beerenberg or small to absent glacier cover on Beerenberg is responsible for this. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Jan Mayen Tephrochronology Geochemistry YD-Holocene Explosive volcanism 1. Introduction The Arctic North-Atlantic ocean is home to two active sub-aerial vol- canic provinces, Iceland and Jan Mayen (Fig. 1), but where Holocene Icelandic tephra records have been studied for decades (e.g. Larsen and Eiríksson, 2008 and references therein), the Holocene tephra re- cords and explosive activity of Jan Mayen prior to its discovery in the 17th century remain largely unknown. Estimates from Imsland (1978) suggested that a total of at least 75 eruptions had taken place during the Holocene based on Holocene vents and lava flows. The explosive eruptions in Iceland from Eyjafjallajökull in 2010 (e.g. Gudmundsson et al., 2012) and Grímsvötn in 2011 (e.g. Hreinsdóttir et al., 2014) showed the potential for regional disruptive effects of even small to me- dium sized explosive eruptions and have highlighted the importance of mapping and understanding the history of explosive eruptive activity in the North-Atlantic region, especially when it comes to estimating haz- ards associated with such eruptions (e.g. Dingwell and Rutgersson, 2014). Tephra, defined by Thorarinsson (1944) as all airborne pyroclasts, including air-fall and pyroclastic flows, has been widely used to recon- struct the eruptive history and evolution of regions and volcanic systems by mapping the extent, chemically fingerprinting and dating tephra from marine, ice and land based records (e.g. Thorarinsson, 1967; Haflidason et al., 2000; Thordarson and Larsen, 2007; Oladóttir et al., 2008; Davies et al., 2010; Gudmundsdóttir et al., 2012). Tephra shards with chemical affinity similar to Jan Mayen have been discovered at several sites in the North-Atlantic region (Fig 1). This includes basaltic tephra from ice records from Greenland (Abbott and Davies, 2012) and marine records (Voelker, 1999; Brendryen et al., 2010; Voelker and Haflidason, 2015). Pleistocene trachytic tephra interpreted to have its origin from Jan Mayen has been reported in marine records (Sylvester, 1978; Lacasse and Garbe-Schönberg, 2001; Hunt, 2004; Voelker and Haflidason, 2015), while recent trachytic tephra from Ireland (Chambers et al., 2004) was previously interpreted to originate from Jan Mayen, these findings, however, have now been sourced to ex- plosive eruptions on Sao Miguel, Azores (Johansson et al., submitted for publication). The ages of the reported tephra outside Jan Mayen go back to 4.75 Ma (Lacasse and Garbe-Schönberg, 2001). None of the reported Jan Mayen tephra horizons are of Holocene age. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 321 (2016) 31–43 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: eirik.gjerlow@uib.no (E. Gjerløw). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jvolgeores.2016.04.025 0377-0273/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jvolgeores