• Journal of the Mineralogical Society of Korea
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.239-254
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• 2016

The Hwangto cave is a sea cave which is located near shore in the Taeha-ri, Ulleung Island, being composed of the reddish tuff wall rock, the topic of this study, and the trachyte ceiling rock. The chemical compositions of the red tuff layer are 49.81-63.63% of $SiO_2$, 13.05-24.91% of $Al_2O_3$, 2.67-5.82% of $Fe_2O_3$, 2.87-6.92% of $Na_2O$, 2.37-3.85% of $K_2O$, 0.55-0.81% of $TiO_2$, 0-0.53% of MnO, 0.39-1.75% of MgO, and 0.60-1.40% of CaO with a pH ranging from 4.5 to 8. The reddish tuff are composed of 23.7-39.4% of anorthoclase, 16.9-33.3% of sanidine, 15.8-26.1% of illite, 5.1-9.0% of hematite, 0-3.7% of goethite, 6.9-9.9% of titanium oxide, and 0.9-9.5% of halite in mineral composition. Although it only includes anorthoclase, sanidine, and illite as major minerals, there can be additional vitric minerals that could not detected by the XRD. The mineralogy and textures of the tuff layer indicate that it became reddish due to the formation of amorphous palagonite and the oxidation of the iron as a heat from the trachytic lava affects the underlying tuff to altered. This iron oxides are enriched in the palagonite, or form microcrystalline or amorphous minerals. We thus suggest that the red tuff layer was generated by the combination of the thermal oxidation involved in the trachytic lava flow on the tuff layer, the palagonitization of the matrix of the tuff, and the oxidation of iron-bearing minerals.