9316350 Carr The purpose of the proposed work is to discover new physical constraints that will lead to a better understanding of arc volcanoes. We propose two projects. The first is to quantify the spatial distribution of arc volcanism, with special emphasis on measuring the sizes of volcanoes. The second project is to examine the morphologies of arc volcanoes to determine if they can be related to chemical or other physical parameters. The significance of the proposed work is that volcanism is the observable surface result of the managing processes at convergent margins. Highly sophisticated geochemical models exist for arc volcanism and several attempts have been made to link geochemical parameters to tectonic and volcanological features. We propose to quantify volcano distribution and morphology, focussing for the most part on Central America. We will then determine what correlations exist between the new physical data and existing geochemical data and use the results to try to eliminate some of the several competing models of melt generation and migration.
