Interaction between a Late Miocene andesitic dyke swarm and wet sediment in the Szoros Valley, Eastern Borsod Basin, Northeast Hungary

Magma/wet sediment interaction (e.g. autobrecciation, magma-sediment mingling, hyaloclastite and peperite-forming, etc.) is a common phenomenon, where hot magma intrudes into unconsolidated or poorly consolidated water saturated sediment. In the Eastern Borsod Basin (NE-Hungary) relatively small (2–30 m) subvolcanic bodies, sills and dykes with contact lithofacies zones were found generated by mechanical stress and quenching of the magma, and interacting with unconsolidated wet andesitic lapilli-tuff and tuff-breccia. Close to the contact between sediment and intrusions, thermal and mechanical effects may occur in the host sediment. Hydrothermal alteration and stratification of the host sediment were developed only locally along the contact zone, probably due to the paleo-hydrogeologic and paleo-rheological inhomogeneities of the lapilli-tuff–tuff-breccia deposits. Processes of magma/wet sediment interaction may be difficult to recognize because of limited exposure and/or certain similarities of the brecciated intrusions to the characteristics of the host sediment; hence detailed field work (geologic mapping or profiling) was required to demonstrate the subvolcanic origin of the brecciated andesite bodies