earth science

Quetena

Quetena is a earth science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Quetena rather than just read about it. In short: Quetena is a fissure-vent volcano in southwest Bolivia, located in the Sur Lípez Province of the Potosí Department, near the border with Chile. It rises to 5,730 metres (18,800 ft) above sea level with a topographic prominence of 998 metres (3,274 ft), and lies in the Cordillera de Lípez within the Central Volcanic Zone of the Andes.

Key takeaways

Quetena belongs to earth science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Quetena to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Quetena from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Quetena is a fissure-vent volcano in southwest Bolivia, located in the Sur Lípez Province of the Potosí Department, near the border with Chile. It rises to 5,730 metres (18,800 ft) above sea level with a topographic prominence of 998 metres (3,274 ft), and lies in the Cordillera de Lípez within the Central Volcanic Zone of the Andes. Quetena is the tallest fissure-vent volcano in the world. The volcano lies within the Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve, and the villages of Quetena Grande and Quetena Chico lie at its foot. Quetena is a comparatively easy high-altitude ascent typically approached from Quetena Chico. It is one of several minor volcanic centers northeast of Uturuncu, the region's largest stratovolcano. A 1977 survey attributed fissure-fed lava flows at Quetena to the Holocene, but a later evaluation concluded that the volcano's activity likely occurred in the Pleistocene or earlier.

Geography and geology Quetena is part of the Central Volcanic Zone of the Andes, where volcanic activity is driven by the subduction of the Nazca Plate beneath the South America Plate. It lies in the Cordillera de Lípez, part of a region of southwestern Bolivia whose Cenozoic volcanic rocks have a combined estimated volume of about 8,000 km3. Together with Cerro Panizos, Cerro Lípez, and Suni K'ira, it forms one of several minor volcanic centers northeast of Uturuncu, a much larger stratovolcano 23.5 kilometres (14.6 mi) to the east that is Quetena's nearest higher neighbor.

The Global Volcanism Program classifies Quetena as a fissure vent/cluster-type volcano and lists no confirmed Holocene eruptions. A 1977 structural and petrologic survey of the region reported lava effusions along fissures at Quetena as occurring in Holocene time, one of only a few post-Pleistocene volcanic events identified in the study area. A subsequent, unpublished assessment considered the volcanism at Quetena to instead be pre-Holocene, and possibly Pleistocene or older. Complicating this picture, a chemical analysis of a lava sample collected directly from the volcano was classified by the 1977 survey as part of a high-potassium calc-alkaline ("shoshonite") association, a group otherwise attributed in the same study to Miocene-to-Early Pleistocene volcanism in the region, suggesting that Quetena's volcanic activity may span more than one period rather than being exclusively Holocene. The Miocene-age Vilama and Pliocene-age Guacha ignimbrites underlie the surrounding area and crop out in the Quetena River valley. Lava flows found near Quetena beneath this ignimbrite plateau are considered contemporaneous with the Miocene-age Bonete Lavas exposed elsewhere in the region. South of Quetena, an ignimbrite sheet overlying Paleozoic basement rocks contains numerous fragments of Ordovician rock near its base, cited as evidence that the ignimbrite incorporated material eroded from the floor over which it flowed. Part of the ignimbrite sequence exposed in the central part of the Sur Lípez region has been attributed to eruptions from north–south-striking fissures located between Quetena and San Antonio de Lípez. The Quetena River drains the area around the volcano and is one of a set of tributaries of the Río Grande de Lípez that flow northward past Uturuncu into the Uyuni basin, the endorheic basin of the Salar de Uyuni. The Paleozoic basement in the area is exposed in a series of horsts; one of these, striking north–south, is named the Quetena horst. Quetena lies near the western edge of a satellite-detected tectonic uplift zone associated with the Altiplano-Puna Magma Body, and magnetotelluric surveys have found a shallow subsurface conductor and localized 3D electrical structure near the volcano.

Human activity Quetena is described as a comparatively easy high-altitude ascent, typically approached from the village of Quetena Chico. The surrounding area lies within the Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve, the most visited protected area in Bolivia, which receives over 50,000 visitors annually. Quetena Chico, at the foot of Quetena, serves as a base for ascents of the higher Uturuncu, reached by a former mining road. An 1889 survey by astronomer Solon Irving Bailey from the Harvard College Observatory, conducted while scouting sites for the observatory's proposed Southern Hemisphere station, recorded Quetena's elevation as 5,720 metres (18,770 ft), within 10 meters of the volcano's modern GVP-listed height. In 1985, scientists considered Quetena and other regions in Bolivia near the Chilean border, like Ollague and Laguna Colorada, as potential areas for a geothermal power plant.

See also Uturuncu Sur Lípez Province Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve List of volcanoes in Bolivia

Notes

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Quetena

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Quetena claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In earth science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Quetena before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Quetena ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Quetena

In research: Quetena appears in earth science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Quetena in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Quetena is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Fissure vents, Five-thousanders of the Andes, Mountains of Bolivia, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Quetena outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Quetena in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Quetena means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Quetena out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Quetena in simple terms?

Why does Quetena matter?

Because it connects several earth science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Quetena?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Quetena.