-Located in the east-central Atlantic Ocean.

-Comprised of 7 large volcanic islands that have developed just off the African continental shelf.

-The active islands rise 6 to 8 km from the seafloor with subareal slopes greater than 15-20 degrees, much steeper than those of Hawaiian style volcanic islands (Day et al., 1999).

Figure 1: Young ocean island volcanoes (Whelan and Kelletat, 2003).

-Western islands are most active during historic times with eruptions approximately every 30 years (Carracedo, 1994).

-Most recent activity on La Palma in 1949 and 1971 (Carracedo, 1994).

-Little to no background seismicity or deformation on active volcanoes (Day et al., 1999).

Figure 2: The Canaries with historic volcanic deposits shaded and oldest K-Ar ages inset.  Islands with older Quaternary volcanoes are striped (Carracedo, 1994).

-Activity concentrated along rift zones, typical of ocean island volcanism (Carracedo, 1994).

-Canarian rifts are commonly configured as a "Mercedes star" or single linear trend (Carracedo, 1994).

-Extensional stress perpendicular to rift zones, steep detachment scarps seen on recently active islands (Carracedo, 1994).

Figure 3: Calderas, rift zones, tensional stress fields, and possible detachment scarps across the Canary Islands (Carracedo, 1994).

-The "Mercedes star" rift system is a natural stage in the evolution of the Canary Islands and is fed by vertical dikes (Carracedo, 1994).

-Geometry suggests maximum vertical upwards loading, consistent with upwelling mantle i.e. a hot spot source (Carracedo, 1994).

Figure 4: Theorized formation of a "Mercedes star" type rift system seen in the Canary Islands (Carracedo, 1994).