Leopold von Buch (1774-1853), Canary Islands, and the Origin of the Theory of Elevation Craters

Abstract

Leopold von Buch was one of the most eminent geologists of the 19th century. His capacity for observation and description of the natural world, matchless for decades, turned him into one of the most influential scientists of his time. Buch was initially trained in Wernerian School at Freiburg, but he was gradually leaving the Neptunism for embracing the Plutonism-Vulcanism. The craters of elevation as the origin of the oceanic islands is the most striking theory among his geological ideas: a layered materials of the earth's surface raises due to a force of magmatic origin coming from inside, whose subsequent collapse causes an elevation crater, unlike those known as eruption craters. Buch developed this idea as a geological theory from his studies about the calderas of Taburiente (La Palma) and Las Cañadas (Tenerife), in the Canary Islands, in 1815, either generalizing or expanding some observations he carried out in Auvergne and Italy.