Los Frailes lies in the Eastern Cordillera of Bolivia, between the southeastern shores of Lake Poopo and the city of Potosi. It is a little-studied volcanic system. Los Frailes belongs to the Central Andean ignimbrites, which cover parts of southern Peru, southwestern Bolivia, northwestern Argentina and northeastern Chile and which contains the Altiplano–Puna volcanic complex. Ignimbrites do not cover all of the terrain there, however, and in some places there is more than one ignimbrite. Where ignimbrites get emplaced is controlled by crustal fractures and lineaments, which are not always visible on the surface. Some better studied volcanic centres are Galán and Cerro Guacha. The Los Frailes ignimbrite plateau covers a heart-shaped area of about or, which makes it one of the largest such plateaus in the world. The plateau has an average elevation of. It was emplaced over a pre-existent topography, which resulted in the ignimbrites having irregular thicknesses; they reach maxima of but on average the thickness is about. They consist of mostly welded tuffs with column-like joint structures; a total volume of has been estimated for the plateau, which is a large size. Several potential vents have been identified, such as Cerro Condor Nasa and Cerro Livicucho in the northern part of the field, and Cerro Pascual Canaviri, Cerro Villacollo and Nuevo Mundo in its southern part. Cerro Villacollo in the western sector of the plateau is a deep and wide collapse structure, and is accompanied by daciticlava flows, whereas Cerro Pascual Canaviri and Nuevo Mundo are complexes of lava domes, the latter of which also contains ash deposits that have been in part transported away by wind. Lava domes and lava flows are widespread on their surface, and some volcanic necks contain mineral deposits.
Geology
At least since the Jurassic, the Nazca Plate has been subducting beneath the South America Plate at a rate of about. Volcanism does not occur along the entire length of the subduction zone; where the subducting plate descends into the mantle at a shallow angle volcanism is absent. There are thus three volcanic zones in South America, the Northern Volcanic Zone, the Central Volcanic Zone and the Southern Volcanic Zone. An additional volcanic belt, the Austral Volcanic Zone, is controlled by the subduction of the Antarctic Plate beneath the South America Plate. The remoteness of many volcanic formations of the Central Andes and the often hostile weather conditions mean that many volcanic formations are poorly investigated. The basement beneath Los Frailes is of Paleozoic–Mesozoic age and covered by Miocene andesitic-dacitic volcanics; some of these have been dated to 11.6 and 20 million years ago. Pre-existent cracks in this basement may have formed the pathways for the magma that eventually gave rise to the Los Frailes ignimbrite to ascend.
The Los Frailes ignimbrites were erupted between about 13 and 2 million years ago, but volcanism associated with the plateau goes back 25 million years, whereas the youngest ignimbrite is dated to 1.52–1.522 million years ago. Several different stages of volcanic activity have been distinguished.
In the oldest stage of activity, the San Pablo and Kari-Kari systems were active.
Cerro Gordo was active 19.7 ± 0.6 million years ago.
Between 16–10.4 million years ago volcanism occurred at Cerro Carguaicollo as well as the Corona-Anaruyo and Larco ignimbrites, the last of which was erupted 16 ± 2 million years ago. Cerro Carguaicollo is dated to 10.45 ± 0.47 million years ago. Another centre, Cerro Sombrero Kollu, was active 11 million years ago.
The Condor Nasa-Livicucho system was active between 7 and 8 million years ago, while the main ignimbrite was emplaced about 2-1 million years ago.
After the emplacement of the ignimbrites, lava domes and resurgent domes continued the volcanic activity in Los Frailes. Nuevo Mundo is the youngest eruptive system of the Los Frailes plateau; based on the position of its lavas with respect to moraines it must have been active within the last 11,000 years in the Holocene, perhaps even in prehistoric time.
