Back-arc Volcanism

Cinder cone just off InterAmerican highway near Cuilapa, Guatemala.

Cinder cone just off InterAmerican highway and just south of  Ixtepeque volcano, Guatemala.

A line of  cinder cones  near Asunción Mita, Guatemala. Photo by J.A. Walker.

Isla Guegüensi in the Gulf of Fonseca, Honduras, a Holocene (recent) cinder cone.

Shield volcano west of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Note the low initial slope that gets even more gentle near the summit, where a cinder cone disrupts the slope. Although this photo implies a recent or uneroded landform, the lavas and most other perspectives of this volcano show it to be moderately weathered and highly eroded.

Ixtepeque is a large obsidian volcano, a mountain of glass.  Its flows have beautiful arcuate flow ridges from the air but it does not look like much from the ground. It was a major source of Mayan obsidian, although perhaps only after about 600 AD.

Volcan Chingo is a small composite volcano near the south end of the Ipala graben. This extensional region contains a large volcanic field, comprised mostly of cinder cones and small shields.