Chinameca Volcano — El Salvador

The small Chinameca stratovolcano (also known as El Pacayal) lies across a low saddle abotu 7 km NW of the large San Miguel volcano. A 2-km-wide, steep-sided caldera, Laguna Seca el Pacayal, truncates the summit, whose flanks are covered with coffee plantations. The Holocene cone of Cerro el Limbo on the W flank rises above the level of the caldera rim, and a Holocene lava flow extends from a NNW-flank vent into the lowlands to the N beyond the town of Chinameca (Weber and Weisemann, 1978). A group of fumarole fields on the N flank surrounds the city of Chinameca, and the volcano has been the site of a geothermal exploration program.