Blast from the Past. Vol 1. Newberry Volcano Series: Geologic Background

From August 14-20, 2011, I became a Volcanologist for a week.

Through an amazing set of circumstances and events, I managed to become a part of a team from the Cascades Volcano Observatory that had the task of rigging a volcano up with monitoring equipment that it was sorely lacking. This is a series of blog posts that will break the different aspects of the trip up. 

A Geologic Background

The volcano in question was the Newberry Shield Volcano, an 800,000 year old 8,000 foot behemoth covering an area the size of Rhode Island and dominating the landscape of Eastern Oregon for miles around. At the top of this huge mound of volcanic rock is a caldera six miles across containing two lakes. Paulina Lake and East Lake,. There are also hot spring seeps along the lake shore that are cool enough to bath in.

Newberry is a unique volcano geologically due to the fact that it erupts both Rhyolite and Basaltic Andesite, in english that basically means the volcano erupts both very thick, sticky, explosive lava, like Mount Saint Helens. but it also erupts very runny and fast moving lava, like Hawaii. The more explosive, or viscous eruptions occur around or in the caldera, the last explosive eruption happening about 1,200 years ago. The more fluid lava erupts from huge fissures or cracks on the mountain's flanks and covers vast areas. The last time an eruption of fluid basaltic lava occurred was about 7,000 years ago. 

Newberry's Profile

The most concerning threat that Newberry presents is its large explosive eruptions thdat can blast ash high into the stratosphere and cover a vast area in a layer of volcanic ash. Newberry lies directly along the major air corridor spanning from British Columbia to California. This creates a huge danger for aircraft, when ash gets sucked into their engines, it shreds the circuitry and fries the electronics in the engines, as well as destroying the mechanical parts. When a 747 unknowingly flew into an ash cloud from a erupting volcano in Alaska in 1989, it almost ended in disaster. 

View of the Newberry Caldera, site of the volcano's more explosive eruptions.

Our team was a potpourri of people. There were seismologists, electricians, geochemists, geophysicists, grad students, a couple of volunteers. And then there was me, the youngest of the group, a lowly high school student along for the ride. 

We had 12 days to begin taking the volcano's pulse. Could we do it?