Wes Hildreth (Former Employee)

The Long Valley region of eastern California (United States) is the site of abundant late Tertiary–present magmatism, including three geochemically distinct stages of magmatism since ca. 3 Ma: Mammoth Mountain, the Mono-Inyo volcanic chain, and Long Valley Caldera. We propose two tectonic models, one explaining the Mammoth Mountain–Mono-Inyo magmatism and the other explaining the...

South Sister is southernmost and highest of the Three Sisters, three geologically dissimilar stratovolcanoes that together form a spectacular 20km reach along the Cascade crest in Oregon. North Sister is a monotonously mafic edifice as old as middle Pleistocene, Middle Sister a basalt-andesite-dacite cone built between 48 and 14ka, and South Sister is a basalt-free edifice that...

Strontium, Nd, Pb, Hf, Os, and O isotope compositions for 30 Quaternary lava flows from the Mount Adams stratovolcano and its basaltic periphery in the Cascade arc, southern Washington, USA indicate a major component from intraplate mantle sources, a relatively small subduction component, and interaction with young mafic crust at depth. Major- and trace-element patterns for Mount Adams...

A suite of 23 basaltic to dacitic lavas erupted over the last 350 kyr from the Mount Adams volcanic field has been analyzed for U–Th isotope compositions to evaluate the roles of mantle versus crustal components during magma genesis. All of the lavas have (230Th/238U) > 1 and span a large range in (230Th/232Th) ratios, and most basalts have higher (230Th/232Th) ratios than andesites and...

Kaguyak Caldera lies in a remote corner of Katmai National Park, 375 km SW of Anchorage, Alaska. The 2.5-by-3-km caldera collapsed ~ 5.8 ± 0.2 ka (14C age) during emplacement of a radial apron of poorly pumiceous crystal-rich dacitic pyroclastic flows (61–67% SiO2). Proximal pumice-fall deposits are thin and sparsely preserved, but an oxidized coignimbrite ash is found as far as the...

Behind the single-file chain of stratovolcanoes on the Alaska Peninsula, independent rear-arc vents for mafic magmas are uncommon, and for silicic magmas rarer still. We report here the characteristics, compositions, and ages of two andesite-dacite dome clusters and of several nearby basaltic units, all near Becharof Lake and 15 to 20 km behind the volcanic front. Blue Mountain consists...

The 650 km3 rhyolitic Bishop Tuff (eastern California, USA), which is stratigraphically zoned with respect to temperatures of mineral equilibration, reflects a corresponding thermal gradient in the source magma chamber. Consistent with previous work, application of the new TitaniQ (Ti-in-quartz) thermometer to quartz phenocryst rims documents an ∼100 °C temperature increase with chamber...

Compositional data for >400 pumice clasts, organized according to eruptive sequence, crystal content, and texture, provide new perspectives on eruption and pre-eruptive evolution of the >600 km3 of zoned rhyolitic magma ejected as the Bishop Tuff during formation of Long Valley caldera. Proportions and compositions of different pumice types are given for each ignimbrite package and for...

Contiguous ring faults of the 8 × 3.5 km Hannegan caldera enclose the Hannegan volcanics in the Cascade arc of northern Washington. The caldera collapsed in two phases, which each erupted rhyolitic ignimbrite (72.3%–75.2% SiO2). The first collapse phase, probably trap-door style, erupted the ≥900-m-thick ignimbrite of Hannegan Peak at 3.722 ± 0.020 Ma. This single cooling unit, generally...

Plinian/ignimbrite activity stopped briefly and abruptly 16 and 45 h after commencement of the 1912 Novarupta eruption defining three episodes of explosive volcanism before finally giving way after 60 h to effusion of lava domes. We focus here on the processes leading to the termination of the second and third of these three episodes. Early erupted pumice from both episodes show a very...

The shift from explosive to effusive silicic volcanism seen in many historical eruptions reflects a change in the style of degassing of erupted magma. This paper focuses on such a transition during the largest eruption of the twentieth century, the 1912 eruption of Novarupta. The transition is recorded in a dacite block bed, which covers an elliptical area of 4 km2 around the vent...

The volcanic history of the Long Valley region is examined within a framework of six successive (spatially discrete) foci of silicic magmatism, each driven by locally concentrated basaltic intrusion of the deep crust in response to extensional unloading and decompression melting of the upper mantle. A precaldera dacite field (3.5–2.5 Ma) northwest of the later site of Long Valley and the...