Medicine Lake Volcano
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| Medicine Lake | |
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 Medicine Lake shield volcano as seen from Lava Beds National Monument | |
| Elevation: | 7,913 ft (2,412 m) |
| Coordinates: | Template:Coor dms |
| Location: | California |
| Range: | Cascade Range |
| Type: | Shield volcano |
Medicine Lake Volcano is a large shield volcano in the northeastern California about 50 kilometers (30 miles) northeast of Mount Shasta. The volcano is located in a zone of east-west crustal extension east of the main axis of the Cascade Range. The 1-kilometer-thick shield is 35 kilometers (22 miles) from east to west and 45 to 50 kilometers (72 to 30 miles) from north to south, and covers more than 2000 square kilometers (770 square miles). The volcano is primarily composed of basalt and basaltic andesite lava flows, and has a 7 by 12 kilometer (4.3 by 7.4 mile) caldera at the center.
The Medicine Lake shield rises about 1200 meters (4000 feet) above the Modoc Plateau to an elevation of 2,376 meters (7795 feet). Lavas from Medicine Lake Volcano are estimated to be at least 600 cubic kilometers in volume, making Medicine Lake the largest volcano by volume in the Cascade Range (nearby Mount Shasta has the second highest volume). The volcano is close to Lava Beds National Monument.
Filling up the entire southern skyline, it has been erupting off and on for half a million years. The eruptions were gentle rather than explosive like Mount St. Helens, coating the volcano's sides with flow after flow of basaltic lava. Medicine Lake is part of the old caldera, a bowl-shaped depression in the mountain. It is believed that the Medicine Lake volcano is unique, having many small magma chambers rather than one large one.
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The Caldera
Medicine Lake caldera is a 7 by 12 kilometer depression (4.3 by 7.4 mile) in the summit area of the volcano that may have formed by collapse after a large volume of andesite was erupted from vents along the caldera rim. However, the distribution of late Pleistocene vents, mostly concentrated along the rim, suggests that ring faults already existed when most of the andesite erupted. No single large eruption has been related to caldera formation. The only eruption recognized to have produced ash flow tuff occurred in late Pleistocene time, and this eruption was too small to account for formation of the caldera. Later conclusions were that Medicine Lake caldera formed by collapse in response to repeated extrusions of mostly mafic lava beginning early in the history of the volcano (perhaps in a manner similar to the formation of Kilauea caldera in Hawaii). Several small differentiated magma bodies may have been fed by and interspersed among a plexus of dikes and sills. Late Holocene andesitic to rhyolitic lavas were derived by fractionation, assimilation, and mixing from high alumina basalt parental magma. The small lake from which Medicine Lake volcano derives its name lies within the central caldera.
Eruptive history
Early history
Medicine Lake Volcano began to grow about one million years ago in Pleistocene time, following the eruption of a large volume of tholeiitic high-alumina basalt. Similar high-alumina basalt has continued to erupt around the volcano throughout its history. Although mafic lavas predominate on the volcano's flanks, all lava compositions from basalt to rhyolite have erupted during Pleistocene time. The lower flanks consist of mostly basaltic and some andesitic lavas. Basalt is mostly absent at higher elevation, where andesite dominates and rhyolite and small volumes of dacite are present. During the past 11,000 years, eruptive activity at Medicine Lake Volcano has been episodic. Eight eruptions produced about 5.3 cubic kilometers of basaltic lava during a time interval of a few hundred years about 10,500 years ago. That eruptive episode was followed by a hiatus that ended with a small andesitic eruption about 4,300 years ago. During the most recent eruptive episode between 3000 and 900 years ago, eight eruptions produced approximately 2.5 cubic kilometers of lava ranging in composition from basalt to rhyolite. Late Holocene lava compositions include basalt and andesite, but silicic lavas dominate.
Eruptive activity during Holocene time has included numerous rhyolite and dacite lava flows erupted at high elevations inside and outside the caldera; cinder cones and associated lava flows of basalt and basaltic andesite have resulted from eruptions at vents on the flanks of the shield. Most vents are aligned along zones of crustal weakness that trend NNE to NNW.
Glass Mountain
The most recent eruption occurred around 1,000 years ago when rhyolite and dacite erupted at Glass Mountain and associated vents near the caldera's eastern rim. No field evidence has been found to substantiate a report of an eruption in 1910.
Glass Mountain consists of a spectacular, nearly treeless, steep-sided rhyolite and dacite obsidian flow that erupted just outside the eastern caldera rim and flowed down the steep eastern flank of Medicine Lake Volcano. Ten additional small domes of Glass Mountain rhyolite and rhyodacite lava lie on a N25degreesW trend to the north and one to the south. The age of Glass Mountain and its preceding pumice deposits has been a matter of discussion for some time. A radiocarbon dating age of 885+/-40 years before present (1990) was obtained on a dead incense-cedar tree without limbs or bark that is preserved in the edge of one of the distal tongues of the flow. The dated material consisted of a piece of exterior wood containing about 30 annual growth rings. This age may be too old, because some of the outside of the tree is missing. The tephra deposits that precede the flow and domes may be somewhat older but are constrained to be less than about 1050 years before present (1990) by the Little Glass Mountain and Lassen Peak data.
Reference
- Adapted from USGS text assumed to be in the public domain. [1] (http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Cascades/volcanoes_cascade_range.html#medicine_lake)