What is it about?
The Yellowstone hot spot, or mantle plume, is a long-lived feature that that resided off-shore until it was overridden by the westward-moving North American plate about 42 million years ago (mya). We show that this buoyant hot spot was responsible for thermal uplift of the subducting Farallon plate from 30 to 20 mya leading to eventual plate rupture and a massive melting event to produce the main-phase eruptions of Columbia River flood basalts and relate rocks in eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and north-central Nevada from 16.7-15 mya.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
This paper provides new insight into the early history of the Yellowstone hot spot. It describes the influence of mantle-plume rise on the subducting Farallon plate and the generation of volcanism east of the Cascades Mountain range. This cause and effect of early hot spot volcanism gives us a better understanding of the ultimate source of super-eruptions that have occurred in the more recent history at Yellowstone National Park.
Perspectives
This paper is the culmination of several years of field work in the Pacific Northwest. It has been a pleasure to share those field experiences with my colleague, Marty Ross, and to write this paper with my other co-authors. There are numerous questions to still be answered on the influence of hot spot volcanism in the Pacific Northwest. If nothing else, it is my hope is that this paper will be thought-provoking enough to inspire others to continue the exploration.
Victor Camp
San Diego State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Uplift, rupture, and rollback of the Farallon slab reflected in volcanic perturbations along the Yellowstone adakite hot spot track, Journal of Geophysical Research Solid Earth, September 2017, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/2017jb014517.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
