USGS volcano scientists visit Long Valley
If you were visiting Long Valley this past week, you might have seen a cavalcade of SUVs periodically disgorging people wielding rock hammers, hand lenses, and brightly colored notebooks.
This field excursion treated USGS geoscientists to expansive views of the Long Valley Caldera, Mono-Inyo Craters, Mono Lake and Sierran granite and metamorphic rocks under clear blue skies. On the way, participants examined new geothermal features at Hot Creek, saw the workings of the power plants at Casa Diablo, and checked out the seismic and GPS stations that make up CalVO's extensive monitoring network in the Long Valley region.
The Long Valley Caldera on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada has a long, complicated eruption history including abundant basalts 4 to 2.6 million years ago, sticky rhyolite domes 2.2 million to 800,000 years ago, an enormous caldera-forming eruption ~760,000 years ago, and other volcanic activity as recent as 600 years ago. This context provides a geologic framework for understanding current conditions inside and outside the caldera and is critical to characterizing volcanic hazards.
This gathering brought together place-based experts with more recent additions to CalVO, CVO, and HVO for an exchange of knowledge, some hands-on time with volcanic rocks, and a healthy dose of discussion and debate. Revisiting, challenging, and revising our scientific assumptions is how geoscientists make advances and test new theories.
Continuing work in the Long Valley region includes installing/maintaining GPS and seismic sensors in Long Valley Caldera and Paoha Island on Mono Lake; monitoring yearly earthquake swarms associated with snowmelt; geochronology of precaldera basaltic lavas; and other geologic, hydrologic, and geophysical studies.
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