Four Craters Lava Field is a

basaltic Basalt (; ) is an aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the surface of a rocky planet or moon. More than 90% of a ...

volcanic field A volcanic field is an area of Earth's crust that is prone to localized volcanic activity. The type and number of volcanoes required to be called a "field" is not well-defined. Volcanic fields usually consist of clusters of up to 100 volcanoes ...

located south east of

Newberry Caldera Newberry Volcano is a large active shield-shaped stratovolcano located about south of Bend, Oregon, United States, east of the major crest of the Cascade Range, within the Newberry National Volcanic Monument. Its highest point is Paulina Peak. ...

in the U.S. state of

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

. The volcanic field covers about 30 square kilometers and post-dates

Mount Mazama Mount Mazama (''Giiwas'' in the Native American language Klamath language, Klamath) is a complex volcano in the state of Oregon, United States, in a segment of the Cascade Volcanoes, Cascade Volcanic Arc and Cascade Range. Most of the mountai ...

's eruption. Four

Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togethe ...

cinder cones A cinder cone (or scoria cone) is a steep conical hill of loose pyroclastic fragments, such as volcanic clinkers, volcanic ash, or scoria that has been built around a volcanic vent. The pyroclastic fragments are formed by explosive eruptions or ...

are the source of the flows in the field and are aligned along a fissure trending N 30° W. The cones rise 75 to 120 meters above the flows and the distance between the northernmost and southernmost cones is about 3.5 kilometers. Closely related to the Four Craters lava field is Crack-in-the-Ground located at the southwest corner of the field. The eruptions from the field were accompanied by a slight sinking of the older rock surface. This shallow,

graben In geology, a graben () is a depressed block of the crust of a planet or moon, bordered by parallel normal faults. Etymology ''Graben'' is a loan word from German, meaning 'ditch' or 'trench'. The word was first used in the geologic contex ...

-like sink is about 3 kilometers wide and extends to the south into an old lake basin. Crack-in-the-Ground marks the western edge of this small, volcano-tectonic depression and is nearly 9 meters deep and over a meter wide. The crack is the result of a tension fracture along a hingeline produced by the draping of Green Mountain lava flows over the edge of upthrown side of the concealed

fault zone In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

References

(archived)

See also

References

Further reading