The Uinkaret volcanic field is an area of monogenetic

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates are ...

es in northwestern

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, located on the north rim of the

Grand Canyon The Grand Canyon (, yuf-x-yav, Wi:kaʼi:la, , Southern Paiute language: Paxa’uipi, ) is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in Arizona, United States. The Grand Canyon is long, up to wide and attains a depth of over a m ...

Lava flow Lava is molten or partially molten rock (magma) that has been expelled from the interior of a terrestrial planet (such as Earth) or a moon onto its surface. Lava may be erupted at a volcano or through a fracture in the crust, on land or und ...

s from the Uinkaret volcanic field that have cascaded down into the Grand Canyon, damming the

Colorado River The Colorado River ( es, Río Colorado) is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The river drains an expansive, arid drainage basin, watershed that encompasses parts of ...

, have been used to date the canyon's carving. One of these cascades is today's Lava Falls. Lava Falls Rapid, below Lava Falls on the Colorado River, is "at all water levels, the most severe rapid in Grand Canyon." The Colorado River was dammed by lava flows multiple times from 725,000 to 100,000 years ago. While some believe that these lava dams were stable, lasting up to 20,000 years and forming large reservoirs, others think they failed quickly and catastrophically as massive floods.Fenton, C.R., Poreda, R.J., Nash, B.P., Webb, R.H., and Cerling, T.E., 2004, Geochemical discrimination of five Pleistocene lava-dam outburst-flood deposits, western Grand Canyon, Arizona: The Journal of Geology, v. 112, pp. 91–110, . Lava flows traveled downriver 76 miles (121 km) from

river mile A river mile is a measure of distance in miles along a river from its mouth. River mile numbers begin at zero and increase further upstream. The corresponding metric unit using kilometers is the river kilometer. They are analogous to vehicle road ...

178 to 254. One lava flow, from Little Springs, south of

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58Mount Trumbull, has a cosmogenic helium age of 1300 +/- 500 years BP. Pottery shards dated to between were found within the lava flow, produced around the same time as the

Sunset Crater Sunset Crater is a cinder cone located north of Flagstaff in the U.S. state of Arizona. The crater is within the Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument. Sunset Crater is the youngest in a string of volcanoes (the San Francisco volcanic field ...

eruption in the

San Francisco volcanic field The San Francisco volcanic field is an area of volcanoes in northern Arizona, north of Flagstaff, US. The field covers 1,800 square miles (4,700 km²) of the southern boundary of the Colorado Plateau. The field contains 600 volcanoes rang ...

on the South Rim.

Notable Vents

References

External links

Uinkaret Volcanic Field, Western Grand Canyon, Arizona
at Volcano World
Full-size version of image in infobox
NASA Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer">ASTER Aster or ASTER may refer to: Biology * ''Aster'' (genus), a genus of flowering plants ** List of ''Aster'' synonyms, other genera formerly included in ''Aster'' and still called asters in English * Aster (cell biology), a cellular structure shap ...

satellite image. {{DEFAULTSORT:Uinkaret Volcanic Field Volcanic fields of Arizona Grand Canyon, North Rim Pleistocene volcanism Landforms of Mohave County, Arizona Monogenetic volcanic fields Grand Canyon, North Rim (west)

Notable Vents

See also

References

External links