Volcano Hazards Program
Long Valley Caldera from above Mammoth Rock on the southwest rim to Glass Mountain on the northeast rim (30 km). The resurgent dome is the forested ridge in the middle distance. The seismically and geothermally active south moat is the lowland in foreground. The White Mountains are snowcapped on the right horizon. View northeastward.
The Long Valley Volcanic Field in east-central California straddles the East Sierran frontal fault zone, overlapping the Sierra Nevada and western Basin and Range Provinces. The volcanic field overlies a mature mid-Tertiary erosional surface that truncates a basement composed mainly of Mesozoic plutons and associated roof pendants of Mesozoic metavolcanic and Paleozoic metasedimentary rocks. Long Valley volcanism began about 4 Ma during Pliocene time and has continued intermittently through the Holocene. The volcanism is separable into two basalt-rhyolite episodes: (1) an earlier, precaldera episode related to Long Valley Caldera that climaxed with eruption of the Bishop Tuff and collapse of the caldera; and (2) a later, postcaldera episode structurally related to the north-south-trending Mono-Inyo Craters fissure system, which extends from the vicinity of Mammoth Mountain northward through the west moat of the caldera to Mono Lake. Eruption of the basalt-dacite sequence of the precaldera basalt-rhyolite episode peaked volumetrically between 3.8 and 2.5 Ma; few basalts were erupted during the following 1.8 m.y. (2.5–0.7 Ma). Volcanism during this interval was dominated by eruption of the voluminous rhyolites of Glass Mountain (2.2–0.8 Ma) and formation of the Bishop Tuff magma chamber. Catastrophic rupture of the roof of this magma chamber caused eruption of the Bishop Tuff and collapse of Long Valley Caldera (760 ka), after which rhyolite eruptions resumed on the subsided caldera floor. The earliest postcaldera rhyolite flows (700–500 ka) contain quenched globular basalt enclaves (mafic magmatic inclusions), indicating that basaltic magma had reentered shallow parts of the magmatic system after a 1.8-m.y. hiatus. Later, at about 400 ka, copious basalts, as well as dacites, began erupting from vents mainly in the west moat of the caldera. These later eruptions initiated the postcaldera basalt-rhyolite episode related to the Mono-Inyo Craters fissure system, which has been active through late Pleistocene and Holocene time.
Download this report as n 86-page PDF file (pp1692.pdf; 4 MB).
USGS Digital Data Series DDS-81, The Long Valley Caldera GIS database, by M. Battaglia, M.J. Williams, D.Y. Venezky, D.P. Hill, J.O. Langbein, C.D. Farrar, J.F. Howle, M. Sneed and P. Segall
For questions about the content of this report, contact Dave Hill
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Page Contact Information: Michael Diggles
Page Last Modified: January 18, 2008
