PROFESSIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS
The Cascade Volcanoes: Reaching New Heights in Applied Geoscience Isaac E. Pope Writing from western Washington, Isaac Pope is a young undergraduate student with an insatiable fascination for geoscience. With publications in peer-reviewed journals, he has conducted much university-level research on both geological and mathematical topics.
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duced the local bedrock have continued into the present. This allows for a more complete understanding of the local geologic history and common natural hazards. Even after decades of study, continued research of such a unique laboratory can be applied to a host of practical and engineering problems prevalent in a variety of geologic environments (Pope, 2020b; Pope, 2020d).
Physical Volcanology: Laying the Foundation Numbering nearly thirty prominent cones from Lassen Peak in California to Mount Meager in British Columbia, the Cascade Volcanoes are series of Quaternary stratocones along the Cascade Magmatic Arc surrounded by a number of smaller cinder cones and other volcanics (figure 1). With diverse geologic histories, the Cascade stratocone eruptions have ranged from dacitic tephra eruptions and dome building, such as at Mount St. Helens, and andesitic and basalt flows with little tephra, such as at Mount Adams, which form the bulk of
owering along the Cascade Magmatic Arc from California to British Columbia, the Cascade Volcanoes are a series of Quaternary stratovolcanoes attesting to the long geologic history of that dynamic landscape. A mere continuation of arc volcanism since the Eocene (Armentrout, 1987), the Cascade Volcanoes have continued to drive geologic investigation four decades after the May 18, 1980, eruption of Mount St. Helens confirmed that the volcanic chain was an active and priceless opportunity (Driedger et al., 2020; Lipman and Mullineaux, 1981; Pope, 2020a). Fueled by its igneous processes and high-relief topography, the dynamic Cascadia landscape incites research within a number of fields of geoscience, of which physical volcanology is only the most obvious. Mass wasting, glacial fluctuations, and the resulting sedimentary deposits and fluvial environments generated by the volcanic setting meld to form an evolving landscape, which has been studied during both the episodes of quiescence and the interims of relative hyperactivity. Furthermore, the volcanogenic geology Figure 1. Numbering to nearly thirty peaks, the Cascade Volcanoes are a series of Quaternary composite cones along the adjoining the Cascade Cascade Magmatic Arc from California to British Columbia. Seven volcanoes (pictured) have erupted in the past three Volcanoes makes the area hundred years, yet this volcanism is merely a continuation of activity since the Eocene. Both the high-relief topography along one of the only locales the arc and the volcanic energy expelled during these eruptions fuel several fields of geologic investigation, thereby where processes that proproviding an unparalleled opportunity to advance applied geoscience. Images in the public domain on the USGS website. Winter 2020
AEG NEWS 63(4)
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