Question about under ground valcanos, hot springs, and sesmicativity at Mammoth, to long to write here...?

Question

Hi, I've recently been to Mammoth and I visited Horseshoe lake and I found out its located on top of an underground valcano. A few miles outside of Mammoth the scienctist have discovered a new gyster and the hot springs on heating up. Mammoth is located on a fault line, so it has alot of sesmic activity. Could this mean the valcano is becoming active again and could this point and lead to a valcanic eruption??

All the trees are dead aroudn the lake on one side becuase of the C2O in th ground. There are no pets allowed around the area, going in the lake is forbidded along with digging and laying on the beach. And we are not allowed to stay for a logn period of time. We think lava might be seeping in from under the ground into the lake and thats why no one can go in the lake, for they might get seriously burned. I learned this can happen in a show. Yes we could smell alot of sulfer.

And the water coming out of the hot springs is at the boiling point. Even hot water is is bubbling up from the river right next to the springs, they had to close it off so no one is allowed to swim anymore. There was also a strong smell of sulfer around the springs. Theres still a little bit of snow on the mountains (eat seirra nevadas) so maybe it won't rerupt for a while.

east* lol i dont think its possible to eat a mountian range

Answer 1

Yeah, DarkAngel had a good idea. Take a geology class, and, if you live anywhere near the Mammoth area, sign up for a geology field trip. They're awesome.

I've been to Mammoth Mountain three or four times in the last several years, and one of those visits was on a geology field trip that also included the Long Valley caldera in the Owens Valley that erupted 760,000 years ago, as well as June Lake in the eastern Sierra and Mono Lake where we climbed an extinct volcano and looked for obsidian rock inside the crater.

At Mammoth we visited Horseshoe Lake, saw all the dead trees, and heard the carbon dioxide story. Down a road near the Mammoth airport is Mammoth Hot Springs (maybe it was Hot Springs Road) where we saw people bathing in the warm water at altitude when the air temperature was quite brisk.

Mammoth Mountain seems to be quite unique. It's definitely volcanic, with a lot of seismic activity on the mountain, yet the Sierra Nevada are relatively young fault-block mountains thrust upward by subduction of the Pacific plate. Since then, the Pacific and North American plates have shifted directions, sliding past each other along the San Andreas fault.

But the eastern slope of the Sierra, as seen from Highway 395, is dramatically steep, similar to the Tetons or the Bighorns farther to the east. I say this because in that environment, you don't expect to see volcanism.

Contrast that with the Cascades, all volcanic, where solitary cone-shaped mountains (Rainier, Hood, Adams, St. Helens, Shasta, Lassen) rise from the plain. The Sierra are not like that. So Mammoth seems out of place.

(Yellowstone, by the way, is in a class by itself. It's a "hot spot", and if it ever blows, it'll dwarf everything else.)

But back to Mammoth. It's obviously perched atop a large magma chamber, and someday it will pop its cork. Whether explosively or not depends on the silicon content, but something will happen sooner or later.

Everybody up there knows that. A couple years ago, the mountain experienced a surge of seismic activity, so a lot of seismometers were implanted. It was widely reported at the time, but it seems to have quieted down since.

Interestingly, they're now developing Mammoth Lakes more than ever before, and real estate values are shooting upward, last I heard. But I also hear that the real estate agents don't talk much about volcanos. No surprise there!

So that's all I can remember about it. One question I'd have is, why is Mammoth so unique, given that the rest of the Sierra are so different? Could it be that Mammoth is really the southernmost of the volcanic Cascade range, and that it just happens to be located in the Sierra Nevada?

I guess I should've thought of that question while I was on the geology field trip.

Answer 2

The volcano can very well become active again, but probably not in our lifetime. Though Volcano's are very unpredictable and may erupt at almost any time, there are sometimes warning signs. If you live near one like say in the North Western part of the US and the snow starts to melt off of the Volcano, run like hell!!! Also, sometimes you'll smell sulfur in lakes that once didn't have that smell near the volcano, fish will start dieing due to lakes heating up, perhaps more earth quakes things like that. I recommend taking a Geology class if you are really interested in this sort of thing. I took a Geology class and learned so much, I didn't know that the study of the earth could be so interesting!!!!