The Columbia River Flood Basalt Province

The Miocene Columbia River flood basalt province covers ~210,000 km2 of the Pacific Northwest of the United States, and forms part of a larger volcanic region that also includes contemporaneous silicic centers in northern Nevada, the basaltic and time-transgressive rhyolitic volcanic fields of the Snake River Plain and Yellowstone plateau, and the High Lava Plains of central Oregon. The Columbia River flood basalt province is accessible and well exposed, making it one of the best-studied flood basalt provinces worldwide, and it serves as a model for understanding the stratigraphic development and petrogenesis of large igneous provinces through time. This volume details our current knowledge of the stratigraphy and physical volcanology; extent, volume, and age of the lava flows; the tectonic setting and history of the province; the petrogenesis of the lavas; and hydrogeology of the basalt aquifers.

This unique book presents hundreds of spectacular photographs of large-scale to small-scale field geological features of flood basalt volcanism from around the world. Major flood basalt provinces covered in this book include the British Palaeogene, Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, Columbia River, Deccan, East Greenland, Emeishan, Ethiopian, Ferrar-Karoo-Tasmania, Iceland, Indo-Madagascar, Paraná, Siberian, West Greenland, and others. Intermediate- to small-sized flood basalts (such as Saudi Arabia and South Caucasus) are also included. Different chapters of the book illustrate varied features of flood basalts, including landscapes, lava flow morphology and stacking, structures formed during lava flow transport, inflation and degassing, structures produced during lava solidification, subaqueous volcanism and volcanosedimentary associations, explosive volcanism, intrusions, igneous processes and magmatic diversity, tectonic deformation, secondary mineralization, and weathering and erosion. This book will be valuable for a large audience: specialists studying flood basalt volcanology, petrology, geochemistry, geochronology, geophysics, and environmental impact and mass extinction links; nonspecialists who want to know more about flood basalts; field geologists (such as those working in geological surveys); students of volcanology and igneous petrology, and even people employed in the industry, such as those working on flood basalt-hosted groundwater or petroleum reservoirs.

Don Swanson, who received the GSA Mineralogy, Geochemistry, Petrology, and Volcanology Division's Distinguished Geologic Career award in 2016, has adopted a detailed, field-oriented approach to studying problems of great volcanologic importance across a range of compositions and spatio-temporal scales. Swanson's work has resulted in a series of fundamental contributions that have advanced understanding of the Columbia River flood basalts, Cascade volcanic arc, and Hawai'i, and his insights have been applied not only around the world, but across the solar system. This volume emphasizes the role of field volcanology as a window into better understanding volcanic processes past and present, and highlights, in particular, those places and processes where Swanson's insights have been particularly impactful.

The 20 chapters of The Geology of Washington and Beyond--an outgrowth of a geologic symposium--present the substantial advances in recent research on the geologic history of Washington State. The 32 contributors used new conceptual developments such as sequence stratigraphy, identification and matching of terranes, and neotechtonics, as well as breakthroughs in technology such as lidar mapping, paleomagnetism, and new methods of radiometric dating, to examine the fascinating geology of Washington State and beyond. Also included is geologic mapping in areas previously known only by reconnaissance. This book will influence resource management decisions, as well as disaster and land-use planning in the region. The introductory chapters make the book accessible for undergraduate courses in geology and to the general public.