Additional monitoring proposed for Newberry Caldera in Oregon

If you could pick as close to an anonymous volcano in the Pacific Northwest, you might be tempted to pick Newberry Caldera in Oregon (I might also take partial credit for picking Medicine Lake in California). Newberry is a caldera volcano (and National Volcanic Monument) surrounded by smaller scoria cones and lava flows - and it hosted one of the more impressive rhyolite domes on the west coast, the aptly named "Big Obsidian Flow" (that you can hike in and around). The Big Obsidian Flow (see top left) is the most recent eruption at Newberry, occuring ~1,300 years ago. The volcano has experienced thousands of eruptions of the last 600,000 years and a number of VEI 3-4 eruptions in the past 10,000 years, which means that Newberry is far from "extinct" as volcanoes go. The caldera is a popular tourist destination, with Paulina and East Lakes within the caldera, separated ...