Stop Calling Flood Basalt Provinces a Single "Volcano" or "Eruption"

Lava flows from the Columbia River Basalts (likely close to 30 meters tall), seen near the shores of the Columbia River. Image: brewbooks / Flickr. One of the favored topics of a lot of science media is some of the largest of all volcanic activity on Earth -- flood basalt provinces (see below). These provinces are vast swaths of land that cover up to hundreds of thousands of square kilometers with tens to hundreds of meters of basalt -- the most famous examples are places like the Columbia River Basalts or the Siberian Traps. When these provinces formed, they potentially played a dramatic role in regional and global climate -- however, what they aren't are a single volcanic event. I saw a headline today from Discovery News that called the Siberian Traps "The Deadliest Volcano Ever". This is a fundamentally flawed idea -- flood basalt provinces are made of thousands ...