Big Southern Butte
Big Southern Butte looking to the southwest.
Big Southern Butte is the largest and youngest (300,000 years old) of three rhyolite domes formed over the ~million years near the center of the Eastern Snake River Plain. In fact, it is one of the largest volcanic domes on earth. Formation of the dome is illustrated in the following series of panels.
How did Big Souther Butte form?
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1. Grey color represents
layers of Quaternary basalt lava flows and interlayered sediments; pink color
represents Tertiary rhyolite; red represents magma associated with the formation
of Big Southern Butte. In frame (1) rhyolite magma is rising through a fracture
formed in the older (solidified) Tertiary rhyolite. Ascent of the rhyolitic
magma is largely driven by its buoynacy (i.e. it is ~5% less dense than the
surrounding rocks).
2. In frame (2) the rhyolite magma stagnates at a depth of about 900 meters
near the boundary between basaltic lava flows and older Tertiary rhyolite. The
basalts are highly fractured and porous (relative to the rhyolite) and as a
result have an average density which is lower than the ascending rhyolitic magma.
Continued supply of rhyoltic magma through a dike (i.e. magma which occupies
a planar fracture) results in inflation of a pond of magma (called a sill).
Continued inflation uplifts the overlying basaltic rocks forming a laccolith.
Ferry Butte, and perhaps Blackfoot dome, located further to the southeast on
the Snake River Plain from Big Southern Butte, are probably both examples of
intrusions of magma that stopped at this stage.
3. Continued addition of viscous rhyolitic magma inflates the "roof"
of overlying basalts to the point at which they fracture (break), allowing escape
of some of the rhyolitic magma to the surface where it piles up as a steep sided
volcanic dome. Part of the roof of basaltic rock caves in and sinks either piece-meal
or as a flap down through the rhyolite. This is what has given rise to an odd
assymetry to the surface-rock geology of Big Southern Butte, i.e. the sothern
side is underlain by rhyolite, while the northern side is underlain by older,
northward-tilted basalt. This assymetry is easy to see from a distance because
the rhyolite is much lighter colored than the basalt.
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