Published Jan 30, 2024 by Ned Rozell, University of Alaska University of Alaska Scientists may have found a reservoir of magma in Interior Alaska
For years, scientists have wondered why North America’s highest mountain is not a volcano. All the ingredients for volcanic activity lurk deep beneath Denali, which sits above where one planetary plate grinds past another.
Recently, while looking for something else, researchers found a reservoir of what might be magma, seven miles beneath the muskeg of middle Alaska.
The spot intrigues Carl Tape because above it, at the ground surface, are ancient volcanic features.
Tape is a seismologist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute. A few years ago, he headed a team that peppered seismic instruments along the Parks Highway and on the Denali seismic fault. They installed hundreds of seismometers at spots along the road and dozens more right on the fault.
While looking at the seismometer data, which revealed ground motions large and small, Tape and his colleagues noticed a spot where earthen waves slowed down as they passed through.
“Sometimes a slowdown is due to sediments, such as those in the Tanana (River) valley,” he said. “Sometimes it’s due to magma. This one is beneath the Buzzard Creek maars.”
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