John Wolff
Washington State University, WA·Earth & Environmental Science
Some of the largest volcanic events on Earth have produced flood basalts, huge outpourings of lava that bury entire regions. The Columbia River Basalts erupted between 17 and 6 million years ago.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
Columbia River Basalts
flood basalts
Large Igneous Province
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Sep 2026
What they work on
- Determine whether Columbia River magmas travelled long distances sideways underground by measuring magma flow directions in feeder dikes with rock magnetic techniques.
- Test whether Columbia River magmas originated near the inferred starting position of the Yellowstone hotspot at the Nevada–Oregon border, using along-strike changes in dike age and chemistry.
- Identify whether there were discrete zones of magma storage that fed flood lavas laterally, by combining geochemical and magnetic flow data across the ~400 km dike system.
- Establish over what timescales dike swarms formed and whether volcanic activity shifted northward away from the Yellowstone hotspot, using geochronology (rock dating).
More about the research
They covered more than 150,000 square miles of Oregon and Washington, in places thousands of feet thick. These lavas came out of long cracks in the ground, called fissures, much like eruptions in Hawaii or Iceland but far larger. Scientists now know that magma for such eruptions can travel long distances sideways underground before it erupts, rather than rising straight up from its source. Understanding how this works is key to understanding how the deep Earth delivers melt to the surface.
Why it matters
Flood basalt eruptions are the biggest volcanic events on Earth, yet how their magma is stored and moved underground is poorly known. New dates and flow-direction data for the Columbia River dikes will give geologists firmer constraints on how such provinces form and how deep magma reaches the surface. The results could also inform ideas about the Yellowstone hotspot's early history.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Alison Graettinger
University of Missouri-Kansas City, MO·Earth & Environmental Science
Determine at what depths silica-rich and basaltic magmas build up beneath Askja and how often magma is refilled, using plagioclase and clinopyroxene mineral analyses and gabbro xenoliths, chunks of deep rock carried up by eruptions.
Kevin Konrad
Oregon State University, OR·Earth & Environmental Science
Determine when the Manihiki and Hikurangi Plateaus formed, how long that took, and whether eruptions came in pulses, using high-resolution 40Ar/39Ar dating of their lavas.
Valbone Memeti
California State University-Fullerton, CA·Earth & Environmental Science
Determine when Tuolumne magmas cooled and how long magma was present, using uranium–lead dating of zircon and titanite inclusions inside K-feldspar megacrysts from the Half Dome and Cathedral Peak units.
The school
Washington State University: 22 labs on PI Pages, $403M a year on research, 259 research doctorates a year.
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