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Lessons learned from the 1980–1986 eruption of the Mount St. Helens composite lava dome

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Abstract

After its cataclysmic explosive eruptive activity on May 18, 1980, most of the output of Mount St. Helens (MSH) for the next six and a half years was quietly extruding lava, which built up one of the best documented and most instructive lava domes of the twentieth century. The unprecedented amount of data collected about the growth of the dome led to a profusion of new models and concepts. In this paper, we first describe some of the early mechanical models and then focus on three specific aspects of the emplacement of the MSH lava dome that were measurable in particularly great detail: the partitioning between exogenous and endogenous styles of growth; the distribution of vesicular textures and their relationship to volatile contents and eruptive conditions; and the presence of characteristic structural features like fractures, folds, and spines. Taken together, these three overlapping physical manifestations of magmatic behavior, evidence of which may be preserved in the geologic record or observed with remote sensing, can provide insights about whether a quietly extruding dome is likely to exhibit dangerous endogenic pyroclastic behavior.

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Acknowledgements

Our original work at Mount St. Helens in the 1980s could not have been accomplished without the generous assistance of Donald Swanson, Robin Holcomb, Dan Dzurisin, Fred Swanson, and their colleagues at the US Geological Survey and US Forest Service. Two helpful reviews by Jackie Kendrick and an anonymous referee significantly improved the manuscript.

Funding

Research was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and NASA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geology, Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA

    Jonathan Fink

  2. Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, CO, USA

    Steven Anderson

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Correspondence to Jonathan Fink.

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Editorial responsibility: U. Kueppers

This paper constitutes part of a topical collection: Over forty years since the May 1980 Mount Saint Helens eruption: Lessons, progress and perspectives

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Fink, J., Anderson, S. Lessons learned from the 1980–1986 eruption of the Mount St. Helens composite lava dome. Bull Volcanol 85, 35 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-023-01642-3

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