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Estimating the eruptive volume of a large pyroclastic body: the Otowi Member of the Bandelier Tuff, Valles caldera, New Mexico

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Abstract

The 1.60 Ma caldera-forming eruption of the Otowi Member of the Bandelier Tuff produced Plinian and coignimbrite fall deposits, outflow and intracaldera ignimbrite, all of it deposited on land. We present a detailed approach to estimating and reconstructing the original volume of the eroded, partly buried large ignimbrite and distal ash-fall deposits. Dense rock equivalent (DRE) volume estimates for the eruption are 89 + 33/−10 km3 of outflow ignimbrite and 144 ± 72 km3 of intracaldera ignimbrite. Also, there was at least 65 km3 (DRE) of Plinian fall when extrapolated distally, and 107 + 40/−12 km3 of coignimbrite ash was “lost” from the outflow sheet to form an unknown proportion of the distal ash fall. The minimum total volume is 216 km3 and the maximum is 550 km3; hence, the eruption overlaps the low end of the super-eruption spectrum (VEI ∼8.0). Despite an abundance of geological data for the Otowi Member, the errors attached to these estimates do not allow us to constrain the proportions of intracaldera (IC), outflow (O), and distal ash (A) to better than a factor of three. We advocate caution in applying the IC/O/A = 1:1:1 relation of Mason et al. (2004) to scaling up mapped volumes of imperfectly preserved caldera-forming ignimbrites.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Lee Winters, Dave Kuentz, Keith Brunstad, Ashley Steiner, Rick Conrey, Fraser Goff, Gary Smith, and the late Jamie Gardner for discussions and assistance in the field and laboratory. We thank John Stix and Peter Lipman for their thoughtful and careful reviews and Jocelyn McPhie and Shan de Silva for providing helpful comments on earlier drafts. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Rick and Shari Kelley for providing the base map DEM. This research was partly supported by NSF EAR-9909700 and EAR-1145127 and Washington State University Department of Geology student grants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, 92093, USA

    Geoffrey W. Cook

  2. School of the Environment, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, 99164, USA

    John A. Wolff

  3. Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720-9980, USA

    Stephen Self

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  1. Geoffrey W. Cook
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Correspondence to Geoffrey W. Cook.

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Editorial responsibility: M.L. Coombs

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Cook, G.W., Wolff, J.A. & Self, S. Estimating the eruptive volume of a large pyroclastic body: the Otowi Member of the Bandelier Tuff, Valles caldera, New Mexico. Bull Volcanol 78, 10 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-016-1000-0

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