Crater Lake Hides 1,400-Foot Cone and 68F Vents Beneath 1,949 Feet of Water
Updated
Updated · Worldatlas.com · Aug 17
Crater Lake Hides 1,400-Foot Cone and 68F Vents Beneath 1,949 Feet of Water
1 articles · Updated · Worldatlas.com · Aug 17
Summary
Crater Lake’s mapped floor includes a 1,400-foot submerged cone, broad lava plains, landslide debris and hydrothermal vents beneath the lake’s 1,949-foot maximum depth.
About 7,700 years ago, Mount Mazama erupted roughly 12 cubic miles of magma and collapsed into a 5-mile-wide caldera that later filled with rain and snowmelt.
A 2000 multibeam sonar survey logged about 16 million soundings, refining the lake’s depth and producing the first detailed map of features later confirmed by 1988-89 submersible dives.
Hydrothermal fields such as Llao’s Bath host bacterial mats that live without sunlight; probes measured temperatures up to 68F against surrounding deep water near 38F.
USGS says Mazama is dormant, not extinct, and future eruptions are most likely to occur inside the caldera below the lake, where the last known eruption came about 4,800 years ago.