Wes Hildreth

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Wes Hildreth
Wes Hildreth in the Long Valley Caldera (cropped).jpg
Hildreth pictured in 2016
Born
Edward Wesley Hildreth III

(1938-08-17) August 17, 1938 (age 85)
Newton, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma mater
Spouses
  • Nancy Brown
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1964,separated)​
  • ​
    (m. 1982)​
Scientific career
Fields
Academic advisors Ian S. E. Carmichael and others

Edward Wesley Hildreth III (known professionally as Wes Hildreth; born August 17, 1938) is an American geologist affiliated with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the California Volcano Observatory. Employed by the USGS since 1977 as a research geologist, Hildreth is a Department of the Interior senior scientist. Described in Wired as "one of the great volcanologists/petrologists of our time," [1] his work in the fields of volcanology, petrology, and geologic mapping has been recognized with the Bowen Award  [ de ] and Thorarinsson Medal, and with fellowship in the Geological Society of America (GSA) and the American Geophysical Union. Hildreth's body of research includes work on the volcanic history of the Cascade Range, magmatism of the Long Valley Caldera, and mapping of mountain regions in the Andes. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Wes Hildreth, full name Edward Wesley Hildreth III, was born on August 17, 1938 [3] in Newton, Massachusetts, and is of Scottish ancestry. His parents—a housewife from an upper class family and a middle class retail store manager—had married earlier that year. Wes grew up "bicoastal", and has lived most of his life in either Greater Boston or the San Francisco Bay Area; he attended schools in both California and Massachusetts, [4] and graduated from Tamalpais High School as salutatorian in 1956. [5] Hildreth ran the Dipsea Race in 1955, while a student at Tamalpais. [6]

Hildreth attended Harvard College, where he majored in geology with a minor in government. [7] While at Harvard, he was a cross country runner for the Harvard Crimson. [8] He received a Detur Book Prize (awarded to sophomores with high academic standing) in 1958. [9] [10] Between his sophomore and junior years, he joined an army reserve unit and trained for six months at Fort Ord, [4] earning the distinction "Outstanding Soldier of the Cycle" in 1959. In 1960, he placed 29th in the 1960 Boston Marathon, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. [9] Hildreth graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree cum laude in 1961. After graduating, he received a scholarship to travel the world, and he did for ten years, picking up a job as a naturalist for the National Park Service. [7]

Hildreth started graduate school, but dropped out under the domestic pressure of the Vietnam War. [11] He later returned to graduate studies: under the advisorship of Ian S. E. Carmichael, Charles M. Gilbert, and Herbert R. Shaw, Hildreth received a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1977, staying at Berkeley after graduation to complete postdoctoral work with Carmichael. [9]

Personal life

In 1964, Hildreth married a woman named Nancy (now Nancy Brown, married to Roger Brown). Wes and Nancy are separated, but appeared in an oral history interview together in 2016. [4] Hildreth met Gail Mahood while a student at Berkeley, [7] and they were married in 1982. [3] The two are both geologists, and have published papers together. [12]

Career and research

Starting in 1966, 5 years after his bachelor's degree was completed, Hildreth worked as a naturalist for the National Park Service. That same year, he conducted research at Muir Woods National Monument, and published a report on the history of the area. [13] During his time with the Park Service, he had stints visiting Death Valley and the Olympic Mountains. [7] He left his position in 1970, later becoming an instructor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked from 1973 to 1975. In 1977, Hildreth received his Ph.D. from Berkeley; he joined the U.S. Geological Survey as a research geologist in the same year. [9]

Hildreth's interest in the Panamint Ranges led him to return to Death Valley and the Bishop Tuff while studying at Berkeley. His analysis of the tuff was a major contribution to the field, [7] and since that time he has published on a wide array of geoscience topics, including volcanology, petrology, and geologic mapping, with a focus on continental formations such as calderas. [9] In the 1970s, Hildreth saw a start to his career by studying the Bishop Tuff and Long Valley Caldera, and also by collaborating with Bob Christiansen on research in Yellowstone National Park. [14] His early research also helped solidify the scientific consensus that there is compositional zoning of magma reservoirs. [7]

Prior to 1980, Hildreth's primary research partner was David A. Johnston, though he was killed by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. [14] Since that summer, much of Hildreth's research has been conducted with Judy Fierstein, fellow USGS geologist. Their collaboration began in 1980, when Hildreth took Fierstein—then a fresh college graduate—to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes in Katmai National Park and Preserve to conduct field research. Hildreth had been studying the geology of Katmai since 1976, but this was Fierstein's first experience in the park. [15] In 2012, Hildreth and Fierstein published a report to commemorate the centennial of the 1912 eruption of Novarupta. [16] The pair have also published research on other volcanoes within the park, including Kaguyak Caldera. [17] Their enduring partnership has proved fruitful, with them both becoming vital to each other's research. [11] In 2019, the duo won the Florence Bascom Geologic Mapping Award, conferred by the Geological Society of America, for their mapping efforts in Alaska, Chile, and the western United States. [14]

In 1979, Hildreth published the seminal paper on Bishop Tuff studies. [18] Subsequent works by him have also helped establish a greater understanding of the Bishop Tuff and its origins. [19] In the Andes, his work has made him a leading expert on the geology of Laguna del Maule. [20] As of 2024, Hildreth is a staff member of the USGS California Volcano Observatory and works out of Menlo Park, California. [9]

Professional service

Hildreth has served as an associate editor of Andean Geology since 1987, a role he previously held at the Journal of Geophysical Research from 1984 to 1986. From 1991 to 2001, he also served on the editorial board of the Bulletin of Volcanology . [9] Hildreth also participates in public events—he was a participant in the 2005 GSA field forum in the Sierra Nevada and the White–Inyo Mountains. [21] He again participated in a GSA field forum in 2009, in Bishop, California, [22] which was adapted into a special issue of Lithosphere. [23] In July 2016, Hildreth and Fierstein hosted an interpretive lecture and hike at Devils Postpile National Monument. [24]

Awards and honors

At the May 1985 meeting of the Geological Society of America, Hildreth was elected a fellow of the society. [25] In December of 1985, [26] he was awarded the Norman L. Bowen Award  [ de ] (named for Norman L. Bowen) of the American Geophysical Union for his geochemical and petrologic studies of the Bishop Tuff, Novarupta, and Yellowstone. [9] Hildreth became a fellow of the union in January 1995. [26] In 2004, Hildreth was awarded the Thorarinsson Medal (named for Sigurdur Thorarinsson) for his many contributions to volcanology, including eruptive and petrological studies at Mount Baker and Mount Adams in the Cascade Range, Mount Katmai in Alaska, and the Yellowstone Caldera; mapping of volcanic calderas in the Andes; and magmatic studies at Long Valley. [2] The GSA awarded Hildreth and Fierstein the 2019 Florence Bascom Geologic Mapping Award (named for Florence Bascom) for their mapping efforts at Adams, Baker, Katmai, Laguna del Maule, and Long Valley as well as the Three Sisters, Simcoe Mountains, Pantelleria, Quizapu–Descabezado, and Mammoth Mountain. [9]

Related Research Articles

A caldera is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcano eruption. An eruption that ejects large volumes of magma over a short period of time can cause significant detriment to the structural integrity of such a chamber, greatly diminishing its capacity to support its own roof, and any substrate or rock resting above. The ground surface then collapses into the emptied or partially emptied magma chamber, leaving a large depression at the surface. Although sometimes described as a crater, the feature is actually a type of sinkhole, as it is formed through subsidence and collapse rather than an explosion or impact. Compared to the thousands of volcanic eruptions that occur over the course of a century, the formation of a caldera is a rare event, occurring only a few times within a given window of 100 years. Only seven caldera-forming collapses are known to have occurred between 1911 and 2016. More recently, a caldera collapse occurred at Kīlauea, Hawaii in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Long Valley Caldera</span> Geologic depression near Mammoth Mountain, California, United States

Long Valley Caldera is a depression in eastern California that is adjacent to Mammoth Mountain. The valley is one of the Earth's largest calderas, measuring about 20 mi (32 km) long (east-west), 11 mi (18 km) wide (north-south), and up to 3,000 ft (910 m) deep.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhyolite</span> Igneous, volcanic rock, of felsic (silica-rich) composition

Rhyolite is the most silica-rich of volcanic rocks. It is generally glassy or fine-grained (aphanitic) in texture, but may be porphyritic, containing larger mineral crystals (phenocrysts) in an otherwise fine-grained groundmass. The mineral assemblage is predominantly quartz, sanidine, and plagioclase. It is the extrusive equivalent of granite.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fumarole</span> Volcanic opening that emits hot gases

A fumarole is a vent in the surface of the Earth or another rocky planet from which hot volcanic gases and vapors are emitted, without any accompanying liquids or solids. Fumaroles are characteristic of the late stages of volcanic activity, but fumarole activity can also precede a volcanic eruption and has been used for eruption prediction. Most fumaroles die down within a few days or weeks of the end of an eruption, but a few are persistent, lasting for decades or longer. An area containing fumaroles is known as a fumarole field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Novarupta</span> Volcano in Katmai National Park, Alaska, US

Novarupta is a volcano that was formed in 1912, located on the Alaska Peninsula on a slope of Trident Volcano in Katmai National Park and Preserve, about 290 miles (470 km) southwest of Anchorage. Formed during the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century, Novarupta released 30 times the volume of magma of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes</span> Valley within Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska, United States

The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is a valley within Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska which is filled with ash flow from the eruption of Novarupta on June 6–8, 1912. Following the eruption, thousands of fumaroles vented steam from the ash. Robert F. Griggs, who explored the volcano's aftermath for the National Geographic Society in 1916, gave the valley its name, saying that "the whole valley as far as the eye could reach was full of hundreds, no thousands—literally, tens of thousands—of smokes curling up from its fissured floor."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yellowstone Caldera</span> Volcanic caldera in Yellowstone National Park in the United states

The Yellowstone Caldera, sometimes referred to as the Yellowstone Supervolcano, is a volcanic caldera and supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park in the Western United States. The caldera and most of the park are located in the northwest corner of the state of Wyoming. The caldera measures 43 by 28 miles, and postcaldera lavas spill out a significant distance beyond the caldera proper.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mount Katmai</span> Stratovolcano in Katmai National Park, Alaska, USA

Mount Katmai is a large active stratovolcano on the Alaska Peninsula in southern Alaska, located within Katmai National Park and Preserve. It is about 6.3 miles (10 km) in diameter with a central lake-filled caldera about two by three miles in size, formed during the Novarupta eruption of 1912. The caldera rim reaches a maximum elevation of 6,716 feet (2,047 m). In 1975 the surface of the crater lake was at an elevation of about 4,220 feet (1,286 m), and the estimated elevation of the caldera floor is about 3,400 ft (1,040 m). The mountain is located in Kodiak Island Borough, very close to its border with Lake and Peninsula Borough. The volcano has caused ten known fatalities due to gas exposure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bishop Tuff</span> Volcanic tuff in Inyo and Mono Counties, California, United States

The Bishop Tuff is a welded tuff that formed 764,800 ± 600 years ago as a rhyolitic pyroclastic flow during the approximately six day eruption that formed the Long Valley Caldera. Large outcrops of the tuff are located in Inyo and Mono Counties, California, United States. Approximately 200 cubic kilometers of ash and tuff erupted outside the caldera.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mount Martin (Alaska)</span> Stratovolcano in the state of Alaska

Mount Martin is a stratovolcano, located on the Alaska Peninsula, United States, in Katmai National Park and Preserve. It is one of the volcanoes in the vicinity of the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. Mount Martin's cone stands only about 500 metres (1,600 ft) higher than the surrounding ridge. Although an eruption in 1953 is now considered questionable and no other confirmed eruptive activity has taken place at Mount Martin, there is intense fumarolic activity within its summit crater. The summit crater is also breached to the southeast. The 300 m (984 ft)-wide summit crater is often ice-free due to the geothermal heat and contains an intermittent acidic crater lake. The fumaroles in the summit crater produce extensive sulfur deposits.

Charles R. Bacon is an American geologist and volcanologist at the United States Geological Survey in the Volcano Hazards Team, and who is best known for his work on the volcanic history of Crater Lake National Park and Mount Mazama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timeline of volcanism on Earth</span>

This timeline of volcanism on Earth includes a list of major volcanic eruptions of approximately at least magnitude 6 on the Volcanic explosivity index (VEI) or equivalent sulfur dioxide emission during the Quaternary period. Other volcanic eruptions are also listed.

The San Juan volcanic field is part of the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado. It consists mainly of volcanic rocks that form the largest remnant of a major composite volcanic field that covered most of the southern Rocky Mountains in the Middle Tertiary geologic time. There are approximately fifteen calderas known in the San Juan Volcanic Fields; however, it is possible that there are two or even three more in the region.

Calabozos is a Holocene caldera in central Chile's Maule Region. Part of the Chilean Andes' volcanic segment, it is considered a member of the Southern Volcanic Zone (SVZ), one of the three distinct volcanic belts of South America. This most active section of the Andes runs along central Chile's western edge, and includes more than 70 of Chile's stratovolcanoes and volcanic fields. Calabozos lies in an extremely remote area of poorly glaciated mountains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ubehebe Craters</span> Volcanic field in Death Valley of California

The Ubehebe Craters are a volcanic field in the northern Death Valley of California, consisting of 14–16 craters in a 3-square-kilometre (1.2 sq mi) area. The largest of the craters is the 800 metres (2,600 ft) wide and 235 metres (771 ft) deep Ubehebe Crater. Many of the craters, though, are partially buried and thus hardly recognizable. Other volcanic features there include a remnant of a scoria cone and a tuff cone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anita Grunder</span> Geologist

Anita Lizzie Grunder is geologist known for her research on volcanic rocks and defining changes in volcanism over geologic eras. She is an elected fellow of the Geological Society of America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hannegan caldera</span> Geologic caldera in Washington (state)

Hannegan caldera is a 3.72 million year old volcanic collapse structure in the North Cascades of the U.S. state of Washington. The caldera collapsed during two separate volcanic eruptions that produced as much as 140 km3 of rhyolite ash.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cascade Volcanic Arc calderas</span>

The Cascade Volcanic Arc is a chain of volcanoes stretching from southern British Columbia down to northern California. Within the arc there is a variety of stratovolcanoes like Mount Rainier and broad shield volcanoes like Medicine Lake. But calderas are very rare in the Cascades, with very few forming over the 39 million year lifespan of the arc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judy Fierstein</span> American geologist

Judith Ellen Fierstein is a geologist and researcher employed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and affiliated with the USGS California Volcano Observatory. Fierstein's research in geology has advanced the understanding of volcanism in Chile, including the history of Laguna del Maule. She is also a researcher on volcanoes in Alaska, where she is noted as an expert on Novarupta. Much of her research has been conducted with fellow geologist Wes Hildreth. They are both fellows of the Geological Society of America (GSA); she was nominated by Charles R. Bacon in 2007.

References

  1. ↑ Klemetti E (November 1, 2013). "A Caldera in the Making?: The Curious Story of Laguna del Maule". Wired . Retrieved May 7, 2024.
  2. 1 2 "Hildreth receives Thorarinsson Medal". Eos . 85 (50): 542. December 14, 2004. doi:10.1029/2004EO500005.
  3. 1 2 "Edward Wesley Hildreth, III". American Men & Women of Science. Gale. 2008.
  4. 1 2 3 "Oral History Project". Grand Canyon Historical Society. sec. "Wes Hildreth, Nancy Brown and Jack Fulton". Retrieved May 7, 2024.
  5. ↑ "Tam High Will Graduate 214 At Ceremonies Tomorrow". Independent-Journal . June 16, 1956. p. 3 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. ↑ "Marin Athletic Club". Marin A.C. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Carmichael IS, Hildreth W, Peterson DW, Fisher R, Schmincke HU (February 18, 1986). "1985 VGP Awards". Eos . 67 (7): 74–75. doi:10.1029/EO067i007p00074-03.
  8. ↑ Sigal WC (October 20, 1956). "Cross Country Team Overpowers Penn, Lions Despite Wrong Turn". The Harvard Crimson .
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Wes Hildreth". U.S. Geological Survey . Retrieved March 7, 2024.
  10. ↑ "Prize Descriptions". Prize Office, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Harvard University . Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  11. 1 2 Hildreth W (2005). "Thorarinsson Medal Acceptance" (PDF). IAVCEI News. 2005 (1). International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior: 7–8.
  12. ↑ See, for example:
  13. ↑ Hildreth W (1966). Historical Chronology of Muir Woods and Vicinity. Muir Woods National Monument.
  14. 1 2 3 "2019 GSA Florence Bascom Geologic Mapping Award". Geological Society of America . Retrieved April 23, 2024.
  15. ↑ Hults CP, Fierstein J (September 2016). "Katmai National Park and Preserve and Alagnak Wild River: Geologic Resources Inventory Report". Natural Resource Reports.
  16. ↑ Hildreth W, Fierstein J (2012). "The Novarupta-Katmai Eruption of 1912—Largest Eruption of the Twentieth Century: Centennial Perspectives". U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1791. doi:10.3133/pp1791.
  17. ↑ See, for example:
  18. ↑ See, for example, references to Hildreth (1979):
  19. ↑ See, for example, discussion of Hildreth's work:
  20. ↑ Tenenbaum DJ. "Exploring a Volcano". University of Wisconsin–Madison . Retrieved May 7, 2024.
  21. ↑ Bartley JM, Coleman DS, Glazner AF, Yoshinobu A, Law RD (February 2006). "Field Forum Report". GSA Today. 16 (2): 23–33.
  22. ↑ Ferrill DA, Morris AP, Dawers NH (July 2011). "Field Forum Report". GSA Today. 21 (7): 40–41.
  23. ↑ "Structure and Neotectonic Evolution of Northern Owens Valley and the Volcanic Tableland, California". Lithosphere (Special issue).
  24. ↑ Communications and Publishing (July 13, 2016). "Young and Old Volcanoes East of the Sierra Nevada: New Map, Report and Public Events". U.S. Geological Survey . Retrieved May 7, 2024.
  25. ↑ "New GSA Fellows" (PDF). GSA News & Information. 7 (7). Geological Society of America: 107. July 1985. ISSN   0164-5854.
  26. 1 2 "Edward (Wes) Wesley Hildreth". American Geophysical Union . Retrieved May 5, 2024.
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