A new approach to probabilistic lava flow hazard assessments, applied to the Idaho National Laboratory, eastern Snake River Plain, Idaho, USA

Elisabeth Gallant,Jacob Richardson,Charles Connor,Laura Connor,Paul Wetmore

doi:10.1130/g45123.1

Elisabeth Gallant, Jacob Richardson + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1130/g45123.1

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Abstract

A new approach to probabilistic lava flow hazard assessments, applied to the Idaho National Laboratory, eastern Snake River Plain, Idaho, USA

Highlights

The intersection of volcanic hazards and sensitive infrastructure, such as nuclear facilities, can be devastating (Menand et al, 2009)
We present an unconditional probabilistic lava flow hazard assessment for the U.S Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL, Idaho, USA) on the eastern Snake River Plain (ESRP)
While COM is compositionally more evolved than the majority of ESRP lavas, it is spatially isolated from contemporaneously erupted non-COM sources, so events are not defined by geochemical variation

Summary

Introduction

The intersection of volcanic hazards and sensitive infrastructure, such as nuclear facilities, can be devastating (Menand et al, 2009). Our assessment utilizes prolific geologic mapping and differs from earlier works by incorporating novel models of ESRP volcanism, a new method of clustering vents into eruptive events, probabilistic selection of input parameters, computational lava flow simulations, and analysis of activity recurrence intervals to report unconditional probabilities of future hazards.

Results

Conclusion