Scientists suggest Aleutian chain part of volcanic caldera

A giant volcano may be sitting in Alaska’s Aleutian chain that dwarfs the nearby Okmok volcano, which has been implicated in the year BCE 43 disruption of the Roman Republic.

Researchers identified the six stratovolcanoes in the Islands of the Four Mountains in the central Aleutians named Carlisle, Cleveland, Herbert, Kagamil, Tana and Uliaga as part of a potential volcanic caldera, the AGU reported.

A caldera taps a huge reservoir of magma in the Earth’s crust. A catastrophic eruption occurs when pressure exceeds the strength of the crust.

“We’ve been scraping under the couch cushions for data,” Diana Roman of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., co-author of the study, told the AGU. “But everything we look at lines up with a caldera in this region.”

John Power, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey at the Alaska Volcano Observatory and the study’s lead author, and Roman said the study team will need to gather more direct evidence to test their hypothesis.

“Our hope is to return to the Islands of Four Mountains and look more closely at the seafloor, study the volcanic rocks in greater detail, collect more seismic and gravity data, and sample many more of the geothermal areas,” Roman said.