Geochemist Rick Carlson has recently returned from the first of a series of field trips to eastern Oregon as part of the multidisciplinary experiment he and seismologist David James are leading, along with numerous collaborators from outside the Carnegie Institution. The project is being funded by the Continental Dynamics Program of the National Science Foundation's Earth Sciences Division. Other collaborators on the project include former postdoctoral fellows Matthew Fouch (now at Arizona State University) and Bill Hart (now at Miami Univeristy of Ohio), in addition to scientists from The University of Texas, El Paso; Oregon State University; University of Rhode Island; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The project, begun this spring and extending into 2010, seeks to establish a better understanding of why the Pacific Northwest, specifically eastern Oregon's High Lava Plains, is so volcanically active. This region, chosen for study because of its accessibility, its high volcanic flux (this the most volcanically active area of the continental United States), and its relatively young age, provides the team with an interesting and challenging problem. None of the accepted paradigms about crustal formation and magmatism fit eastern Oregon. By applying numerous techniques ranging from geochemistry and petrology to active and passive seismic imaging to geodynamic modeling, the group will be able to examine an assemblage of new data that they hope will give them key information about the roles of lithosphere structure, tectonics, flat-slab subduction, slab roll-back, and plumes as instigators of aerially extensive magmatism continuing from plate margins into the interior of the continent.

On this first field trip the group concentrated on the collection of samples to be analyzed in the lab. Additional sample-gathering trips will be made each summer throughout the project. A website giving more details about the project is being built here.