We live among giants—majestic mountains that draw hundreds of thousands of visitors every year as well as an ever-increasing number of year-round residents to our region. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that those mountains are actually volcanoes, and that volcanic activity has occurred in the Cascades for the past 40 million years. What does this past activity tell us about the likelihood of future eruptions, and how could future activity affect our daily lives? In this presentation we’ll discuss the types of volcanic activity that are most likely occur in central Oregon and how these eruptions might affect us.

Leading the discussion is Daniele McKay, who studies volcanoes and teaches at OSU-Cascades. She graduated with a PhD in geology from the University of Oregon, where she studied the processes and products of cinder cone eruptions. Cinder cones are the most common volcanic landform on Earth, and also the most common type of volcanoes found in the central Oregon Cascades. Much of McKay’s research involves mapping the ash deposits produced by recent cinder cone eruptions in Central Oregon. A life-long passion for exploring mountains sparked an early interest in science, eventually prompting her to examine natural processes in detail by studying geology.



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