Tuya Butte is a tuya in the Tuya Range of north-central British Columbia, Canada. It is a bit less isolated from other ranges than neighbouring Mount Josephine. Some of the other volcanoes in the area include

South Tuya South Tuya, also called Southern Tuya, is a tuya clustered around Tuya Lake in the Northern Cordilleran Volcanic Province in British Columbia, Canada. The base of South Tuya comprises hyaloclastite and pillow lava indicating that the volcano for ...

, Ash Mountain, and

Mathews Tuya Mathews Tuya is a tuya in northcentral British Columbia. It is one of the six tuyas close to Tuya Lake. It has been partly glaciated and Ar-Ar geochronology shows that is it about 730,000 years old. It mainly comprises palagonitized tephra (tuff, ...

. Tuya Butte was the first tuya analyzed in the geological literature, and its name has since become standard worldwide among

volcanologist A volcanologist, or volcano scientist, is a geologist who focuses on understanding the formation and eruptive activity of volcanoes. Volcanologists frequently visit volcanoes, sometimes active ones, to observe and monitor volcanic eruptions, col ...

s in referring to and writing about tuyas. The Tuya Mountains Provincial Park was recently established to protect this unusual landscape, which lies north of Tuya Lake and south of the

Jennings River The Jennings River is a river in far northern British Columbia, Canada. It is approximately long. The river was named for William T. Jennings (1846-1906), a civil engineer who, in 1897, assessed various road and railroad routes from the Pacifi ...

near the boundary with the Yukon Territory. Tuya Butte is regarded as among the best examples of this landform outside Iceland and

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

. Tuya Butte was named by Canadian

Bill Mathews in association with adjacent Tuya Lake and Butte Lake. The term ''tuya'' may be derived from a Tahltan word.

Geology

Tuya Butte is part of the Tuya Volcanic Field, a

volcanic field A volcanic field is an area of Earth's crust that is prone to localized volcanic activity. The type and number of volcanoes required to be called a "field" is not well-defined. Volcanic fields usually consist of clusters of up to 100 volcanoes ...

that includes tuyas, postglacial

lapilli Lapilli is a size classification of tephra, which is material that falls out of the air during a volcanic eruption or during some meteorite impacts. ''Lapilli'' (singular: ''lapillus'') is Latin for "little stones". By definition lapilli range ...

cones and lava flows and several small shield volcanoes formed during the Pleistocene and Holocene. This in turn is part of the

Northern Cordilleran Volcanic Province The Northern Cordilleran Volcanic Province (NCVP), formerly known as the Stikine Volcanic Belt, is a geologic province defined by the occurrence of Miocene to Holocene volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest of North America. This belt of volcanoes ex ...

from

Prince Rupert Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Duke of Cumberland, (17 December 1619 (O.S.) / 27 December (N.S.) – 29 November 1682 (O.S.)) was an English army officer, admiral, scientist and colonial governor. He first came to prominence as a Royalist cavalr ...

, into the Yukon and the

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...

border caused by

rift In geology, a rift is a linear zone where the lithosphere is being pulled apart and is an example of extensional tectonics. Typical rift features are a central linear downfaulted depression, called a graben, or more commonly a half-graben wi ...

ing of the North American Plate as the

Pacific Plate The Pacific Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. At , it is the largest tectonic plate. The plate first came into existence 190 million years ago, at the triple junction between the Farallon, Phoenix, and Iza ...

slides northward along the Queen Charlotte Fault. Tuya Butte formed when magma intruded into and melted a vertical pipe in the overlying Cordilleran Ice Sheet. The partially molten mass cooled as a large block, forming the highly developed

hyaloclastite Hyaloclastite is a volcanoclastic accumulation or breccia consisting of glass (from the Greek ''hyalus'') fragments (clasts) formed by quench fragmentation of lava flow surfaces during submarine or subglacial extrusion. It occurs as thin margin ...

and

pillow lava Pillow lavas are lavas that contain characteristic pillow-shaped structures that are attributed to the extrusion of the lava underwater, or ''subaqueous extrusion''. Pillow lavas in volcanic rock are characterized by thick sequences of disconti ...

with gravity flattening its upper surface. Horizontal columns occur at numerous locations along the periphery of the mass. The absence of glacial erosion of the tuya suggests that it erupted during the Pleistocene. The volcano has no summit crater or obvious vent, suggesting the volcano was fed by a fissure, although several indictions suggest a vent location near a large cirque on the north face. Other subglacial volcanoes can be found in the

Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic field The Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic field, also called the Clearwater Cone Group, is a potentially active monogenetic volcanic field in east-central British Columbia, Canada, located approximately north of Kamloops. It is situated in the Cariboo ...

and the

Garibaldi Volcanic Belt The Garibaldi Volcanic Belt is a northwest–southeast trending volcanic chain in the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains that extends from Watts Point in the south to the Ha-Iltzuk Icefield in the north. This chain of volcanoes is located in ...

References

External links

Volcano World: Tuya Butte
{{Interior Mountains Volcanoes of British Columbia One-thousanders of British Columbia Tuyas of Canada Northern Cordilleran Volcanic Province Stikine Country Stikine Ranges Pleistocene volcanoes Monogenetic volcanoes Buttes

Geology

See also

References

External links