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Sunset Crater & Bonito Flow: Geological Processes and Human Interactions
Sunset Crater erupted only 940 years ago, creating a cinder or scoria cone, and it is one of over 600 short-lived volcanoes in northern Arizona’s San Francisco volcanic field. Its eruption had very significant impacts, both positive and negative, on the northern Sinagua Indigenous people living in its vicinity.
Geologist Dr. Jeffrey Meyer will share the story of this eruption and detail his recent work mapping the Bonito lava flow, which came out of the cone’s western base and traveled to the west against an uphill slope. It is unique among lava flows in having traveled uphill, and, as such, can serve as an end-member example of processes that occur in flows on flat terrain. Understanding these processes can help in hazard prediction on earth and in the interpretation of past flows on earth, the moon and other planets.
Doors open at 6:30pm. The presentation starts at 7:00pm.
*The event is free, but space is limited, and registration is required. For those unable to attend in person, the talk will be live-streamed on our YouTube Channel.
For his PhD work, Dr. Jeffrey Meyer studied a 24-million-year-old super volcano – think Yellowstone, the opposite type of volcano to the young Sunset Crater. For 28 years, he was a community college geology instructor, and always kept active through teaching in the field. Upon retirement, Dr. Meyer and his wife, who is also a geologist, moved to Prescott into a home that her parents built. He has continued to teach geology part-time at Prescott College. While camping at Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, he noticed and became curious about unusual features of the Bonito flow, a prominent flow from the crater. He located recent Lidar data, and started mapping the flow, first by computer, and later in the field. Dr. Meyer is eager to share his recent research and continue to pursue his love of teaching through this program with the Natural History Institute.
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Rooted: The Natural History of People in the Southwest is the second installment of NHI’s humanities speakers series exploring the relationship between people and place in Arizona and the broader Southwest. Explore how humans have shaped and been shaped by the landscape of our region over time in this series of talks from archaeologists, Indigenous historians, ethnobotanists, activists, and authors.
This program was made possible by Arizona Humanities and sponsored by Findlay Subaru of Prescott.
