ABSTRACT The Columbia River Gorge is the Columbia River’s long-held yet evolving passage through the volcanic arc of the Cascade Range. The globally unique setting of a continental-scale river bisecting an active volcanic arc at the leading edge of a major plate boundary creates a remarkable setting where dynamic volcanic and tectonic processes interact with diverse and energetic fluvial processes. This three-day field trip explores several elements of the gorge and its remarkable geologic history—cast here as a contest between regional tectonic and volcanic processes building and displacing landscapes, and the relentless power of the Columbia River striving to maintain a smooth passage to the sea. DEDICATION Dedicated to Russell C. Evarts (7 April 1947–11 July 2017) and his contributions to Pacific Northwest geology. Russ Evarts devoted most of his 30-year career with the U.S. Geological Survey to geologic mapping of Oregon and Washington. His thorough geologic mapping of the near-vertical terrain of the western Columbia River Gorge underpins much of what is reported in this guide and continues to inspire our studies of the geology of the Pacific Northwest.

ABSTRACT New findings about old puzzles occasion rethinking of the Grand Coulee, greatest of the scabland channels. Those puzzles begin with antecedents of current upper Grand Coulee. By a recent interpretation, the upper coulee exploited the former high-level valley of a preflood trunk stream that had drained to the southwest beside and across Coulee anticline or monocline. In any case, a constriction and sharp bend in nearby Columbia valley steered Missoula floods this direction. Completion of upper Grand Coulee by megaflood erosion captured flood drainage that would otherwise have continued to enlarge Moses Coulee. Upstream in the Sanpoil valley, deposits and shorelines of last-glacial Lake Columbia varied with the lake’s Grand Coulee outlet while also recording scores of Missoula floods. The Sanpoil evidence implies that upper Grand Coulee had approached its present intake depth early the last glaciation at latest, or more simply during a prior glaciation. An upper part of the Sanpoil section provides varve counts between the last tens of Missoula floods in a stratigraphic sequence that may now be linked to flood rhythmites of southern Washington by a set-S tephra from Mount St. Helens. On the floor of upper Grand Coulee itself, recently found striated rock and lodgement till confirm the long-held view, which Bretz and Flint had shared, that cutting of upper Grand Coulee preceded its last-glacial occupation by the Okanogan ice lobe. A dozen or more late Missoula floods registered as sand and silt in the lee of Steamboat Rock. Some of this field evidence about upper Grand Coulee may conflict with results of recent two-dimensional simulations for a maximum Lake Missoula. In these simulations only a barrier high above the present coulee intake enables floods to approach high-water marks near Wenatchee that predate stable blockage of Columbia valley by the Okanogan lobe. Above the walls of upper Grand Coulee, scabland limits provide high-water targets for two-dimensional simulations of watery floods. The recent models sharpen focus on water sources, prior coulee incision, and coulee’s occupation by the Okanogan ice lobe. Field reappraisal continues downstream from Grand Coulee on Ephrata fan. There, some of the floods exiting lower Grand Coulee had bulked up with fine sediment from glacial Lake Columbia, upper coulee till, and a lower coulee lake that the fan itself impounded. Floods thus of debris-flow consistency carried outsize boulders previously thought transported by watery floods. Below Ephrata fan, a backflooded reach of Columbia valley received Grand Coulee outflow of small, late Missoula floods. These late floods can—by varve counts in post-S-ash deposits of Sanpoil valley—be clocked now as a decade or less apart. Still farther downstream, Columbia River gorge choked the largest Missoula floods, passing peak discharge only one-third to one-half that released by the breached Lake Missoula ice dam.

ABSTRACT This field guide reviews 19 sites providing insight to four Cenozoic deformational phases of the Cascadia forearc basin that onlaps Siletzia, an oceanic basaltic terrane accreted onto the North American plate at 51–49 Ma. The field stops visit disrupted slope facies, prodelta-slope channel complexes, shoreface successions, and highly fossiliferous estuarine sandstones. New detrital zircon U-Pb age calibration of the Cenozoic formations in the Coos Bay area and the Tyee basin at-large, affirm most previous biostratigraphic correlations and support that some of the upper-middle Eocene to Oligocene strata of the Coos Bay stratigraphic record represents what was differentially eroded off the Coast Range crest during ca. 30–25 Ma and younger deformations. This suggests that the strata along Cape Arago are a western “remnant” of the Paleogene Tyee basin. Zircon ages and biostratigraphic data encourages the extension of the Paleogene Coos Bay and Tyee forearc basin westward beyond the Fulmar fault and offshore Pan American and Fulmar wells. Integration of outcrop paleocurrents with anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility data from the middle Eocene Coaledo Formation affirms south-southeast to north-northwest sediment transport in current geographic orientation. Preliminary detrital remanent magnetism data show antipodal directions that are rotated clockwise with respect to the expected Eocene field direction. The data suggest the Eocene paleo-shoreline was relatively north-south similar to the modern shoreline, and that middle Eocene sediment transport was to the west in the area of present-day Coos Bay. A new hypothesis is reviewed that links the geographic isolation of the Coos Bay area from rivers draining the ancestral Cascades arc to the onset of uplift of the southern Oregon Coast Range during the late Oligocene to early Miocene.

ABSTRACT The Miocene Columbia River Basalt Group (CRBG) is the youngest and smallest continental flood basalt province on Earth. This flood basalt province is a succession of compositionally diverse volcanic rocks that record the passage of the Yellowstone plume beneath eastern Oregon. The compositionally and texturally varied suite of volcanic rocks are considered part of the La Grande–Owyhee eruptive axis (LOEA), an ~300-km-long, north-northwest–trending, Middle Miocene to Pliocene volcanic belt that extends along the eastern margin of the Columbia River flood basalt province. Volcanic rocks erupted from and preserved within the LOEA form an important regional stratigraphic link between the flood basalt–dominated Columbia Plateau to the north, the north and bimodal basalt-rhyolite volcanic fields of the Snake River Plain to the east, the Owyhee Plateau to the south, and the High Lava Plains to the south and east; the latter two have time transgressive rhyolite centers that young to the east and west, respectively. This field-trip guide details a four-day geologic excursion that will explore the stratigraphic and geochemical relationships among mafic rocks of the CRBG and coeval and compositionally diverse silicic rocks associated with the early trace of the Yellowstone plume and High Lava Plains in eastern Oregon. The trip on Day 1 begins in Portland then traverses across the western axis of the Blue Mountains, highlighting exposures of the widespread, Middle Miocene Dinner Creek Welded Tuff and aspects of the Picture Gorge Basalt lava flows and northwest-striking feeder dikes situated in the central part of the CRBG province. Travel on Day 2 progresses eastward toward the eastern margin of the LOEA, examining a transition linking the Columbia River Basalt province with a northwestward-younging magmatic trend of silicic volcanism of the High Lava Plains in eastern Oregon. Initial field stops on Day 2 focus on the volcanic stratigraphy northeast of the town of Burns, which includes regionally extensive Middle to Late Miocene ash-flow tuffs and lava flows assigned to the Strawberry Volcanics. Subsequent stops on Day 2 examine key outcrops demonstrating the intercalated nature of Middle Miocene tholeiitic CRBG flood basalts, temporally coeval prominent ash-flow tuffs, and “Snake River–type” large-volume rhyolite lava flows cropping out along the Malheur River. The Day 3 field route navigates to southern parts of the LOEA, where CRBG rocks are associated in space and time with lesser known and more complex silicic volcanic stratigraphy forming Middle Miocene, large-volume, bimodal basalt-rhyolite vent complexes. Key stops will provide a broad overview of the structure and stratigraphy of the Middle Miocene Mahogany Mountain caldera and of the significance of intercalated sedimentary beds and Middle to Late Miocene calc-alkaline lava flows of the Owyhee basalt. Initial stops on Day 4 will highlight exposures of Middle to Late Miocene silicic ash-flow tuffs, rhyolite domes, and calc-alkaline lava flows overlying the CRBG across the northern and central parts of the LOEA. The later stops on Day 4 examine more silicic lava flows and breccias that are overlain by early CRBG-related rhyolite eruptions. The return route to Portland on Day 4 traverses the Columbia River gorge westward from Baker City. The return route between Baker and Portland on Day 4 follows the Columbia River gorge and passes prominent basalt outcrops of large volume tholeiitic flood lavas of the Grande Ronde, Wanapum, and Saddle Mountains Formations of the CRBG. These sequences of basaltic and basaltic andesite lavas are typical of the well-studied flood basalt dominated Columbia Plateau, and interbedded silicic and calc-alkaline lavas are conspicuously absent. Correlation between the far-traveled CRBG lavas and calcalkaline and silicic lavas considered during the excursion relies on geochemical fingerprinting and dating of the mafic flows and dating of sparse intercalated ashes.

ABSTRACT What causes recurrent mass extinctions of life? We find that the ages of 10 of the 11 well-documented extinction episodes of the last 260 m.y. show correlations, at very high confidence (>99.99%), with the ages of the largest impact craters or the ages of massive continental flood-basalt eruptions. The four largest craters (≥100 km diameter, impact energies ≥3 × 10 7 Mt trinitrotoluene [TNT]) can be linked with recognized extinction events at 36, 66, 145, and 215 Ma, and with stratigraphic distal impact debris correlative with the extinctions. The ages of 7 out of 11 major flood-basalt episodes can be correlated with extinction events at 66, 94, ca. 120, 183, 201, 252, and 260 Ma. All seven flood-basalt–extinction co-events have coincident volcanogenic mercury anomalies in the stratigraphic record, closely linking the extinctions to the volcanism. Furthermore, the seven major periods of widespread anoxia in the oceans of the last 260 m.y. are significantly correlated (>99.99%) with the ages of the flood-basalt–extinction events, supporting a causal connection through volcanism-induced climate warming. Over Phanerozoic time (the last 541 m.y.), the six “major” mass extinctions (≥40% extinction of marine genera) are all correlated with the ages of flood-basalt episodes, and stratigraphically with related volcanogenic mercury anomalies. In only one case, the end of the Cretaceous (66 Ma), is there an apparent coincidence of a “major” mass-extinction event with both a very large crater (Chicxulub) and a continental flood-basalt eruption (the Deccan Traps). The highly significant correlations indicate that extinction episodes are typically related to severe environmental crises produced by the largest impacts and by periods of flood-basalt volcanism. About 50% of the impacts of the past 260 m.y. seem to have occurred in clusters, supporting a picture of brief pulses of increased comet or asteroid flux. The largest craters tend to fall within these age clusters. Cross-wavelet transform analyses of the ages of impact craters and extinction events show a common, strong ~26 m.y. cycle, with the most recent phase of the cycle at ~12 Ma, correlating with a minor extinction event at 11.6 Ma. The stream of life flows so slowly that the imagination fails to grasp the immensity of time required for its passage, but like many another stream it pulses irregularly as it flows. There are times of quickening, the expression points of evolution, which are almost invariably coincident with some great geologic change, and the correspondence so exact and so frequent that the laws of chance may not be invoked by way of explanation. —Richard Swann Lull ( Organic Evolution , New York, Macmillan, 1929, p. 693)