Models for the Filling of Crater Lake, Oregon

Crater Lake partially fills, to a depth of 593 m, the 10-km-diameter, 1200-m-deep caldera formed by collapse of Mount Mazama volcano. The lake receives water from direct precipitation and inflow from the caldera walls and loses water by surface evaporation and leakage. No streams flow from Crater Lake. A high-resolution multibeam echo sounding survey of the lake floor conducted in 2000 (Gardner et al., 2001) revealed seven drowned beaches between 1849 and 1878 m elevation (reference lake elevation is 1883 m). The beaches are thought to reflect drier periods in the lake's history since the climactic, caldera-forming eruption of Mount Mazama, approximately 7,700 years ago. The shallowest drowned beach at 1878 m represents the deepest part of a wave-cut platform up to 100 m wide, substantially wider than any of the beaches, where erodible talus or intensely altered rocks are present. The great width of the platform compared to the width of the drowned beaches indicates that the lake has mostly been near its current level during the lake's history. Unambiguous evidence of former highstands above 1883 m has not been reported. In order to explain the occurrence of the drowned beaches and their relatively narrow depth range, leakage through the caldera walls must vary with depth and cannot occur just at the lake bottom or at the modern lake level. A reasonable model is that leakage is proportional to elevation above the bottom of the lake. Recognition that there is a thick layer of relatively permeable debris resting on glaciated lava in the northeast caldera wall above an elevation of 1845 m suggests a variant of this model where leakage is proportional to elevation above 1845 m. Climate studies indicate that Crater Lake began to fill during a dry period. Assuming that precipitation at that time was 70% of modern and that the beach at 1853 m (the deeper beach is somewhat suspect) corresponds to this amount of precipitation, a combination of the above leakage models is necessary to match these values. The history suggested by the combination model estimates that the lake filled to 1853 m in around 800 years. The lake filling model provides a chronology for postcaldera andesitic volcanism because volcanic landforms, 98% of their volume hidden beneath the lake's surface, document eruptions at several prior lake levels ending when the lake reached ~1805 m elevation. J. V. Gardner et al. 2001, USGS Water Resources Investigations Report 01-4046; http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/pacmaps