View of a bay in Lake Toba, on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, which is the largest volcanic lake in the world

A volcanogenic lake is a lake formed as a result of volcanic activity. They are generally a body of water inside an inactive volcanic crater (crater lakes) but can also be large volumes of molten lava within an active volcanic crater (lava lakes) and waterbodies constrained by lava flows, pyroclastic flows or lahars in valley systems. The term volcanic lake is also used to describe volcanogenic lakes, although it is more commonly assigned to those inside volcanic craters.

Volcanic crater lakes

Crater Lake in Oregon, USA

Lakes in calderas fill large craters formed by the collapse of a volcano during an eruption. Examples:

Soda Lakes in Nevada, USA

Lakes in maars fill small craters where an eruption deposited debris around a vent. Examples:

Lava lakes

Lava lake at Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

These are some examples of rare lava lakes where molten lava in a volcano maintains relative equilibrium, neither rising to overflowing nor sinking to drain away.

Lava-dammed lakes

Garibaldi Lake in British Columbia, Canada, is impounded by lava flows comprising The Barrier

Further reading

  • Delmelle, Pierre; Bernard, Alain (2000). "Volcanic Lakes". In Sigurdsson, Haraldur (ed.). . San Diego: Academic Press (published 1999). pp. –895. ISBN 978-0-12-643140-7.
  • Christenson, B. W. (2000). Varekamp, Johan C.; Rowe, Gary L. Jr. (eds.). . Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research. 97 (1–4): 1–508. Bibcode:. doi:. (entire volume about crater lakes)
  • Pasternack, G. B.; Varekamp, J. C. (1997). "Volcanic lake systematics I. Physical constraints". Bulletin of Volcanology. 58 (7): 526–538. Bibcode:. doi:. S2CID .
  • Kusakabe, Minoru, ed. (1994). . Geochemical Journal. 28 (3): 137–306. doi:. (entire issue about chemistry of crater lakes)

External links

  • , Greg Pasternack, U. California Davis
  • documentation in archive
  • 2019-12-15 at the Wayback Machine