Compositional Diversity in Volcanic Suites


Kent Ratajeski
Published Oct. 26, 2004.

Description

In this exercise, students use whole-rock major- and trace-element compositions of volcanic rocks to explore the origins of compositional variation in igneous suites. Large datasets from the Yellowstone and Crater Lake calderas are downloaded from the GEOROC database, imported into Excel spreadsheets, and graphed to learn about the different petrogeneses of these two volcanic suites.


This exercise is one of several examples featured in the Geoscience Education in the New Cyberinfrastructure module at SERC. Each example is designed to give instructors and students direct practice for using cyberinformatic databases and tools to analyze Earth science data. Students should begin on the Case Study page.

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