Logo link to homepage

Report on Guguan (United States) — June 1992


Guguan

Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network, vol. 17, no. 6 (June 1992)
Managing Editor: Lindsay McClelland.

Guguan (United States) No gas emission

Please cite this report as:

Global Volcanism Program, 1992. Report on Guguan (United States) (McClelland, L., ed.). Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network, 17:6. Smithsonian Institution. https://doi.org/10.5479/si.GVP.BGVN199206-284190



Guguan

United States

17.307°N, 145.845°E; summit elev. 287 m

All times are local (unless otherwise noted)


A six-member team of USGS volcanologists visited the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands 11-27 May 1992 at the request of the CNMI Office of Civil Defense. Observations [of Guguan] from an airplane on 13 May and a helicopter on 21 May revealed no gas emission.

Geological Summary. The small island of Guguan, only 2.8 km wide, is composed of an eroded volcano on the south, a caldera with a post-caldera cone, and a northern volcano. The latter has three coalescing cones and a breached summit crater that fed lava flows to the west and NW. The 287-m high point of the island is the south rim of the caldera. Freycinet misidentifed Guguan with Alamagan; reported eruptions in 1819 and 1901 (Catalog of Active Volcanoes of the World) actually refer to solfataric activity on Alamagan (Corwin, 1971). The only known historical eruption of Guguan took place between 1882 and 1884 and produced the northern volcano and lava flows that reached the coast.

Information Contacts: R. Moore, USGS; R. Koyanagi, M. Sako, and F. Trusdell, HVO.