Buldir Volcano

The westernmost volcanic center of the 2500-km-long Aleutian arc, the island includes the older Buldir volcano in the center and the younger East Cape volcano to the NE. The high point of the island is a tuff cone that tops the older center. A plug dome forms the summit of East Cape volcano, which has two principal peaks. The youngest volcanic feature on the isolated, 4.2 x 7.2 km island is a lava dome on the SE flank of East Cape volcano. The dome was considered by Coats (1951) to be of Pleistocene age based on morphologic considerations. Smith and Shaw (1975) suggested that the volcano may have been active within the last two thousand years, however, Holocene activity is uncertain, and the volcano may have ceased activity during the Pleistocene (Motyka et al. 1993, Nye et al. 1998). The flora is less varied than on neighboring islands, suggesting that Buldir is relatively young.