Writing science fiction almost always involves world building. When an opportunity arose to actually see what real world building looks like, I jumped at the chance—and that’s how I found myself on a journey to maars.
To two of them, as a matter of fact.
A maar is a shallow, flat-bottomed volcanic crater, most commonly formed when hot magma close to the surface comes into contact with groundwater, triggering a steam explosion. (There are other mechanisms: in 1977 scientists got to watch an Aleutian maar form, over a period of a week and a half, caused by permafrost being melted, then flashed into steam, by magma.)
With water being one of the defining elements of maar formation, it isn’t surprising that maars commonly fill with water to become lakes, disguising their volcanic origins. And so it was with the maars I saw.
A friend offered to fly me in a small airplane to view two maars near Fallon, Nevada. I sat in the left seat and did most of the flying; although I’m rated in sailplanes, not airplanes, a wing is a wing is a wing, and I found the airplane easy to fly—if perhaps not quite as satisfying as a sailplane would have been. Speaking of flying, as we approached the maars we could clearly see the runways of Naval Air Station Fallon, better known as the home of the Navy’s famed Top Gun school.
The Fallon maars are known locally as the Soda Lakes and at one time were mined for alkaline minerals. The region is still geologically active: there’s a geothermal power plant close by, and the United States Geological Survey lists the Soda Lakes as potential volanic threats, in part due to their young age: they were formed no earlier than 6,000 years ago and possibly as recently as 1500 years ago . . . almost yesterday.
Soda Lakes are the only Nevada volcanoes listed in the annual threat assessment compiled by the USGS, but just over the state line there are many more. It may surprise you to learn that the USGS estimates the odds of an eruption in California in the next 30 years is about one in six! World building, indeed.
