earth science

Menan Buttes

Menan Buttes is a earth science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Menan Buttes rather than just read about it. In short: The North and South Menan Buttes in southeastern Idaho are two of the world's largest volcanic tuff cones. The two cones, with four smaller associated cones, align along a north-northwest line and comprise the Menan Complex.

Key takeaways

Menan Buttes belongs to earth science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Menan Buttes to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Menan Buttes from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The North and South Menan Buttes in southeastern Idaho are two of the world's largest volcanic tuff cones. The two cones, with four smaller associated cones, align along a north-northwest line and comprise the Menan Complex. The buttes rise about 800 feet (250 m) above the surrounding Snake River plain and are late Pleistocene in age, dating to approximately 10,000 YBP (Years Before Present). The South Menan Butte is currently in private hands, however North Menan Butte is publicly owned and has been designated as a National Natural Landmark and a Research Natural Area by the United States Congress. The US Bureau of Land Management designated the North Butte as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC). The volcanoes forming the two major Menan Buttes were created when basaltic magma came into contact with a shallow aquifer or with the precursor of the modern Snake River. Particles of volcanic glass called tachylite were created as the water turned to steam and explosively fragmented the hot magma. The cone shaped deposits are fairly uniform and consist primarily of tuff in lapilli-size particles. Some deposit layers preserve indentations, designated as "bomb sags", made as larger pyroclastic particles landed on soft layers of tuff. The Menan Buttes stand at an elevation of 5,619 feet (1,713 m.) and are very similar in size and shape. North Menan Butte is slightly larger and elliptical, with axes 3.5 and 2.5 km in length. South Menan Butte measures 3 km x 2 km. The crater of the North Menan Butte is about 3,000 feet (900 m) in diameter and the cone is about 6,000 feet (1,800 m) in diameter. The North Butte's volume is 0.16 cubic miles (0.70 cubic km) and the South Butte measures at 0.07 cubic miles (0.30 cubic km). In comparison, the better known tuff cone Diamond Head on Oahu has a volume of 0.15 cubic miles (0.6 cubic km). The larger buttes in the Menan Complex are asymmetrical. Each has a greater accumulation of material on the northeast, presumably due to strong southwest winds during the initial eruption. The Menan Buttes are located in Madison County, with lower slopes extending westward into Jefferson County. Nearby communities include Menan, Rigby, Rexburg and Idaho Falls, Idaho.

See also Island Park Caldera Phreatomagmatic eruption Yellowstone hotspot

References

Additional sources Creighton, D.N., 1987, Menan Buttes, southeastern Idaho, in Beus, S.S., ed., Centennial Field Guide Volume 2 Rocky Mountain Section of the Geological Society of America, p. 109–111. Greeley, R., 1977, 5. Aerial guide to the geology of the central and eastern Snake River Plain, in Greeley, R., and King, J.S., eds., Volcanism of the eastern Snake River Plain, Idaho: A comparative planetary geology guidebook: NASA, Washington, D.C., p. 59–112. Hackett, W.R., and Morgan, L.A., 1988, Explosive basaltic and rhyolitic volcanism of the eastern Snake River Plain, in Link, P.K., and Hackett, W.R., eds., Guidebook to the Geology of Central and Southern Idaho: Idaho Geological Survey Bulletin 27, p. 283–301. Hamilton, W., and Myers, W.B., 1963, Menan Buttes, cones of glassy basalt tuff in the Snake River Plain, Idaho: U.S. Geological Survey Professional paper 450E, p. E114-E118. Stearns, H.T., Crandall, L., and Steward, W.G., 1938, Geology and ground-water resources of the Snake River Plain in Southeastern Idaho: U.S. Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper 774, 268 p.

External links North Menan Butte, A National Natural Landmark - Bureau of Land Management Satellite Image

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Menan Buttes

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Menan Buttes claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In earth science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Menan Buttes before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Menan Buttes ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Menan Buttes

In research: Menan Buttes appears in earth science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Menan Buttes in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Menan Buttes is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Bureau of Land Management areas in Idaho, Extinct volcanoes of the United States, Geology of Idaho, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Menan Buttes outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Menan Buttes in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Menan Buttes means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Menan Buttes out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Menan Buttes in simple terms?

Why does Menan Buttes matter?

Because it connects several earth science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Menan Buttes?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Menan Buttes.