Shallow plumbing and eruptive processes of a scoria cone built on steep terrain

•Field study of an incised monogenetic scoria cone•Volcanic conduit flares in the upper 20 m of the host rock, consistent with the literature.•Proximal pyroclastic deposits indicate a range of eruption styles, Strombolian–Hawaiian.•Description of the progression from a radial dike to bocca fed lava flows.•Volcanic deposits allow for eruption reconstruction.

Dark Peak (Lunar Crater Volcanic Field, central Nevada, USA) is an eroded Pliocene, monogenetic basaltic volcano that exposes intrusions while preserving some pyroclastic deposits and lavas, allowing reconstruction of the shallow magma feeding system and its relation to eruptive processes. Variably welded agglomerates record Strombolian and Hawaiian fountaining. Dikes fed degassed magma to a bocca on the lower cone slopes and fed a small lava field. The cone was built on the side of a steep ridge with small side drainages, had a maximum diameter of about 1 km, and was ~ 125 m high above the highest point on the paleotopography. The eruption was fed by an ~ 1 km long, narrow (1–3 m) feeder dike that locally flared in the upper tens of meters to form an ~ 30 m wide conduit around which the cone was built. The conduit shape and the transition depth from feeder dike to conduit are consistent with data from other exposed plumbing systems of small volume basaltic volcanoes that were dominated by magmatic volatile-driven eruption styles, supporting inferences that their conduits are relatively shallow features (upper ~ 150 m).