11 Facts About Mount Berlin

Mount Berlin is a 3,478 metres high glacier-covered volcano in Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica, 210 kilometres from the Amundsen Sea.

Several tephra layers encountered in ice cores all over Antarctica - but in particular at Mount Moulton - have been linked to Mount Berlin, which is the most important source of such tephras in the region.

Mount Berlin has variously been described as a composite volcano, shield volcano or stratovolcano with a volume of about 200 cubic kilometres.

Monogenetic volcanoes on the northern flank of Mount Berlin have generated two outcrops of mafic lava and scoria, one of which is found at Mefford Knoll on a linear vent.

Ignimbrites are rare in Marie Byrd Land; the outcrop on the southeastern flank of Mount Berlin is a rare exception.

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The Mount Berlin deposits reach thicknesses of over 70 metres close to the crater, diminishing to 1 metre at Merrem Peak.

Magma erupted by Mount Berlin appears to originate in the form of discrete small batches rather than in one large magma chamber.

Eruption history of Mount Berlin is recorded in outcrops on Mount Berlin, in a blue-ice area on Mount Moulton, 30 kilometres away, at Mount Waesche, in ice cores and in marine sediment cores from the Southern Ocean.

Tephras deposited by this volcano have been used to date ice cores, establishing that ice at Mount Berlin Moulton is at least 492,000 years old and thus the oldest ice of West Antarctica.

Date of the last eruption of Mount Berlin is unclear but the Global Volcanism Program gives 8,350±5,300 years as the date of the last eruption.

Mount Berlin is geothermally active, the only volcano in Marie Byrd Land with such activity.