Silverthrone Caldera is a potentially active caldera complex in southwestern British Columbia, Canada, located over 350 kilometres northwest of the city of Vancouver and about 50 kilometres west of Mount Waddington in the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains.
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Main glaciers in the Silverthrone Caldera area are the Pashleth, Kingcome, Trudel, Klinaklini and Silverthrone Caldera glaciers.
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Silverthrone Caldera is very remote and rarely visited or studied by geoscientists, such as volcanologists.
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Silverthrone Caldera is part of the Pemberton Volcanic Belt, which is circumscribed by a group of epizonal intrusions.
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However, as at other calderas, eruptions at Silverthrone are explosive in nature, involving viscous magma, glowing avalanches of hot volcanic ash and pyroclastic flows.
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Silverthrone Caldera is considerably younger than its nearest prominent neighbour Franklin Glacier Complex to the east-southeast.
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Silverthrone Caldera is one of the eleven Canadian volcanoes associated with recent seismic activity: the others are Castle Rock, Mount Edziza, Mount Cayley, Hoodoo Mountain, The Volcano, Crow Lagoon, Mount Garibaldi, Mount Meager massif, Wells Gray-Clearwater Volcanic Field and Nazko Cone.
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Towns and cities south of Silverthrone Caldera are home to well over half of British Columbia's human population, and there is a likelihood that future eruptions will cause damage to populated areas, making Silverthrone Caldera and other Garibaldi belt volcanoes further south a major potential hazard.
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Explosive nature of past eruptions at Silverthrone Caldera suggests that this volcano poses a significant long-distance threat to communities across Canada.
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Silverthrone Caldera region is in a remote and exceptionally rugged part of the Coast Mountains, danger from lava flows would be low to moderate.
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Lava flows with high to intermediate levels of silica rarely extend more than 8 kilometres from their source while Silverthrone Caldera has produced a 10 kilometres long andesitic lava flow in the Pashleth Creek and Machmell River valleys.
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Currently Silverthrone Caldera is not monitored closely enough by the Geological Survey of Canada to ascertain how active the volcano's magma system is.
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