Days of Dust and Darkness

Join us for a public talk on the impact of volcanic ash fallout, led by Dr. Alwynne, Beaudoin, the Director of Curatorial and Research at the Royal Alberta Museum and President of the Alliance of Natural History Museums of Canada.

It is no exaggeration to describe the explosive eruption of Mount Mazama about 7,600 years ago as "cataclysmic." The volcano in modern-day Oregon spread a thick blanket of ash across much of northwestern North America, with ash detected as far away as Newfoundland and Greenland. The ash impacted the Dene ancestors in the Yukon and Northwest Territories.

Undoubtedly, it was a significant natural disaster for people living in the region. Modern similarities, such as the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980, can be used in a "thought experiment" to assess how the Mazama ashfall affected climate and landscapes as well as plants, animals and other resources important to people living in the area at that time. Additional information from studies of preserved plant remains provides insight into the long-term effects of the eruption. Reconstructing the event and its aftermath allows us to imagine how people may have coped with such an extraordinary