Catherine Hickson

• PhD
• Professor (Adjunct) at University of British Columbia

Geothermal energy exploration, development, and research have been ongoing in Canada for several decades. The country's cold climate and the push to develop renewable energy sources have driven interest in geothermal energy. Despite this drive, regulatory complexities and competition with other relatively inexpensive energy sources with existing in...

The Alberta No. 1 Geothermal Project (ABNo1) is a renewable energy project in Canada; it will use deep geothermal energy for electrical power generation and direct-use thermal power. However, concerns regarding induced seismicity must be addressed. This study proposes implementing the Traffic Light Protocol (TLP) as a risk management tool for conve...

The Canadian Cordillera hosts numerous Pleistocene and Holocene volcanoes and volcanic deposits, including a number of volcanoes that have erupted within the last several hundred years. The nature and composition of volcanic edifices and deposits are diverse and dictated by the complex configuration of tectonic plates along the western margin of Br...

Mount Garibaldi Volcanic System (MGVS) is the southernmost member of Garibaldi Volcanic Belt (GVB), the northern (Canadian) segment of the Cascade Volcanic Arc. Temporally episodic explosive to effusive eruptions may be associated with peak ice unloading after glacial maxima. Rapid and widespread deglaciation of the overlying ice sheet, and glacial...

Alberta No. 1 (ABNo1) is a geothermal project targeting deep carbonate, conglomerates, and sandstone formations in a potential production and injection zone for geothermal energy exploitation within the Municipal District of Greenview south of Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada. In geothermal systems without a steam fraction (typically systems under 1...

Eruptive processes and products have had, and continue to have, a profound impact on our planet. The resulting volcanic landforms alter climate by creating long-term orographic affects; moreover, ejection of particulate matter and ash and gases by powerful explosive eruptions can cause short-term global climate change. In addition, volcanism can cr...

The Alberta No. 1 conventional geothermal project is located in the province of Alberta, south of the city of Grande Prairie. The company recently conducted a detailed temperature log on a SECURE ENERGY idle disposal well within the project area. The goal was to determine the regional thermal gradient and temperatures within the project's target fo...

The Alberta No. 1 project is a planned power and heat (direct use) geothermal project located within the County of Grande Prairie and Municipal District of Greenview. For the project to successfully produce power and heat on a commercial scale, temperatures of 120 °C are desirable. The produced fluids must also be from highly permeable formations f...

Significant capital has been raised on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) by publicly traded companies seeking financing for renewable energy projects. In 2002, the TSX adopted the National Instrument 43-101 for mineral and mining development to help ensure that misleading, erroneous or fraudulent information relating to mineral properties is not pub...

In Canada’s Western Sedimentary Basin (WSB), a number of significant factors must be taken into consideration in order to develop a commercially viable geothermal project, most of which center around drilling and well completions. Within Canada, Alberta has particularly significant areal extent where temperatures are high enough to extract for dire...

In Canada’s western provinces, the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) is known to host warm to hot brines in large extractable volumes from permeable, hydrocarbon-bearing units. In Alberta’s northwestern region, the Municipal District of Greenview (MDGV) has been actively supporting preliminary resource investigations within its lands. These i...

Geothermal research and exploration in Canada have a long and rich history with many prominent and important early researchers, explorers and developers who worked within Canada and abroad. Geothermal Canada was launched in 1973 as the Canadian Geothermal Association and has been dedicated since that time to supporting the geothermal community in C...

In Canada's western provinces, the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) is known to have warm to hot brines in large extractable volumes from permeable, hydrocarbon-bearing units. In Alberta's northwestern region, the Municipal District of Greenview (MDGV) was actively supporting preliminary resource investigations within its lands. These invest...

In April 2018, a significant cave entrance was recognized during an aerial survey in Wells Gray Provincial Park, British Columbia. A September 2018 assessment of the site confirmed one of the largest known, and previously undocumented, cave entrances in Canada. The feature is a large vertically-walled sink swallowing a small river, likely leading t...

The Alberta No. 1 Project, under the terms of Canada's Federal government's Emerging Renewable Power Program (ERPP), must produce 5MWe net. The goal of this study was to identify areas where three essential constraining conditions overlap; (1) the temperature gradient is sufficiently high that 120°C brines at depths of 4,500m or less are potentiall...

Geothermal research and exploration in Canada have a long and rich history with many prominent and important early researchers, explorers and developers who worked within Canada and abroad. Geothermal Canada was launched in 1973 as the Canadian Geothermal Association and has been dedicated since that time to supporting the geothermal community in C...

The Alberta No. 1 Project is a planned geothermal power and direct heat use project in the province of Alberta that has been awarded funding from Natural Resources Canada's Emerging Renewable Power Program. The program stipulates that the geothermal project must produce 5MWe net of power; as such, a regional study was undertaken to identify areas i...

This paper presents a multidisciplinary structural analysis of the Reykjanes Peninsula where Holocene deformation of a young oblique rift controls the geothermal processes in presence of a transform segment. The new structural map from aerial images and outcrops is correlated with selected surface and subsurface data and shows a complex pattern: NN...

Quaternary intermediate volcanic rocks of the Monmouth Creek volcanic complex, located west of Squamish, British Columbia were mapped to determine their extent and origin. The deposits are distributed within a deep embayment in the granite wall of the Howe Sound, and have a present day thickness of about 200 m. They comprise a sequence of andesite...

This field guide describes a three-day trip from Vancouver, British Columbia, to the Wells Gray–Clearwater volcanic field (WGCVF) in east-central British Columbia. The WGCVF is the site of transitional to alkali olivine basaltic volcanism erupted over the last three million years. The small volume magmas (<1 km³) erupted along preexisting normal fa...

Putting geothermal exploration into the development context is a critical element of business development. Without the resource there is no development; without the financing there is no project. Managing these two aspects of development and the interplay between the geoscience side of the equation and finance side is a critical part of a successfu...

Volcanism has a profound impact on our planet. The process can be viewed from three different levels - global, regional, and local. Global scale features are associated with tectonic plate boundaries: the oceanic ridge systems and their attendant basins that cover 60% of the Earth's surface, and subduction zones and related volcanic arcs (mountain...

SynonymsMagmatic eruptions; Volcanic explosionsDefinitionVolcanic Eruptions. The expulsion of liquid rock (magma) – explosively or effusively – onto the earth’s surface, either above or below water, through a vent. During a volcanic eruption, lava, tephra (ash, lapilli, rocks, pumice), and various gases are expelled. The following are the main erup...

Geothermal exploration relies in part on the gas geochemistry of fumaroles, bubbling springs and steaming ground to offer insight into the nature of the fluids at depth, processes affecting them when rising to the surface, and provide estimates of the temperature of last equilibration of the gases within the reservoir. Traditional measurements invo...

When exploration budgets are limited, cost-effective surveying techniques can add considerable value to an exploration program by increasing the return on investment. In western (British Columbia and the Alberta cordillera) and northwestern (Yukon and Northwest Territories) Canada, where water is abundant, sampling creeks, streams and springs and t...

On 9 October 2007, an unusual sequence of earthquakes began in central British Columbia about 20 km west of the Nazko cone, the most recent (circa 7200 yr) volcanic center in the Anahim volcanic belt. Within 25 hr, eight earthquakes of magnitude 2.3–2.9 occurred in a region where no earthquakes had previously been recorded. During the next three we...

Small-volume, subaerial, subaqueous and subglacial basaltic eruptions occurred in the Wells Gray–Clearwater area during Quaternary time. Part of this time, significant thicknesses of glacial ice were present. Dating of intraglacial volcanic features corroborates other evidence of an Early Pleistocene, Cordilleran-wide ice sheet. Of the intraglacial...

The Clearwater – Wells Gray area of east-central British Columbia includes a succession of late Cenozoic, alkali olivine basalt flows that lie east of the extensive Chilcotin lavas and define the eastern end of the Anahim Volcanic Belt. The rocks are petrographically similar to but less altered than the Chilcotin basalts. The volcanic activity span...

A wealth of new geological and geophysical data from recent studies of the Queen Charlotte region are integrated into a coherent model. In this paper, we summarize these new studies and discuss possible correlations with other areas. Four tectonostratigraphic divisions are distinguished by stratigraphic, structural, and magmatic character, and each...

The Mariposa Geothermal System (MGS) is located 300 km south of Santiago, Chile, and has an inferred resource of 320 MWe. The field is outlined by a low resistivity MT anomaly with two lobes (or wings) that appear to relate to a clay cap associated to two principal upflow areas. The resource depth varies approximately 700 m to over 1000 m depending...

In many high temperature geothermal fields, exploration proceeds directly from surface methods (geology, chemistry and geophysics) to standard diameter geothermal wells. This is particularly the case where well targets are readily and confidently defined. However, as exploration moves from the easily developed fields toward those that are more chal...

The Ring Creek lava flow is the youngest event in a series of Quaternary volcanic activity in Mount Garibaldi Volcano of south-west British Columbia, Canada, occurring between 10.7 - 9.3 ka. The lava flow erupted from parasitic Opal Cone and extends south 6.5 km before making a sharp turn and continues another 11.5 km. At this turn, the flow width...

Here we describe a two-day field trip to examine Quaternary volcanism in the Canadian Cascade arc, named the Garibaldi volcanic belt. Day 1 of the trip proceeds along the Whistler corridor from Squamish to Pemberton and focuses on Quaternary glaciovolcanic deposits. Interactions between volcanoes and ice in the Garibaldi volcanic belt have been com...

Canada has had a formal volcanic ash notification network since early 1990. The Interagency Volcanic Event Notification Plan, "IVENP", was created following the near fatal encounter of a 747 passenger aircraft with ash from Mt. Redoubt, Alaska, in December of 1989. The Canadian Airline Pilots Association, brought the matter of aircraft safety and v...

Southwestern British Columbia's Garibaldi Volcanic Belt (GVB) contains numerous subglacial lava domes. Subglacial lava domes (SLD) are steep-sided lava masses with rounded or irregular upper surfaces. They are dominated by fine-scale columnar jointing and display flow shapes and cooling joint orientations inconsistent with apparent paleotopography....

The surficial deposits surrounding the Mount Meager volcanic complex include numerous avalanche deposits. These deposits share many attributes: (a) they are nearly monolithologic and comprise mainly intermediate volcanic rock clasts, (b) they lack internal structure, and (c) they are very poorly sorted. Despite these similarities, the avalanche dep...

Western Canada lies in a zone of active tectonics and volcanism, but thedispersed population has witnessed few eruptions due to the remoteness of the volcanoes and their low level ofactivity. This has created a false perception that Canada's volcanoes are extinct. There are more than 200 potentially-active volcanoes in Canada, 49of which have erupt...

The Garibaldi Volcanic Belt (GVB) in southwestern British Columbia is dominated by intermediate composition volcanoes in a setting that has been intermittently subjected to widespread glaciation. The glaciovolcanic features produced are distinctive, and include flow-dominated tuyas, subglacial domes, and ice-marginal flows. Flow-dominated tuyas, wh...

Dissolved H 2O, CO 2, S and Cl concentrations were measured in glasses from Tanzilla Mountain, a 500 m-high, exposed subglacial volcano from the Tuya-Teslin region, north central British Columbia, Canada. The absence of a flat-topped subaerial lava cap and the dominance of pillows and pillow breccias imply that the Tanzilla Mountain volcanic edific...

In Canada, potentially active volcanoes are found only in British Columbia and the Yukon Territory, where they represent cinder cones, shield volcanoes, and stratovolcanoes. Magma composition controls how a volcano erupts. Low-viscosity magmas (basalt) erupt effusively and represent a low-level hazard. Magmas with higher viscosity (dacite) often er...

One of the world's largest and most spectacular continental areas of rhyolitic-andesitic volcanic rocks, the Neogene-Quaternary central Andes volcanic complex, occurs in the high Andes mountains of South America. More than 1000 eruptive centres, many hosting significant mines and occurrences of epithermal precious metals, as well as other metals an...

Volcanism in association with large quantities of ice manifests itself in a variety of morphological forms developed under differing physical conditions. These physical conditions include the location, amount, thickness, and type of confining ice, the location and quantity of trapped water, and the surrounding topography. Ice in the form of thick c...

 The Pebble Creek Formation (previously known as the Bridge River Assemblage) comprises the eruptive products of a 2350 calendar year B.P. eruption of the Mount Meager volcanic complex and two rock avalanche deposits. Volcanic rocks of the Pebble Creek Formation are the youngest known volcanic rocks of this complex. They are dacitic in composition...

The Bridge River Volcanic Assemblage comprises the eruptive products of a 2400 BP eruption of Mount Meager including airfall pumice, pyroclastic flows, lahars, and lava flow. There is also a unique form of welded block and ash breccia derived from collapsing fronts of the lava flow. Rock avalanches comprising mainly blocks of Plinth Assemblage volc...

Ash Mountain, South Tuya, and Tuya Butte are three small basaltic volcanoes in the Stikine volcanic belt of northern British Columbia. They began eruptive activity under several hundred meters of overlying glacial ice, or water in an ice-impounded lake, and undegassed pillow lava was erupted and forms the bases of all three. Later, as the vents gre...

A band of Oligocene to Recent volcanoes and associated intrusive rocks extend from latitude 44°N in northern California to latitude 52°N in southwestern British Columbia. These centres make up the Cascade magmatic arc. The arc formed in response to subduction of the Farallon Plate (the present day Juan de Fuca Plate). Volcanism from 5 Ma to the pre...

The May 18, 1980, eruption of Mount St. Helens comprised a complex series of events that started with a magnitude 5.1 earthquake. Studies of eyewitness photographs and observations provided important information in determining the chronology of events. The eruption has been subdivided into six phases, based on evidence provided by this chronology a...

A rapid and sensitive procedure for analyzing rare-earth elements (REE) in geological samples, ranging in composition from ultramafic rocks to rhyolite, is described. The graphite furnace atomic absorption procedure has been modified for the determination of middle to heavy REE (Sm, Eu, Dy, Er and Yb). Whole-rock samples are digested using perchlor...

The extent of contamination resulting from the use of high-C steel grinding plates, a Cr-steel shatter-box, a tungsten carbide shatter-box, an agate mortar and a corundum-ceramic handmill was evaluated on samples of Ottawa sand standard (>99%) SiO2. These samples, after preparation in each of the different types of equipment, were analysed for 21 m...

The Mount Edziza Volcanic Complex in north-central British Columbia includes a group of overlapping basaltic shields, salic composite volcanoes, domes and small calderas that range in age from 7.5 Ma to less than 2000 years B.P. The volcanic assemblage is chemically bimodal, comprising voluminous alkali olivine basalt and hawaiite, a salic suite of...

The so-called "lateral blast" associated with the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens was witnessed by two of us (C.H. and P.H.), and its deposits were later studied. Oriented samples were collected on a ridge 14 km northwest of the mountain. The thickness of the deposit at this locality ranges from 40 cm to more than 1 m. The surface of the...

The Watts Point volcanic centre, located 40 km north of Vancouver, British Columbia, along the north south of Howe Sound, is the southernmost volcanic centre in the Garibaldi segment of the Cascades volcanic arc. The Watts Point volcanic centre comprises approximately 0.02 cubic km of sparsely porphyritic, highly jointed hornblende and pyroxene dac...