Overlapping with the northwestern corner of the Basin and Range Province, also known as the High Lava Plains, Newberry Volcano lies within a Cenozoic highland marked by normal faults known as the Brothers Fault Zone. It is situated at the intersection of the Brothers Fault Zone with the north-northwest-trending Sisters and northeast-trending Walker Rim fault zones. In the mantle under Newberry Volcano, P and S seismic waves exhibit an unusually low wave velocity. The Earth's crust thins from at the nearby Three Sisters volcano complex to near Newberry, where it has a high Poisson's ratio.