Yellowstone Park sitting on super volcano
By: Ranae Bangerter
Issue date: 3/26/07 Section: Campus News
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Yellowstone National Park, the first national park and full of hundreds of geysers, sits atop one of the world's largest volcanoes, which could erupt at any time.
"We don't know. These things (lava flows and bursts) go up and down and then burp," said Robert B. Smith, professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah.
Smith, a Yellowstone volcanic region expert and USU alumnus, spoke about the statistics that led to the study of a potential volcanic eruption, on Friday afternoon in the Taggart Student Center Auditorium.
During the lecture he showed slides of the different parts of the seismic
volcano.
He said Yellowstone itself sits atop a plume of magma under the earth's crust and that magma comes up and produces another crust, a "crustal magma chamber," and then that erupts to the surface to create geysers or hypothermal systems.
One big change to the landscape has been the rising of valleys and the sinking of mountains.
In 1973 on the south end of Yellowstone Lake, a submerged boat dock at Peale Island was discovered.
It's the caldera, a crater formed by a volcano eruption, in the center that's causing the uplift, Smith said. From 1991 to 1995, the caldera was going down, but the trend went up from 1995 to 2000, and now from 2004 to 2006, it is "really going up," he said.
"When you pump up a balloon, it rises vertically and expands laterally," he said. That's what the magma plume is doing under the surface of the earth.
He said that geysers in Yellowstone need the volcano to survive. And the earthquakes also help with that. Yellowstone records 1,000 to 3,000 earthquakes per year.
"It's all linked together. Yellowstone is based on a plume," Smith said. "The plume is fixed in space and the plate is moving southwest."
He showed an example of this motion with a bottle of molasses and a table.
The plume, an upwelling of magma, would be the molasses being poured onto a table, and if someone moved the table, then the molasses would spread out over the table.
"We don't know. These things (lava flows and bursts) go up and down and then burp," said Robert B. Smith, professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah.
Smith, a Yellowstone volcanic region expert and USU alumnus, spoke about the statistics that led to the study of a potential volcanic eruption, on Friday afternoon in the Taggart Student Center Auditorium.
During the lecture he showed slides of the different parts of the seismic
volcano.
He said Yellowstone itself sits atop a plume of magma under the earth's crust and that magma comes up and produces another crust, a "crustal magma chamber," and then that erupts to the surface to create geysers or hypothermal systems.
One big change to the landscape has been the rising of valleys and the sinking of mountains.
In 1973 on the south end of Yellowstone Lake, a submerged boat dock at Peale Island was discovered.
It's the caldera, a crater formed by a volcano eruption, in the center that's causing the uplift, Smith said. From 1991 to 1995, the caldera was going down, but the trend went up from 1995 to 2000, and now from 2004 to 2006, it is "really going up," he said.
"When you pump up a balloon, it rises vertically and expands laterally," he said. That's what the magma plume is doing under the surface of the earth.
He said that geysers in Yellowstone need the volcano to survive. And the earthquakes also help with that. Yellowstone records 1,000 to 3,000 earthquakes per year.
"It's all linked together. Yellowstone is based on a plume," Smith said. "The plume is fixed in space and the plate is moving southwest."
He showed an example of this motion with a bottle of molasses and a table.
The plume, an upwelling of magma, would be the molasses being poured onto a table, and if someone moved the table, then the molasses would spread out over the table.
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