Yellowstone Caldera Totally Explained

Everything about The Yellowstone Caldera totally explained

The Yellowstone Caldera is the volcanic caldera in Yellowstone National Park in the United States. It is located in the northwest corner of Wyoming, measuring about 55 kilometers (34 mi) by 72 kilometers (45 mi). The caldera was discovered based on geological field work conducted by Bob Christiansen of the United States Geological Survey in the 1960s and 1970s. After a BBC television science program coined the term supervolcano in 2000, it has often been referred to as the "Yellowstone supervolcano."

Volcanism

Yellowstone, like the Hawaiian Islands, is believed to lie on top of one of the planet's few dozen hotspots where light, hot, molten mantle rock rises towards the surface. The Yellowstone hotspot has a long history. Over the past 17 million years or so, successive eruptions have flooded lava over wide stretches of Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, and Idaho, forming a string of comparatively flat calderas linked like beads, as the North American plate moves across the stationary hotspot. The oldest identified caldera remnant is straddling the border near McDermitt, Nevada-Oregon. The calderas' apparent motion to the east-northeast forms the Snake River Plain. However, what is actually happening is the result of the North American plate moving west-southwest over the stationary hotspot deep underneath.
Currently, volcanic activity is exhibited only via numerous geothermal vents scattered throughout the region, including the famous Old Faithful Geyser, but within the past two million years, it has undergone three extremely large explosive eruptions, up to 2,500 times the size of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. The three eruptions happened 2.1 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago, and the most recent such eruption produced the Lava Creek Tuff 640,000 years ago and spread a layer of volcanic ash over most of the North American continent. Smaller steam explosions occur every 20,000 years or so; an explosion 13,800 years ago left a 5 kilometer diameter crater at Mary Bay on the edge of Yellowstone Lake (located in the center of the caldera). Additionally, non-explosive eruptions of lava flows have occurred in and near the caldera since the last major eruption; the most recent of these was about 70,000 years ago. Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho is the result of volcanic activity between 11,000 and 2,000 years ago.
The volcanic eruptions, as well as the continuing geothermal activity, are a result of a large chamber of magma located below the caldera's surface. The magma in this chamber contains gases that are kept dissolved only by the immense pressure that the magma is under. If the pressure is released to a sufficient degree by some geological shift, then some of the gases bubble out and cause the magma to expand. This can cause a runaway reaction. If the expansion results in further relief of pressure, for example, by blowing crust material off the top of the chamber, the result is a very large gas explosion.

Volcanic hazard

A full-scale eruption of the Yellowstone caldera could result in millions of deaths locally. The last full-scale eruption, the so-called Lava Creek eruption, ejected approximately 240 cubic miles of rock and dust into the sky and is believed to have almost driven the young human race to extinction, over 600,000 years ago.
Geologists are closely monitoring the rise and fall of the Yellowstone Plateau, which averages +/- 0.6 inches (about 1.5 cm) yearly, as an indication of changes in magma chamber pressure. Explosions of this magnitude "happen about every 600,000 years at Yellowstone," says Chuck Wicks of the U.S. Geological Survey, who has studied the possibilities in separate work. "And it's been about 620,000 years since the last super explosive eruption there." The U.S. Geological Survey, University of Utah and National Park Service scientists with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory "see no evidence that another such cataclysmic eruption will occur at Yellowstone in the foreseeable future. Recurrence intervals of these events are neither regular nor predictable.".

Hydrothermal explosion hazard

Studies and analysis may indicate that the greater hazard comes from hydrothermal activity which occurs independently of volcanic activity. Over 20 large craters have been produced in the past 14,000 years since the glaciers retreated from Yellowstone, resulting in such features as Mary Bay, Turbid Lake and Indian Pond.
   Lisa Morgan, a USGS researcher, explored this threat in a 2003 report, and again in a 2008 report revealed further that an earthquake may have displaced more than of water in Yellowstone Lake, creating huge waves that essentially unsealed a capped geothermal system leading into the hydrothermal explosion that formed Mary Bay.
   Other research shows that earthquakes from great distances do reach and have effects upon the activities at Yellowstone, such as the 1992 7.3 magnitude Landers earthquake in California’s Mojave Desert that triggered a swarm of quakes from more than away and the Denali fault earthquake away in Alaska that altered the activity of many geysers and hotsprings for several months afterwards.
   The head of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, Jake Lowenstern, has proposed major upgrades and extended monitoring since the federal government classified Yellowstone as a “high-threat” system.

Origin

The source of the Yellowstone hotspot is controversial. Some geoscientists theorize that the Yellowstone hotspot is the effect of an interaction between local conditions in the lithosphere and upper mantle convection. Others prefer a deep mantle origin (mantle plume). Part of the controversy is due to the relatively sudden appearance of the hotspot in the geologic record. Additionally, the Columbia Basalt flows appeared at the same approximate time, causing speculation about their origin.

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