Yellowstone on EARTH Magazine

Yellowstone's Mexican mantle plume

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 16:30:18 -0400

Yellowstone's many thermal features are fueled by a deep mantle plume rooted at the core-mantle boundary under Mexico. Credit: Nelson et al., Nature Geoscience, 2018.

The volcanic activity at Yellowstone National Park is impressive, with thousands of active thermal features dotting a nearly 4,000-square-kilometer caldera. Scientists have long suspected that a massive mantle plume underlies the supervolcano. Now, new imaging has provided the clearest picture yet of the heat source that drives Yellowstone’s volcanism.

Snake River eruption history offers glimpse into Yellowstone hot spot dynamics

Thu, 14 Jul 2016 13:44:08 -0400

In the Cassia Hills in southern Idaho, researchers found evidence of a dozen large eruptions from the Yellowstone hot spot volcanic system that occurred between about 11.3 million and 8 million years ago. Credit: Knott et al., GSA Bulletin, March 2016.

About 8 million years ago, what is now the Snake River Plain of southern Idaho ripped open in a catastrophic super-eruption that spewed roughly 1,900 cubic kilometers of lava and ash across thousands of square kilometers. New research, based on field studies and geochemical analyses of rocks collected on the plain, shows that this eruption was just one of many massive mid-Miocene volcanic events arising from the Yellowstone hot spot. The work also provides a window into the complex and evolving mantle-crust interactions that have occurred as the North American Plate has moved westward over the hot spot.

Modeling a big mess from Yellowstone

Tue, 09 Dec 2014 12:11:31 -0500

How Yellowstone ash could spread across the U.S. Credit: USGS.

In the event of another super-eruption at Yellowstone National Park, few places in the U.S. would be ash-free, according to a new modeling study. The northern Rocky Mountains would be blanketed in meters of ash, and millimeters would be deposited as far away as New York City, Miami and Los Angeles.

Corn syrup model splits Yellowstone's plume in two

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 12:48:20 -0400

Yellowstone is renowned for its hot springs, geysers and for hosting one of the world’s most volatile supervolcanoes. Despite its popularity, the origin of all that volcanic activity remains poorly understood. A mantle plume seems like the most obvious source, but traditional plume models can’t explain the jumble of volcanic surface features. Now, a new study using corn syrup to replicate the mantle processes underlying Yellowstone offers a more complicated scenario: a bifurcated mantle plume, split by the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

Tracking Yellowstone's Activity

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:41:58 -0500

New technologies track the feverish supervolcano in real time

This story has been modified since it was originally published in EARTH.

Over the past 2.1 million years, Yellowstone volcano has had three explosive super-eruptions. During the most recent super-eruption 640,000 years ago, the supervolcano ejected 2,500 times as much ash and lava as the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. If such an eruption were to occur today, it would bury the immediate vicinity in ash flows up to 600 meters deep, and would ultimately spread ash across the western half of North America. Meanwhile, sulfur aerosols and ash particles from the volcano would travel the world, lowering temperatures, devastating agriculture and causing alarming water and air quality issues.