Images

Samples of Lava Creek Tuff, which erupted during the formation of Yellowstone Caldera about 631,000 years ago, with large quartz and sanidine crystals circled in red. Photos by Faith Nolander, July 22, 2025.

A close-up (microscope) image of a sanidine crystal from the Lava Creek Tuff, which erupted during the formation of Yellowstone Caldera about 631,000 years ago, marked with a point where electron microprobe analysis was performed. The chemistry of that point is given, where each major element has a corresponding weight percent.

Depth of earthquakes during the July 8 - August 25, 2025, seismic swarm at Mount Rainier, WA.

Seismicity beneath Mount Rainier, Washington, showing earthquakes during 2020-2025 in blue, and those that occurred as part of an earthquake swarm on July 8 - August 25, 2025, in orange.

Plots of earthquake magnitudes (top) and numbers (bottom) over the course of the July 8 - August 25, 2025 seismic swarm at Mount Rainier, Washington.  The swarm was greatest in terms of numbers of events on the morning of July 8.  After that time, earthquake rates slowly decreased over the course of the following days.

Example of a Yellowstone seismic waveform recorded at station YMC (at Maple Creek in the northeast part of Yellowstone National Park) with earthquakes for which a magnitude could not be determined. The magnitude was therefore set at -9.99 in the University of Utah Seismograph Stations catalog.

A map of the stations operating in the Yellowstone region between 2012 and 2024 shown as triangles with fill and edge colors indicating whether they are used to calculate magnitudes using traditional approaches, artificial intelligence methods, or both.

In a North American reference frame, where motion of the North American plate has been removed, you can easily see how the GPS stations around the region are moving in slightly different ways.

Geodatabase entry for a sample of the Lava Creek Tuff, which is a result of the eruption that formed Yellowstone Caldera about 631,000 years ago.  Top: A selected point in the ArcGIS geodatabase showing all the data recorded in the field as well as an image of the rock sample. Bottom: Topographic map showing the location of where the data were recorded.

GPS station velocities in the western USA shown in a global (left) and North American (right) reference frame. The direction and length of each arrow shows where that station is moving over time, and how fast. The global reference frame shows overall motion of the North American plate.

Montana State University researchers recording data at an outcrop in Yellowstone National Park. M.S. student Liv Wheeler (right) overlays the GPS position of the outcrop over a geologic map produced by USGS geologist Robert Christianson, while undergraduate student Liam Arnold (left) notes other data related to the outcrop.

Photograph of the Gros Ventre Slide 100 years after it occurred. View is to the south, with the landslide scar visible in the middle of the treed hillslope across the valley. Lower Slide Lake, which formed behind the landslide debris, is visible on the left side of the photograph.  Photo by James Mauch, Wyoming State Geological Survey, June 7, 2025.

Crew of the Office of Naval Research’s Research Vessel (R/V) Atlantis and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) deploying the U.S. Navy’s three-person human-occupied vehicle (HOV) Alvin submarine. Photograph by Art Howard, June 2025.

The top of Bare Mountain (foreground) looking towards the southwest. Bare Mountain has two components: a pre-glacial (older than about 20,000 years) andesite lava flow that travelled to the north, after which the top of the eruptive vent was destroyed in an explosive eruption that formed a 475 meter (1550 feet) wide and 145 meter (475 feet) deep crater.

A basalt of Sister Rocks dike (a subsurface magmatic structure) cutting across a scoria deposit from a previous eruption of Sister Rocks. Being in a scoria deposit can indicate that you are near a volcanic vent, as scoria is not ejected very far from its source. This feature can be accessed just off the trail to the summit of Sister Rocks.

Oblique lidar shaded relief map looking east up the Gros Ventre River valley, Wyoming. The Gros Ventre Slide, which occurred on June 23, 1925, is outlined in black, and it moved from the high ridge on the south (right side of image) into the valley below. North-dipping sedimentary rock units are labeled in white, separated by white dashed lines.

Talus slopes of the basalt of Soda Peaks (foreground), the oldest known eruption in the West Crater area, overlooking the andesite of West Crater (middle background), the youngest known eruption. This area is heavily vegetated and steeply sloped, which provide a challenge for rock sampling. Photo by James Genero, CVO summer intern, June 2025.

Lidar shaded relief map of the Porcelain Basin and Back Basin areas of Norris Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park.  Orange star indicates the location of a new thermal pool that formed sometime during late December 2024 to early February 2025.

Animated GIF of high-resolution satellite images of the Porcelain Basin area of Norris Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, showing the development of a new thermal pool in the circled area.  There is no indication of the pool in images from October 19 and December 19, 2024.  A small depression is visible in the January 6, 2025, image.  In the Feb

Landsat 8 and 9 images of southwest Yellowstone National Park from 9-May (left), 25-May (center), and 18-June (right), 2025. The red labels are for the Madison (MP) and Pitchstone Plateaus (PP). The Yellow labels are for Shoshone (SL), Lewis (LL), Heart Lake, and Yellowstone (YL) Lakes. The Blue labels are for Lower (LGB) and Upper (UGB) Geyser Basins.

This frame capture of a video from a webcam shows a small eruption emanating from Black Diamond Pool in Biscuit Basin, a subbasin of Upper Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park, on May 31, 2025.  This was the site of a hydrothermal explosion on July 23, 2024.