Images

Site of the former Fountain Hotel in Yellowstone National Park.  Red arrows indicate the location of the pipe that ran through the meadow between Leather Pool and the site of the Fountain Hotel (yellow arrow). Yellowstone National Park photo by Annie Carlson, October 2021.

Interferogram created from data collected on September 22, 2020, and September 17, 2021, by the Sentinel-1 satellite system. Colored fringes indicate a change in distance (called range change) between the satellite and ground surface that is caused by surface deformation.

Typical exposure of tabular blocks of layered ash in a matrix of cross-bedded ash. The tabular blocks were deposited, rapidly hardened, and ripped up and transported downstream along the ancestral Missouri River system with another pulse of ash and water, forming the cross-bedded matrix.

“Hey Bear” volcano, Wyoming, with Raggedtop Mountain in the background. Hey Bear volcano is a small scoria cone that is about 1.3 million years old and that erupted over Eocene (~50 million-year-old) rocks (noted by yellow dotted line). Photo by Matthew Brueseke, Kansas State University, August 2021, used with permission.

Photograph of Twin Buttes in Lower Geyser Basin looking to the northwest, with Excelsior Geyser of Midway Geyser Basin in the foreground. Twin Buttes is a thermal kame that formed when glaciers covered the area, and hydrothermal activity below the ice led to melting and the deposition and cementation of glacial sediments.

Imperial Geyser, Lower Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park. USGS photo by Lauren Harrison, July 2021.

USGS scientists Laura Dobeck and Sara Peek carrying field equipment to set up a gas monitoring station in Yellowstone National Park. USGS photo by Jennifer Lewicki, July 13, 2021.

USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory Physical Science Technician Brian Meyers installs a data telemetry antenna on a volcano monitoring station at Mount St. Helens. A DOAS scanner is mounted above the flat-panel antenna at the top of the mast.

Photo of Mount Hood taken June 7, 2003. The fault-plane solution for the M 3.9 earthquake that occurred on June 5, 2021 is in the lower right corner. 

View of Monument Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park, with one of the silica spire "monuments" (from which the basin gets its name) in the foreground. USGS photo by Mike Poland, May 15, 2021.

Roaring Mountain, an acid-sulfate thermal area about 5 miles south of Norris Geyser Basin along the Norris-Mammoth road.  At times during the late 1800s and early 1900s, the sound of gas escaping from vents could be heard over a mile away, but today the thermal area is mostly quiet, although remains intensely hot with over 100 megawatts of geothermal radiative

Photographs of the two dominant rock types found on Mount Everts: the Everts Formation (photo by Natali Kragh, May 18, 2021) and the Landslide Creek Formation (photo by Emma Kerins, May 2021). Notice the difference in scale between these two units, indicated by the pencil and field book.

Washington State Governor Proclaims May 2021 as Volcano Awareness Month.

Thermal anomaly map of Yellowstone National Park, based on a Landsat 8 nighttime thermal infrared image from 9 January 2021.  The color ramp indicates the intensity of the above-background thermal anomaly for each thermal area.  Lakes are blue.  Yellowstone caldera and resurgent domes are outlined in black.

Beginning of Yellowstone-Snake River Plain hotspot track and resulting northeasterly path of the ancestral Missouri River starting about 16.5 million years ago.  Modified from Hyndman D.W., and Thomas, R.C., 2020, Roadside Geology of Montana, Mountain Press Publishing, 464 p.

Absolute versus relative earthquake locations associated with 2019 Ridgecrest, California, foreshock and aftershock sequence.  Animated GIF image compares the routine catalog earthquake locations with those from an enhanced catalog employing precise relative locations.  Depths are color-coded as shown.  Triangles indicate seismic stations. 

Ngorongoro volcano, in Tanzania, east Africa, is a caldera that formed 2-3 million years ago.  The Ngorongoro Conservation Area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to one of the densest concentrations of wildlife in Africa.  Satellite Image from CNES/Airbus via Google Earth.

Section from the piston core YL92-1C, collected in south-central Yellowstone Lake. The core is viewed horizontally, with the top of core to the left. The core section shown is from 5.21–5.63 meters (17–18.4 feet) depth.

Crested Pool, in Upper Geyser Basin near Castle Geyser.  Geyser Hill is in the background, and Old Faithful is the steaming feature at the upper right.  USGS photo by Mike Poland, October 12, 2020.

A 53,000-pound vibroseis truck, with a hydraulic vibration plate that creates signals like tiny earthquakes. The truck is parked at a roadside pullout near the Continental Divide in Yellowstone National Park.  Photo by Jamie Farrell, University of Utah, September 2020, taken under Yellowstone National Park research permit YELL-2020-SCI-8146.

View of dead lodgepole pine trees with “bobby socks” from having taken up hydrothermal water that contains dissolved silica and other minerals. Photo taken south of the Fountain Paint Pot Trail in Lower Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, looking toward the southeast. USGS photo by Stanley Mordensky, August 28, 2020.