Yellowstone Volcano Observatory

During the Spring term in 2019, geology students from Montana State University participated in a reading group focused on understanding the geology of the Yellowstone hotspot. The culmination of the class was a field trip into Yellowstone National Park to see first-hand the deposits that had been discussed throughout the semester.

Here at YVO we receive a lot of questions related to Yellowstone supereruption "what ifs" and "whens", even though that is the least possible scenario for future volcanic activity. News articles, websites, and videos often exaggerate the rarest events, while ignoring hazards that may actually happen during a person's life.

The faults in Yellowstone National Park vary greatly in age and how they formed, and they can be divided into two groups: relatively young faults that have been active in the last 1.6 million years of Earth's history, and older faults that are no longer active. Earthquakes are often associated with many of the younger faults in the park.

The month of May marks the start of many field studies for scientists affiliated with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO).

Imagine for a moment that you could turn back the clock some two-hundred years or so and embark on a journey from east to west across the North American continent. Imagine that you had never heard of Yellowstone, or geysers and hot springs, and as far as you were concerned nature was epitomized by the patchy, deciduous forests and rolling hills of the Appalachian Mountains.

Much is known about volcanism occurring from Yellowstone within the past 2 million years, but many people are not aware that this landscape was also profoundly shaped by much older volcanism. Fifty million years ago, the Absaroka Volcanic Field dominated the region that is now Yellowstone National Park. Today, you can explore extensive fossil forests resulting from this explosive past.

In September 2004, USGS scientists detected sudden, but unmistakable, signs that Mount St. Helens was waking up. Volcano monitors had picked up the occurrence of hundreds of small earthquakes and other signals that the volcano’s crater floor had begun to rise. Within a week, several eruptions blasted clouds of ash into the atmosphere, and soon after, a new lava dome emerged in the crater.

Toting their surveying instruments to the tops of mountains or across continents, ancient (20th century) geodesists might have dreamed of an easier way to measure precise locations and track changes in ground motion over time. Today that dream has been realized with GPS and InSAR.

In addition to studying volcanic processes and their associated hazards in California and Nevada, scientists at the California Volcano Observatory also collaborate with other volcano observatories to work on volcanic processes throughout the United States.

Motion of a volcano resulting from pressure changes within its plumbing system is called deformation, and we can measure it with high-precision positioning instruments on the ground, such as GPS, and also from radar satellites.

Yellowstone Volcano Observatory staff gathered in Bozeman, Montana to discuss how to better monitor changes in the thermal areas of Yellowstone National Park.