Images

Just some of the hats collected by the Yellowstone National Park Geology Program from sensitive thermal areas throughout the park in 2025.  National Park Service photo by Margery Price, September 3, 2025.

USGS geologist Mark Stelten collects a sample of what is potentially a newly recognized lava flow exposed along the Gibbon River. USGS photo by Nicole Thomas, September 2025.

Plot of temperatures measured by continuous loggers at Guardian Geyser (light red) and Valentine Geyser (dark red) on August 24, 2025. Activity at Guardian Geyser included episodic splashing for a few hours prior to the near-simultaneous eruptions of both geysers just after 6:30 a.m. MDT on this date.  Data collected by Mara Reed, Yellowstone National Park.

Photo of Valentine Geyser and Guardian Geyser in eruption on August 7, 2025. Valentine Geyser is in the rear of the alcove, and Guardian Geyser is at the alcove’s mouth, closer to the camera. Visitors on a trail below the Norris Geyser Basin Museum can be seen at the top of the image. Photo by Carol Beverly, used with permission.

Aerial view of the summit of Mount Rainier taken during the gas flight. The photo was taken looking south, and Rainier (14,411’) rises prominently above the cloud deck at about 8,000’. Mount St. Helens (8,357’) is faintly visible in the distance.  

Yellowstone National Park Geology Program volunteer Tara Cross smiles and shows off a pizza box found on Geyser Hill in Upper Geyser Basin. National Park Service photo by Margery Price, August 2025.

A researcher holds a vibrant green sample of thermophilic cyanobacteria collected from a hot spring in Yellowstone’s Lower Geyser Basin. National Park Service photo by Samantha Hilburn, August 2025.

Yellowstone National Park Geology Program team member Mara Reed uses a long grabber pole to remove a park map, presumably blown from a visitor's hand or pack by the wind, from a feature in Upper Mammoth Terraces. National Park Service photo by Samantha Hilburn, August 2025.

Yellowstone National Park Geology Program team member Margery Price installs a thermal danger sign near Maiden’s Grave Spring along Fountain Flat Drive. National Park Service photo by Samantha Hilburn, August 2025.

A researcher collects a sample of thermophilic cyanobacteria from a hot spring in Yellowstone's Lower Geyser Basin. National Park Service photo by Samantha Hilburn, August 2025.

Imperial Geyser in eruption.  The geyser, which apparently formed in 1927, is located in Lower Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park.

GPS station P712 near the northwest corner of Yellowstone National Park. The gray dome on the left is the GPS antenna, the electronics are located in the brown boxes, and the small gray dome on the right is the satellite antenna used to transmit data to the online archive for processing and analysis. Photo by Scott Johnson, EarthScope Consortium, July 30, 2025.

Fairy Falls, a 200-foot-high (60 meters) waterfall over rhyolite cliffs in the Lower Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park.

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.

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.

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.