Images

Fissure within the Wapi lava field, a volcanic feature in the eastern Snake River Plain of Idaho.  Photo by Michael Ort, October 14, 2022.

A USGS scientists uses a hammer and chisel to collect a sample from the surface of a basalt boulder in the San Francisco Volcanic Field of northern Arizona.  The age of the sample will be determined using a technique called cosmogenic surface exposure dating, which determines how long the rock has been exposed to cosmic rays at the surface of the Earth.

Interferogram created from data collected on September 29, 2021, and October 6, 2022, 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.

Atmospheric water vapor and river level measured during June 2022 in the northeast part of Yellowstone National Park. Gray line is the level of the Lamar River. Blue line is the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere above GPS station P720.

Looking northeast from teh Green Mountain lookout at the Springerville volcanic field in eastern Arizona.  All of the forested hills in the distance are cinder cones that mark eruptive vents of the field.  USGS photo by Mike Poland, September 22, 2022.

Multi-GAS station installed in the Mud Volcano area of Yellowstone National Park under permit YELL-2022-SCI-7082.  The station was situated on stable, cool ground away from the edge of thermal features to ensure no impact to the features.

A cutbank exposure near West DuNoir Creek, Wyoming, illustrates the differences between bedrock and surficial geologic mapping. On bedrock maps this location is mapped as the Eocene (55–34 million years old) Indian Meadows Formation, which corresponds to the bedrock visible in the stream bed.

Photo of a newly eroded cliff along the Gardner River, Yellowstone National Park, showing the unconsolidated layers of sandstone and gravel. USGS photo by David Roth, September 5, 2022.

One method of rapidly cooling an experiment that involves molten rock. The volcanic material is dropped from inside the furnace (at ~1000 °C or 1830 °F!) down a vertical tube and into a bulb of room-temperature water.

Gardner River chloride flux monitoring site before and after the June 2022 flooding in Yellowstone National Park.  (Left) Site prior to June 2022 storm. Note that the riverbank is near to the base of the fallen tree. USGS photo by Blaine McCleskey, May 21, 2014.  (Right) Site after June 2022 storm. The probe is buried under ~4 feet of debris.

Sediment cores from Twin Butte Lake, Yellowstone National Park, being analyzed in the laboratory.  (a) Photo of a freshly split core that exhibits a transition in lake productivity (grey sediment on bottom to dark organic rich sediment on top). One half of the core is scanned for multiple types of data and sampled while the other half of the core is archived.

Photograph of geologists examining a paleoseismic trench across the Sawtooth fault, Idaho. Trenches like this provide geologists an opportunity to date sediments that were offset by past earthquakes, thus determining the rupture history of the fault. Photo by Zach Lifton, Idaho Geological Survey, September 2022.

Landsat 8 thermal infrared images of Yellowstone showing daily and seasonal differences.  In these greyscale images, bright pixels are warmer and dark pixels are cooler.  In the daytime images (A and C), you can see the effects of topography, with darker (cooler) pixels like shadows on north-facing slopes and brighter (warmer) pixels on sun-facing slopes.&

Dr. Cathy Whitlock (Montana State University) in the “core description boat” on Twin Butte Lake, Yellowstone National Park, with a freshly extruded one meter (3 feet) sediment core. Cores are described and measured in the field before being carefully wrapped for transport to the lab. Photo taken under NPS research permit YELL-2022-SCI-0009 by S.

A string of pack mules led by the National Park Service packers Hannah Miller and Ben Cunningham carrying lake coring equipment to a small backcountry lake in Yellowstone National Park; photo taken under NPS research permit YELL-2022-SCI-0009 by S. Hurwitz in August 2022.

Lake coring operations at Twin Buttes Lake, Yellowstone National Park,  (a) Assembled lake coring platform being launched into the Twin Buttes Lake and (b) anchored in the core sampling location. Photos taken under NPS research permit YELL-2022-SCI-0009 by S. Hurwitz (a) and L. Harrison (b) in August 2022.

Hillside Springs group at the margin of the Summit Lake post-caldera rhyolite lava flow (the looming cliff) in Upper Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park.  In the past few thousand years, the springs have occasionally deposited travertine, which can be found at the bottom of the hill below the active springs.

Extensive silica sinter breccia field along the Imperial Meadows Trail in the Lower Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park looking southwest towards Twin Buttes. The inset image shows a place where a passing hiker’s footstep brushed away the white surface sinter, revealing bright green phototrophic microorganisms underneath (boot toe for scale).

Boiling River, Yellowstone National Park, before and after the June 2022 flooding.  (Left) Visitors to Yellowstone National Park enjoy the warm waters of the Gardner River where it is joined by Boiling River, near Mammoth Hot Springs.  Yellowstone National Park photo by Jim Peaco, July 30, 2014.  (Right) Aerial view of Gardner River and Boiling River,

Field photograph showing the plateau-like nature of Timber Hill basalt. The Sweetwater Fault (yellow) vertically offsets the Timber Hill basalt at least 700 feet at this location. Photograph by Jesse Mosolf, Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology, 2022.

Thermal images and accompanying photographs of hot areas on Firehole Lake Drive in Lower Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park.  Top shows a hot pothole and deflected asphalt near Firehole Spring (images by Mark Wolf and Kiernan Folz-Donahue, July 13, 2022).  Bottom shows thermal road damage between Great Fountain Geyser and White Dome Geyser, which is v