Images

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Water temperature in a runoff channel of Black Diamond Pool in Biscuit Basin, Yellowstone National Park, measured on May 31, 2025.  The spike and subsequent drop over the span of about four minutes, followed by the low temperature recorded over about the following hour, is due to a small eruption that occurred from the pool at 8:39 p.m. that day.