The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory is turning 25 years old! Surprisingly, the seeds for the observatory were planted at Lassen Volcanic National Park, almost 1,000 miles to the southwest.
Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week's contribution is from Michael Poland, geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey and Scientist-in-Charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
Happy Birthday to the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory! In May 2026, the observatory turned 25 years old. But the idea for the observatory didn’t germinate in Yellowstone National Park. Rather, it was another national park where the stage was set.
In September 2000, a unique workshop was convened in the city of Redding, California. The “Volcanism in National Parks” gathering was organized by the Geologic Resources Division of the National Park Service and the Volcano Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey, and it was intended to improve scientific input to park managers, as well as volcano monitoring and research in parks.
The workshop included a field trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park and a hike to Bumpass Hell, a hydrothermal area near Lassen Peak with hot springs, fumaroles, and boiling mudpots. Sort of a mini-Yellowstone! During the excursion, Dr. Robert (Bob) Smith, a seismologist from the University of Utah who had worked in Yellowstone for decades, found himself chatting with Marianne Guffanti, the coordinator of the USGS Volcano Hazards Program.
Bob asked a simple question. Why isn’t there a Yellowstone Volcano Observatory? There’s a Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. An Alaska Volcano Observatory. A Cascades Volcano Observatory. Doesn’t the largest magmatic system in the United States deserve a volcano observatory? Marianne agreed—Yellowstone deserved more attention!
Also at the workshop were Paul Doss, who was the Yellowstone National Park geologist, and Bob Christiansen, who had been mapping Yellowstone’s volcanic history as a USGS geologist for over three decades. All were in accord. The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory—YVO—needed to be established! The goals of the observatory would be to (1) provide a stable foundation for long-term monitoring, hazards assessment, and research, (2) communicate the results of this work to responsible authorities and to the public, and (3) better coordinate geoscience efforts in the region.
But how should the new Yellowstone Volcano Observatory be operated? In Hawaiʻi and the Cascades, the USGS was the primary monitoring agency, although there were collaborations with other institutions—in those respective cases, Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park and the University of Washington. In Alaska, however, the observatory was established as a partnership between the USGS, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.
The Alaska Volcano Observatory turned out to be the perfect model for YVO. The University of Utah was already doing seismic and ground deformation monitoring in the region, Yellowstone National Park had a long history of hydrothermal research and monitoring, and the USGS brought expertise in hazards assessment and geologic mapping. In May 2001, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by all three agencies, and the YVO consortium was born. Bob Christiansen was the first Scientist-in-Charge of the observatory, and Bob Smith served as the Coordinating Scientist.
Over the years, additional partners were added to the YVO partnership. In 2013, the University of Wyoming, UNAVCO (now the EarthScope Consortium), Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology, Idaho Geological Survey, and Wyoming State Geological Survey joined the team. And in 2020, Montana State University became the ninth member of the consortium. Each institution brought unique expertise to the group, and also shared the goals of better understanding and communicating about geologic processes in the Yellowstone region.
Over the years, some of the people have changed, but YVO’s mission of studying Yellowstone’s geologic past, present, and future has remained the same. The past 25 years have seen substantial improvements in monitoring geologic activity, including development of digital geophysical networks and deployment of stations specifically intended to monitor hydrothermal activity. Likewise, research results have provided new understanding of how hydrothermal systems work, the geologic history of the park and its surroundings, and the geologic hazards most likely to impact the region.
The next 25 years will be no less exciting as technological advances, like use of machine learning to aid earthquake monitoring, come into use and new geological discoveries are made. And it is all thanks to a meeting of geologists not in Yellowstone National Park, but rather 1000 miles away at another site of extraordinary hydrothermal and volcanic activity—Lassen Volcanic National Park!
Happy Birthday YVO!