Uplift, thermal unrest and magma intrusion at Yellowstone caldera

The Yellowstone caldera, in the western United States, formed 640,000 years ago when an explosive eruption ejected 1,000 km³ of material¹. It is the youngest of a series of large calderas that formed during sequential cataclysmic eruptions that began 16 million years ago in eastern Oregon and northern Nevada. The Yellowstone caldera was largely buried by rhyolite lava flows during eruptions that occurred from 150,000 to 70,000 years ago¹. Since the last eruption, Yellowstone has remained restless, with high seismicity, continuing uplift/subsidence episodes with movements of 70 cm historically² to several metres since the Pleistocene epoch³, and intense hydrothermal activity. Here we present observations of a new mode of surface deformation in Yellowstone, based on radar interferometry observations from the European Space Agency ERS-2 satellite. We infer that the observed pattern of uplift and subsidence results from variations in the movement of molten basalt into and out of the Yellowstone volcanic system.