Yellowstone Has Bulged as Magma Pocket Swells

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Yellowstone Has Bulged as Magma Pocket Swells

Some places saw the ground rise by ten inches, experts report.

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Published January 19, 2011 News Blogs
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The simmering volcano has produced major eruptions—each a thousand times tested in Florida, brewers say.
Google Buzz more powerful than Mount St. Helens's 1980 eruption—three times in the past 2.1
million years. Yellowstone's caldera, which covers a 25- by 37-mile (40- by 60- Native American Mammoth Art

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/01/110119-yellowstone-park-supervolcano-eruption-magma-science/[2/18/2011 9:25:21 PM]

Yellowstone Has Bulged as Magma Pocket Swells

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kilometer) swath of Wyoming, is an ancient crater formed after the last big blast,
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Since then, about 30 smaller eruptions—including one as recent as 70,000 years Bison Returning to Alaska?
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ago—have filled the caldera with lava and ash, producing the relatively flat Bison are symbolic of the American prairie
landscape we see today. and Canadian forest, but today they are no
longer part of Alaska's landscape.
But beginning in 2004, scientists saw the ground above the caldera rise upward
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at rates as high as 2.8 inches (7 centimeters) a year. (Related: "Yellowstone Is
Rising on Swollen 'Supervolcano.'")
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The rate slowed between 2007 and 2010 to a centimeter a year or less. Still,
E-mail Us at Newsdesk@ngs.org
since the start of the swelling, ground levels over the volcano have been raised
by as much as 10 inches (25 centimeters) in places.
"Bodies" Make Up Fake "It's an extraordinary uplift, because it covers such a large area and the rates are
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Scientists think a swelling magma reservoir four to six miles (seven to ten
kilometers) below the surface is driving the uplift. Fortunately, the surge doesn't
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seem to herald an imminent catastrophe, Smith said. (Related: "Under
Learn about what's passed on
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from generation to generation with
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"At the beginning we were concerned it could be leading up to an eruption," said
Smith, who co-authored a paper on the surge published in the December 3,
2010, edition of Geophysical Research Letters.

"But once we saw [the magma] was at a depth of ten kilometers, we weren't so
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Smith and colleagues at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Yellowstone
to Botswana, Africa!
Volcano Observatory have been mapping the caldera's rise and fall using tools
such as global positioning systems (GPS) and interferometric synthetic aperture
radar (InSAR), which gives ground-deformation measurements.

Ground deformation can suggest that magma is moving toward the surface
before an eruption: The flanks of Mount St. Helens, for example, swelled
dramatically in the months before its 1980 explosion. (See pictures of Mount St.
Helens before and after the blast.)

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/01/110119-yellowstone-park-supervolcano-eruption-magma-science/[2/18/2011 9:25:21 PM]

Yellowstone Has Bulged as Magma Pocket Swells

But there are also many examples, including the Yellowstone supervolcano,
where it appears the ground has risen and fallen for thousands of years without
an eruption.

According to current theory, Yellowstone's magma reservoir is fed by a plume of

hot rock surging upward from Earth's mantle. (Related: "New Magma Layer
Found Deep in Earth's Mantle?")

When the amount of magma flowing into the chamber increases, the reservoir
swells like a lung and the surface above expands upward. Models suggest that
during the recent uplift, the reservoir was filling with 0.02 cubic miles (0.1 cubic
kilometer) of magma a year.

When the rate of increase slows, the theory goes, the magma likely moves off
horizontally to solidify and cool, allowing the surface to settle back down.

Based on geologic evidence, Yellowstone has probably seen a continuous cycle

of inflation and deflation over the past 15,000 years, and the cycle will likely
continue, Smith said.

Surveys show, for example, that the caldera rose some 7 inches (18 centimeters)
between 1976 and 1984 before dropping back about 5.5 inches (14 centimeters)
over the next decade.

"These calderas tend to go up and down, up and down," he said. "But every
once in a while they burp, creating hydrothermal explosions, earthquakes, or—
ultimately—they can produce volcanic eruptions."

Yellowstone Surge Also Linked to Geysers, Quakes?

Predicting when an eruption might occur is extremely difficult, in part because the
fine details of what's going on under Yellowstone are still undetermined. What's
more, continuous records of Yellowstone's activity have been made only since
the 1970s—a tiny slice of geologic time—making it hard to draw conclusions.

"Clearly some deep source of magma feeds Yellowstone, and since Yellowstone
has erupted in the recent geological past, we know that there is magma at
shallower depths too," said Dan Dzurisin, a Yellowstone expert with the USGS
Cascades Volcano Observatory in Washington State.

"There has to be magma in the crust, or we wouldn't have all the hydrothermal
activity that we have," Dzurisin added. "There is so much heat coming out of
Yellowstone right now that if it wasn't being reheated by magma, the whole
system would have gone stone cold since the time of the last eruption 70,000
years ago."

The large hydrothermal system just below Yellowstone's surface, which produces
many of the park's top tourist attractions, may also play a role in ground swelling,
Dzurisin said, though no one is sure to what extent.

"Could it be that some uplift is caused not by new magma coming in but by the
hydrothermal system sealing itself up and pressurizing?" he asked. "And then it
subsides when it springs a leak and depressurizes? These details are difficult."

And it's not a matter of simply watching the ground rise and fall. Different areas
may move in different directions and be interconnected in unknown ways,
reflecting the as yet unmapped network of volcanic and hydrothermal plumbing.

The roughly 3,000 earthquakes in Yellowstone each year may offer even more
clues about the relationship between ground uplift and the magma chamber.

For example, between December 26, 2008, and January 8, 2009, some 900
earthquakes occurred in the area around Yellowstone Lake.

This earthquake "swarm" may have helped to release pressure on the magma
reservoir by allowing fluids to escape, and this may have slowed the rate of uplift,
the University of Utah's Smith said. (Related: "Mysterious 'Swarm' of Quakes
Strikes Oregon Waters.")

"Big quakes [can have] a relationship to uplift and deformations caused by the
intrusion of magma," he said. "How those intrusions stress the adjacent faults, or
how the faults might transmit stress to the magma system, is a really important

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/01/110119-yellowstone-park-supervolcano-eruption-magma-science/[2/18/2011 9:25:21 PM]

Yellowstone Has Bulged as Magma Pocket Swells

new area of study."

Overall, USGS's Dzurisin added, "the story of Yellowstone deformation has

gotten more complex as we've had better and better technologies to study it."

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Comments (63) Newest

Newest to Oldest
to Oldest

natewells
1:42 PM on February 16, 2011

For the love of God, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a magma theorist...

  Reply Recommend Report Abuse

pangea77
11:40 PM on February 2, 2011

Why wouldn't they let me finish what I was saying? Does this have
a time limit on it or something? Thanks.

  Reply Recommend (1) Report Abuse

pangea77
11:35 PM on February 2, 2011
Spare me. We all know the inevitabiltiy of this. It DOES erupt
every 600-700 thousand years. The lava alone will cover a 100
mile radius. The ash blown into the atmosphere will not only block
the sun f

  Reply Recommend (15) Report Abuse

kilmoturtles
12:35 PM on January 30, 2011

My biggest fear is that the rectal ring in the lower quadrant of the
elepticillian core will be exposed to the radiation, produced not by
the sun, but by the Romulan Forcillian Captuary. Our only hope is
that Captain Kirk can penetrate the time septic in the Villian Obitor
region and help us release the build-up of gases, using the
Rodiant Pentercil that they used on plantet U-Rass75. If the
balloon can be penetrated with this uptillian needle, the gases
may be released and captured, and used by Captain Kirk and his
crew to power their Migdion power source, thus leaving this planet
to boldly go where we will not, if we do not stop this imminent
catastrophe of Mezezoic proportions. Thank you

  Reply Recommend (38) Report Abuse

3 replies

mrfrost
11:09 PM on January 27, 2011

charged particles from the sun cause the core to spin. This motion
causes friction making the outer core spin. This generates heat
and gravity keeping the outer core liquid. This heat travels
outward melting the mantle. The spinning of the outer core around
the core causes polarization and creates a magnetic field around
our planet. Our core could be slowing down weakening the
magnetic field. When the solar winds recharge the core, it will
speed up, causing more friction, heat and likely an increase in
pressure build up....I'd worry then

  Reply Recommend (13) Report Abuse

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Yellowstone Has Bulged as Magma Pocket Swells

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