The Yellowstone SuperCaldera Project

The 8.0 in Japan was felt in Yellowstone yesterday. It was felt at West Thumb,
Mt. Sheridan, Pitchstone, Lake, Pelican, Madison, Denny, Mirror, Maple, Soda,
Mammoth and Moose. Madison was particulary strong yesterday and is showing some
movement today.

www.seis.utah.edu...

More interestingly is the Granite Vault readings from yesterday. The significant
motion that has become daily at Granite Vault, ceased for 30 minutes prior to the
Japan quake and then begun moving when the 8.0 hit.

www.seis.utah.edu...

The experimental Spectrograms also picked up the 8.0

www.geophys.washington.edu...

There was a small tremor today in the park. At 12:00 UTC rumbling was detected
at Pitchsone, Sheridan, West Thumb, Lake, Pelican, Madison, Mirror, Denny, Maple
Moose, Mammoth and Soda.

www.seis.utah.edu...

The strongest readings came from Moose Creek in the southern portion of the park,
near the epicenters for the larger quakes this year. It does not appear to have
registered on the Richter scale.

Granite Vault was moving prior to the quake but picked up momentum after the jolt.

www.seis.utah.edu...


Update: The same tremor was felt across the board in Utah. The epicenter could be along the Wasatch Fault.

[Edited on 27-9-2003 by kukla]

What does the USGS have to say about Yellowstone and a potential eruption?
volcanoes.usgs.gov...

If another catastrophic caldera-forming Yellowstone eruption were to occur, it quite likely would alter global weather patterns and have enormous effects on human activity, especially agricultural production, for many years.

Yellowstone is monitored for signs of volcanic activity by YVO scientists who detect earthquakes using seismographs and ground motion using GPS (Global Positioning System). YVO has not detected signs of activity that suggest an eruption is imminent.

This may have come up in the other thread:

INCREASED THERMAL ACTIVITY AT NORRIS GEYSER BASIN REQUIRES TEMPORARY CLOSURE

www.nps.gov...

More information & opinion than you can shake a stick at:
www.earthmountainview.com...

From the BBC:

Geologists say there is a real risk that sooner or later a supervolcano will erupt with devastating force, sending temperatures plunging on a hemispheric or even global scale.

news.bbc.co.uk...

In the category of questionable reporting:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP) - Geothermal activity is increasing in a Yellowstone National Park geyser basin and the bottom of Yellowstone Lake is bulging, but scientists say there is no impending major eruption.
...
But this year is exceptional, with a new mud pot welling up, 200-degree temperatures on the ground and geysers that haven't erupted in years spouting off.

www.journalnet.com...

It Is Time To Cast a Worried
Eye Towards Yellowstone

yowusa.com...

Ummmmm.......not good??!?

On August 10, the Denver Post reported that Liz Morgan, a U.S. Geological Survey research geologist had discovered a huge bulge underneath Yellowstone Lake that had risen 100 feet from the lake floor. The bulge is two thousand feet long and has the potential to explode at any time. Morgan was quoted as saying that "The inflated plain is a potential and serious hazard and possible precursor to a large hydrothermal explosion event."

www.onlinejournal.com...
(as a side note, I've tried to find the original Denver Post article about this, but it seems to have been taken offline.....)

There were two quakes yesterday and this morning in the southern portion of the park.

A micro earthquake occurred on Sunday, 28 September 2003 at 10:30:25PM (MDT) .
The magnitude 2.6 event occurred 36 km ( 22 miles) S of West Thumb, WY.
The hypocentral depth is 4 km ( 2 miles).

A micro earthquake occurred on Monday, 29 September 2003 at 3:33:23AM (MDT) .
The magnitude 1.6 event occurred 37 km ( 23 miles) S of West Thumb, WY.
The hypocentral depth is 2 km ( 1 mile).

There continues to be some movement at Pitchstone, Sheridan, West Thumb, Lake, Pelican,
Madison, Mirror, Maple, Soda, Mammoth and Moose.

www.seis.utah.edu...

The Granite Vault patterns changed after both quakes.

I uploaded three more videos from the area around Nymph Lake.

6 and 7 are shot about 100 feet from the main venting area. I believe this area is the leading edge of the new thermal. Look for steam rising out of undisturbed soil.

8 is shot near the lake side where the ground was very brittle.

New HotSpot - Part 6

New HotSpot - Part 7

New HotSpot - Part 8

One of the main warning signs of a pending eruption from any Caldera are the seismic foreshocks that usually precedes it.

The main chain of events leading up to any seismic event includes the introduction of strain energy into the active rock unit. This strain is usually applied through the very slow and subtle movement of surrounding units, or through geothermal pressure being introduced through volcanic processes. This is the main process introducing strain to Yellowstone.

As the strain builds up in the host rock unit, it is stored as potential energy as long as the contained energy is below the tensile or shear strength of the rock unit. When the stored potential energy exceeds the tensile or shear strength of the rock unit, the unit fractures and releases the stored energy in a seismic event.

Foreshocks are a very important indicator of the status of the stored energy in a rock unit. As the strain increases and approaches the excedence of the rock unit strength capacity, smaller, weaker sections of the rock unit will begin to fail first, releasing small amounts of energy as foreshocks. As the strain begins to build and the weaker sections of rock are fractured, the magnitude of foreshocks will increase.

It is normal during this cycle that foreshocks will increase in magnitude and in rapidity as the strain approaches overall failure of the rock unit. Immediately before the main seismic event, it is not uncommon for a complete calm to overcome the affected area as all weaker units have already fractured, and the only thing holding the main unit together is its own strength, until the strain exceeds it. This is the stereotypical �Calm before the storm�.

What we have been seeing lately (this week anyway) at Yellowstone has been a series of relatively small shocks. As Kukla mentioned, Yellowstone did in fact feel the 8.0 quake that shook Hokkaido Japan. While this did indeed introduce some energy into the Yellowstone system, it (fortunately) was not a significant amount, although it likely did trigger a few foreshocks prematurely.

The very small (Magnitude 1-2) quakes reported lately are not unusual around an active seismic system, as there is always a small amount of movement in any active system. However, what this does indicate is that the Yellowstone system is still cohesive and is still absorbing strain (allowing it to build to ever higher levels).

The main thing to watch for regarding Yellowstone are the significant forshocks, such as the Mag 3-4 quakes that were recorded a couple of weeks ago.

I�ve been working on statistical �mood meter� for the project and already have uncovered some anomalous facts. While trying to determine a baseline for the mood meter, I calculated averages of quakes in Yellowstone by day and month. After crunching the magnitude numbers for 1998 and 1999, I quickly found that there is no catalog available from the University of Utah from 2000 to June 2003.* These are the monthly magnitude averages for 1998, 1999 and the previous three months.

1998 209
1999 403

July 2003 29
Aug 2003 113
Sept 2003 83

www.seis.utah.edu...

Several things bother me about these averages. Firstly, could July have been that quiet? Then there�s the �Long Quake� detected in September that resulted in NO micro quakes that are registered in the catalog. We still have no official analysis of that event. I think this properly highlights the shortcomings of current seismometer equipment and methodologies. The �Long Quake� of September was a seismic event and it should be discussed and analyzed. Furthermore, the �Long Quakes� at Granite Vault do not result in quakes that are included in the catalogs. It leaves me to wonder if we�re getting the full story.

At this point I think it is prudent to highlight the data transmission scheme for the Yellowstone seismometers. This is an excerpt from Bob Smith�s research:

At each field site, the seismometer acts as a transducer to convert ground velocity to an electrical signal, which is amplified and converted into a frequency-modulated (FM) audio tone within the amplifier/VCO unit. Eight FM center frequencies ranging from 680 to 3060 Hz are in use with a 340 Hz separation between center frequencies and an individual fixed bandwidth of 250 Hz.

Data from the YSN are transmitted continuously via either UHF or VHF analog radios to an FAA radar site located on Sawtelle Peak, Idaho. Signals are then multiplexed onto four FAA microwave lines for retransmission to the FAA control center in Salt Lake City, UT. From there, the data are transmitted to the University of Utah's central recording laboratory via four voice-grade telephone lines.

**I ammended my Field Report to include a discussion about the Caldera Boundary. This
factoid slipped my mind when writing the original. Here's the info:

We also talked about the Caldera boundary and the official Caldera maps. She noted that the bathymetric mapping of the Lake had proved their boundary estimation incorrect. She did not have the details of where and how far, only that the maps are wrong for the Lake portion of the boundary. It leaves to wonder, where else the map may be incorrect?

* The catalog for 2001 and 2002 reappeared on 02/10/03





[Edited on 4-10-2003 by kukla]

Hey fellow researchers, sorry for the gap in posting new info. My GPS base station, which was out for repairs came back and I've been catching up on some field work that pays the bills for old AC. I wanted to follow closely the horizontal velocity vectors with the vertical velocity vectors and I probably could have directly done that. I just wanted to add a few comments from my own personal knowledge regarding vertical accuracy pertaining to GPS, DGPS, and CGPS.

Vertical accuracy, like horizontal accuracy can be determined various ways, however when speaking of verticle accuracy, we must be sure what datum we are dealing with and if a Geoid Model is being used. When we refer to the "Z" aspect of an X.Y,Z coordinate, we can be refering to a few different things depending on what our needs are. Elevation is usually referenced to mean sea level which isn't exactly the true sea level as that varies from lunar cycle to lunar cycle...its just referenced to an average. HEA or height above elipsoid assumes the Earths shape to be constant and roughs in a elipse using the average terrain. HEA is the difference between the sat reading and the elipsoid heght. A Geiod height, which I utilize for survey GPS (Conus 99) allows a more accurate local terrain model and allows one to upload a reference into the data collector which uses that as its model. With that explained a little, I'll go on with the data from UofU which is collected with carrier phase and thus has an error of 25% in some cases.








"While subsidence of the Snake River Plain over its 16 Ma history reflects the long-term deformation pattern of that region, the Yellowstone Plateau has been the site of rapid crustal deformation in historic time. Pelton and Smith (1982) first documented the historical uplift of the Yellowstone caldera of up to 76 cm based upon repeated 1st-order precision leveling in 1975-76-77 at benchmarks originally surveyed in 1923. From the mid-1970's to 1984, leveling surveys revealed an additional 25 cm of uplift. However, by 1985 the deformation had reversed to subsidence, and the subsidence had exceeded ~20 cm by 1995 (Dzurisin and Yama#a, 1987; Meertens and Smith, 1995).


Models of the uplift show that its depth extended from the surface to 9 km in depth. For the uplift data, a maximum volume change of 0.218 km�, in the 3 km to 6 km depth range was determined in the southern caldera and a second source of 0.185 km� volume increase located in the northeast caldera. The total volume change for the 1923 to 1977 data totaled ~0.73 km� and was attributed to migration of magmas and/or hydrothermal fluids into the upper crust. This corresponds to an inflation rate of 0.01 km�/yr to 0.03 km�/yr from magmatic fluids intruded into the upper crust.


Causative mechanisms for the caldera-wide uplift, summarized by Pelton and Smith (1982), included magmatic, tectonic, and glacial-isostatic sources, but these authors suggested that the most likely source of the 1923-1977 uplift was by transport of magma. Dzurisin and others (1990) concluded that basaltic intrusions into the mid- or upper crust or pressurization of a deep hydrothermal system by magmatic gas, or brine, released by crystallization of a rhyolitic melt were also plausible sources for the uplift. "

Following the 50-year episode of historical uplift, deformation abruptly changed to subsidence of up to 6 cm between 1984 and 1985 (Dzurisin and others, 1990), and subsidence has continued to 1991. Meertens and others (1992) reported subsidence of up to 7 cm for the period 1987 to 1991 over the entire caldera using GPS (Global Positioning Satellites) corresponding to the same general area which experienced uplift from 1923 to 1977. The spatial correlation between the area of uplift and the area of subsidence suggests a causative mechanism related to magmatic/hydrothermal intrusion followed by fluid migration or degassing from the same source. The 1923-1977 uplift phase of the Yellowstone caldera is postulated to have resulted by melts and/or hydrothermal fluid intrusion at depths of 3 to 6 km upper crust. These fluids may have in turn produced excess hydrothermal fluid/gases in a shallow overlying layer which then degassed and/or experienced a reduced rate of hydrothermal fluid input, producing the observed subsidence from 1985-1991.


Evidence of a widespread magmatic connection between the Yellowstone caldera and the Hebgen Lake fault was recently suggested by Savage and others (1993) who modeled the strain field of the Hebgen Lake trilateration network for the period 1973-1987. The calculated uniaxial extension was 0.27 �strains at an azimuth of 015�. Although these data can be explained by dislocation on a southward-dipping normal fault at Hebgen Lake, the data imply significant deformation north of the surface projection of the Hebgen Lake fault. Savage and others (1993) suggested an alternate mechanism related to magmatism, namely inflation of a vertical dike and accompanying rift that extends west-northwest ~100 km from the Yellowstone caldera to the Hebgen Lake fault zone. This is a provocative interpretation of the crustal deformation, but it provides a tie between tectonic and magmatic mechanisms across a large area of the Yellowstone Plateau.


Nonetheless, we believe that the of migration of melts and/or hydrothermal fluids into the mid- and upper-crust of the Yellowstone caldera is the most plausible explanation for the modern crustal deformation. This mechanism must have been important over much of the 2 Ma volcanic history of Yellowstone, and magmatism must have been the principal mechanism in the development of the resurgent domes. The modeled volume changes of Yellowstone's historic crustal deformation are consistent with intrusion of hydrothermal fluids and rhyolitic/basaltic melts into the upper crust as a likely mechanism. "










Just to add a little more fuel to kukla's fire about insufficient aftershocks, I found this statement regarding the Hedgon Lake network.

"Repeated GPS surveys of all or portions of the Hebgen Lake network between 1987-1993 revealed ongoing horizontal velocities at high rates of 3 to 5 mm/yr. extension in a N-NE direction. Remarkably, horizontal deformation has continued for several decades following the 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake. We note that there are insufficient aftershocks to match the equivalent seismic moment for this anomalously high rate. In contrast, no significant vertical motion is apparent in the GPS measurements"





"



[Edited on 1-10-2003 by astrocreep]

This was posted to a Yahoo newsgroup yesterday.

Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 6:32 PM
Subject: Re: [Pinpoint EQ News] OT: Yellowstone on FoxNEWS - boiling ground

For anyone following the situation at Yellowstone, a friend just told me
that on the RADIO, at the top of the hour on a local station which has
FoxNEWS - that it was reported that the Boiling Geyser of Yellowstone
Park, which has been dormant for thirty years erupted today - it erupted TWICE
today.

Kukla was good enough to bring this to my attention:

An updated FAQ page on the USGS Yellowstone Volcano Observatory website:

volcanoes.usgs.gov...

After reading through it I had a few observations...

A large amount is written considering hydrothermal explosions. This is very true and accurate data. In the Yellowstone environment, there are a history of small to medium sized hydrothermal explosions, and I would expect more to come.

However:

Do any of the features below the lake relate to a possible volcanic eruption?

It is very unlikely. All active features are related to faults and hot water (hydrothermal) vents. Identified craters were formed by collapse or as a result of old hydrothermal explosions. Many of the rocks beneath the lake are lava flows more than 100,000 years old.

Per se, this is not an inaccurate sttement, but it is misleading, and omits one very important feature... What is the prime mover or heat source that is driving this increased hydrothermal activity?

Indeed, these increased hydrothermal features are being driven by superheated water... but what is heating that water???

All evidence that I have seen indicates that the original magma plume beneath the caldera is either moving or increasing in size.

If the magma plume is indeed increasing in size, it would explain the sudden massive increase in hydrothermal activity, as well as the inflationary features indicated underneath the lake. For this to happen, there would be some kind of additional upwelling of magma into the magma chamber, which indicates a change in deep mantel processes.

If the actual volume ofthe magma plume is indeed increasing, that certainly means that attendant pressure is increasing and the chances for volcanic eruption also increase dramatically.

If for some reason the magma plume volume is remaining constant, but is shifting its location, that could also explain the hydrothermal activity, as the magma is migrating into fault areas not normally exposed to such heat and pressure. However, this raises the question, what is causing the magma to be displaced?

One possible explaination could be some kind of deep tectonic seismic activity that is slowly deforming the surrounding rock units, and forcing the magma along the path of least resistance.

Does this potential shift in the magma plume location increase the chances of volcanic eruption? Possibly.

Any tectonic activity that will deform and displace a magma plume of the size located under Yellowstone will certainly weaken the confining rock units. This weakening will be exacerbated by being exposed to the heat and pressure of the magma plume.

Both scenarios do not look too bright to me.

The YVO posted their monthly seismic report today. There is no mention of the 9/15 "long quake" event. Activity in the park has been quiet with the exception of the usual movers, Mammoth and Madison. I have yet to find a collaborating source on the geyser eruption.

September 2003 Yellowstone Seismicity Summary

During the month of September 2003, 80 earthquakes were
located in the Yellowstone region. The largest shock to
occur during this report period was a magnitude 3.3
earthquake on September 10th at 10:20 UTC, located about
22.4 miles south southeast of West Thumb, Wyoming, and
near the southern park border. This earthquake is part
of an aftershock sequence that began with a mainshock that
occurred on August 21, 2003, with a magnitude 4.4 has
continued to produce smaller aftershocks.

Earthquake activity in the Yellowstone region is at
background levels.

volcanoes.usgs.gov...

There are more changes at the YVO Website. They have a new page for the Norris Basin deformations, including references to Nymph Lake.

On 10 March 2003, a new thermal feature was reported west of Nymph Lake, located about 3.5 km northwest of the Norris Museum. A linear series of vigorous fumaroles about 75 m long had formed in a forested area located about 200 m from the lake's west shoreline on the side of a hill. Fine particles of rock and mineral fragments ejected from the fumaroles coated nearby vegetation. Fumarole temperatures were as high as 92�C (198�F), the boiling temperature of water at that elevation. After two months, somewhat reduced steam emission was accompanied by discharge of approximately 11 to 38 liters (3 to 10 gallons) per minute of near-neutral thermal water. Trees within 4 m of the lineament had died and were being slowly combusted.

There is no evidence that magma beneath the enormous Yellowstone caldera is directly involved in the recent changes at Norris or Nymph Lake. Though magma as shallow as 3-6 miles beneath Norris does provide the heat for the geothermal system, the current activity is very unlikely to reflect magma ascent or increased likelihood of volcanism at Yellowstone Park. If magma were to rise to shallow levels beneath the ground it would be accompanied by intense swarms of local earthquakes and extensive displacement (deformation) of the ground surface around Norris. Thus far, caldera-wide seismicity and ground deformation have remained at typical background levels beneath Yellowstone and Norris.

volcanoes.usgs.gov...

The past 24 hours have seen increased seismic activity. The seismometers have picked up some tele-seismic events from Russia and Japan but this doesn't account for all the activity.

The specific reason for this alert is Old Faithful. It is starting show some movement and it hasn't twitched in a month. Movement at Old Faithful has preceded micro-quake swarms and larger quakes this year.

www.seis.utah.edu...

You will notice that the Old Faithful seismomter doesn't have data from the entire day. You may also notice that there is no archived graphs from the previous week. I have no explanation for this, the graphs were smooth yesterday and the week prior.

The Lake feed has been down for almost a week and only has two days of archives.

Portions of Norris Basin reopen

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK -- Portions of the Norris Geyser Basin that were closed since July 23 because of increased geothermal activity are scheduled to reopen at 8 a.m. today.
About 4,800 feet of the 5,800 feet of trails that were closed will be reopened. Only the Back Basin Trail between Green Dragon Spring and the Porkchop Geyser intersection will remain closed, Yellowstone officials said Tuesday.
Norris is the park's hottest and most seismically active geyser basin. Each year, there is a noticeable change in the color and steam discharge of many of the basin's thermal features. It is called the "annual disturbance."
This year's annual disturbance was hotter and longer than normal and resulted in the formation of many new steam vents and unacceptably high ground temperatures in accessible areas -- in some cases up to 200 degrees.

So, unless I'm mistaken, this is the first time someone "official" actually said that there have been things out of the ordinary at Yellowstone lately.

Wonder what next year's "annual disturbance" (ain't that a great term?!?) will be like.

I thought this was a good read.
It strikes me as strictly middle of the road, giving nods to theories put forth by both Yellowstone officials *and* us amatuers.
This is also the first mainstream news mention I've been able to find regarding Lisa Morgan, who discovered the gigantic bulge beneath Yellowstone Lake.

Yellowstone Will Blow Again - No Telling When

Subterraniean Volcano Stews in Yellowstone

This is interesting as well, for a couple tidbits. Notably:

In light of the new activity, safety is a growing concern, and officials are writing a hazard plan in case the region grows more active. The ground warming could mean that heat is increasing water pressure, a possible cause of eruptions.

Except for the quake two months ago, Yellowstone has had far fewer quakes in recent years. ��Seismically, its been deathly quiet,'' Smith said. ��We average a half-dozen to 20 quakes'' a day. ��The last two years, we see a couple a day.''

At the northern end of the basin, a series of vents, or fumaroles, appeared and mud pots cropped up on the trail, splattering hot acidic mud, though it later disappeared.
��Norris,'' Heasler said, ��is showing us something, and whether we can figure it out, we'll see.''

Yellowstone caldera monitoring station at Lake, Wyoming



Okay, just a little more info on the process of obtaining this data since we've covered how it's created and used... This scematic does a pretty good job of describing how data is transmitted from CGPS stations along with other data telemetry.




Also, just for the sake of details, here's the technical locations of the stations..
coordinates


Also, here is another map of CGPS monitoring stations overlaid on the Yellowstone Hotspot map.






Also, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to get real-time daily info on the velocity vectors with the following links mysteriously offline....

Yellowstone Hotspot GPS Network

University of Utah GPS Network

and also the data archives are offline as well..

University NAVSTAR Consortium (UNAVCO)

Now, I'm not sure why this data is not availible , maybe the unavco sever is just currently down for service but I will continue to attempt to access it.

To follow astrocreep's post, I would also note that the Lake feed has been down for a week. While the YVO has lost data feeds in the past, the timing of this outage is suspect.

There is continued seismic activity, more specifically at Old Faithful. The recent seismic activity throughout the park has triggered 15 micro-quakes, but Old Faithful is usually flat-line, even during some micro-quake episodes.

www.seis.utah.edu...
www.seis.utah.edu...

I was digging around at NUFORC and noticed this entry that was recently posted.
This event occurred on 9/29/2003. The only other report for Yellowstone in this database is from 1956.

I was driving west on US 20 approximately 10 miles east of the west entrance to Yellowstone National Park. My wife was in the front passenger seat. The time was 20:35 (8:35 PM Mountain time) on Friday night September 29, 2003. The sun had already set, so it was quite dark. This is a wilderness area that we were in, no lights what so ever for miles. No other vehicles were in the area. The skies were clear. One could practically reach up and touch the stars. The landscape on each side of the two lane road had new pine tree growth with a height of 4 to 10 feet.

We were traveling about 30MPH with the windows rolled down so we could hear the elk bugling in the not so far distance. Suddenly and without warning, approximately 3 feet off the ground and 30 feet in front of us, a red sphere darted across the road from left to right (south to north). The color was that of a lit tail light lens, but not bright as if brakes were applied. This completely circular object, about 6" in diameter, flew straight for the short duration that we saw it. Sighting was lost as it entered the trees. This was not a flash of light bouncing off an object and again, no other vehicles were within sight. Nothing was said to each other until I stopped at a pull-off a couple of miles down the road. We then looked at each other and I asked my wife, "Did you see that back there?" Her reply was, "I wasn't going to say anything until you did. What was that red ball?" We compared notes. We indeed did see a 6" red ball flying from left to right about 3' off the ground. No sound was noted.

www.nuforc.org...

kukla, this is very interesting and I know what I'm about to suggest is way off my assigned research but this sort of unexplained phenom are almost always tied into an impending event. I know this sounds like its a bit out there but to read some of John Keel's work, he describes this as some sort of energy that builds before something big happens. His book, Mothman Phophecies, is but one account of a research event and the strange events leading to it but he presents research which also shows a tremendous increase in UFO and mysterious figure sightings in several instances throughout the world which precluded dissasters. I'm not advocating such thing but just thought it interesting and your snippit brought it to mind immediatly.

Okay, back to my GPS corner, I go.