Whats going on at yellowstone?

A bigger than average earthquake appeared on most Yellowstone webicorders. Unfortunately I didn't have GEE active on YW stations at the time.

reply to post by Shirakawa


I saw that earlier. Looks like it's from an earthquake else where, but I don't know the source. I'm still trying to find out where the most recent eq's closest to WY are... heh

Maybe an effect from the volcano eruption in Columbia? www.usatoday.com...

[edit on 15-2-2009 by ekhodust]

reply to post by ekhodust


Could this be the one? I haven't compared them.
PRELIM: M2.5 23:17 2/14 45.5N 111.9W 21 km SSW of Harrison, MT WESTERN MONTANA Z=0km MB 18879 33b24

reply to post by dodadoom


Not exactly sure. There was another one that registered on almost all of the seismographs between 2:00 and 3:00 2/15/09. Any opinions?

Another one between 3:00 and now 2/15/09. You can see it pretty clear on:
www.seis.utah.edu...

[edit on 15-2-2009 by ekhodust]

[edit on 15-2-2009 by ekhodust]

reply to post by PuterMan


They look kind of 180 Deg out of sync don't they...one goes up opposite the other...good graph!

The islands of Talaud, Indonesia and Puetro Rico are in similiar situtations. Both are islands which are on microplates. Both microplates are in collision between two major plates. The only difference is Talaud is being hit from two different directions. And Puetro Rico is being squeezed by as the Carribean and North American plates slide past each other. There is speculation that Puetro Rico is a block. Meaning, it is not spinning, or being deformed as it is crushed between the plates. The Indonesia microplate is being also acting as a block because it is being squeezed equally from the two plates as they subduct it into the mantle. This could be the link. As the world's plates move about, these two micro plates could be creating resistence because they are not flexing or spinning to relieve stress.


www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu...

www.earth.ox.ac.uk...

www.earthquakeprediction.gr...

Yes there was a quake in Montana. But it would seem there has been some increase in activity in the park. The Yellowstone Most Recent Map is not showing them, but that doesn't surprise me, they are often slow in updating information.

reply to post by Robin Marks


Wow, awesome info.

And it does look like there was some activity at Yellowstone, but nothing special. Just standard stuff and background noises. :shrug:

Another earthquake hits New Jersey. Second in two weeks. This was 2.2. Earlier one was 3.0.


www.nbcnewyork.com...

reply to post by manotick


New Jersey quakes aren't common, but not rare. Especially on a geological time scale. earthquake.usgs.gov... But, that was a good story.

[Edit:] I said geological scale. haha o_O considering this is *all* on a geological scale.

[edit on 15-2-2009 by ekhodust]

I find this interesting. What's up at Mirror Lake?

www.seis.utah.edu...

Although it's not showing on any of the other seismographs. I did find out a bit about Mirror Lake. It's a popular fishing place, which is pretty cool. hehe

Somewhere in this huge thread, someone was talking about Earth actually growing...and I thought they had very good arguments. We are constantly talking here about plates coliding, but it looks more to me like volcanoes are actually building elements of Earth.
It looks like gravity (whatever it is) is pushing stuff into the core and something is pushing it back upwards...

Don't you think?

reply to post by greshnik


I wonder if it could be explained like weather fronts...as the cooler crust is subducted under a plate, the warmer layer between rises?


[edit on 2/15/2009 by Hx3_1963]

Originally posted by greshnik
Somewhere in this huge thread, someone was talking about Earth actually growing...and I thought they had very good arguments. We are constantly talking here about plates coliding, but it looks more to me like volcanoes are actually building elements of Earth.
It looks like gravity (whatever it is) is pushing stuff into the core and something is pushing it back upwards...

Don't you think?

It's here... very interesting theory - I agree.
www.youtube.com...

What's going on with realtime water outflow data from lake Yellowstone? There has been almost no change whatsoever during the last five days.

reply to post by Shirakawa


Iced up in that position perhaps? Certainly looks a bit strange. That's the only thing I can think of.

reply to post by PuterMan


If you're saying that the instrumentation used to measure water discharge literally iced, I don't think it's the case, as lately temperatures at Yellowstone have been raising (as also showed by melting snow on webcams). Also, in colder periods when lake discharge was more or less constant over a period of a few days, it was never perfectly constant.

[edit on 2009/2/17 by Shirakawa]

This newspaper article mentions the water temperature at Yellowstone Lake. www.trib.com...

It compares Yellowstone Lake water temperature at the south being 50 milliwats, and at Fishing Bridge, at the northeast being 30,000 milliwats.

Yellowstone caldera's pushing earth

Just wanted to point everyone following this thread to a heads up article:

www.trib.com...

One thing researchers found, in measuring water temperatures from the south end of the lake and comparing them with the north, where the earthquake activity occurred, was a heat fluctuation measured in milliwatts that ranged from 50 at the south to 30,000 near Fishing Bridge in the northeast.

This short article is pretty interesting all by itself, and if someone living in Bozeman, MT could attend the conference Thursday night and report, that would be great.

Here's a good article:

www.bozemandailychronicle.com...

Yellowstone’s shifting geological puzzle

By JESSICA MAYRER Chronicle Staff Writer
When Hank Heasler first visited Yellowstone National Park as a little boy, he stared at the bubbles rising up from green- and orange-ringed mud pots, colored by heat-loving bacteria that thrive in water recycled through deep underground aquifers.

“I just remember being fascinated,” he said. “I always wanted to know more.”

Heasler is now Yellowstone Park’s geologist, one of the primary scientists responsible for tracking movement around one of the largest volcanos in North America.

It’s a constant challenge, figuring out the park’s ever shifting geological puzzle, he said.

“I’m still excited,” he said.

Although he had studied the park for years before becoming park geologist in 2002, when he left the University of Wyoming, where he taught for 21 years, he knew he faced a steep learning curve.

“When I first got to Yellowstone, I was totally lost,” Heasler said.

Now here he is, seven years later, charged with helping to interpret - among other things - just what caused the swarm of more than 800 earthquakes below Yellowstone that started in late December and whether those quakes were linked to volcanic activity.

The super volcano, after all, is capable of catastrophic eruption. “Kind of like a meteor hitting the earth,” Heasler said.

Healser doesn’t think the volcano will blow any time soon.

“We think there’s a lot more potential for damage from large earthquakes rather than volcanic eruptions,” Heasler said.

But he also admitted that, despite all that scientists have learned, Yellowstone is still a marvelous mystery.

Under pressure

One thing scientists know for sure is that the recent seismic activity is not unprecedented. A combination of forces shakes the nation’s oldest park thousands of times every year.

Yellowstone sits on the caldera of a super volcano, which molded the white-peaked mountains and still heats 10,000 thermal features, geysers, hot springs and mud pots.

It’s an ancient, complex underground system. Water from rain and snow flows through cracks in the porous rock and is heated by underground volcanic rock. Eventually that water returns to the surface through geysers and mud pots.

Because snow recharges deep aquifers in a leisurely cycle that takes about 50 years to complete, Old Faithful is likely spurting liquid that fell as snow during World War II, Heasler said.

“Yellowstone is a fascinating place,” said John Eichelberger, U.S. Geological Service volcano hazards program coordinator. “It’s one of the places that shows us how dynamic the planet really is. It’s alive.”

A major earthquake shakes things up in or around Yellowstone Park every 100 years or so, Heasler said, pointing to the Hebgen Quake of 1959, which killed 28 people.

Beginning in December, scientists believe pressure from molten rock triggered about 15 percent of the quake swarm.

Eichelberger compared the pressure buildup to what happens when one leaves a carbonated beverage in the freezer. When liquid freezes, there’s nowhere for carbon dioxide to go, so pressure builds, triggering an explosion.

Similarly, as underground magma cools, there’s no place for water to go, he said. The steam generated from hot meeting cold builds pressure. And then, boom, the earth shakes, releasing stored energy.

Heasler said another form of terrestrial energy release, tectonic shifting, as seen along fault lines in California, likely played a role, too.

But as scientists learn more, aided by ever-advancing technology, about what is going on underground in Yellowstone, more questions arise. In this case, Eichelberger said, scientists are debating what combination of fluids caused the seismic activity.

“The big argument is: Is that swelling caused by movement of hot water or movement of magma?” he said.

But it is clear there’s still much, much more to learn.

“One could spend their whole life getting familiar with Yellowstone and still only know a small percentage of it,” Heasler said.

Eruption not likely soon

After the December earthquake swarm in Yellowstone, an imposter, using a USGS logo, posted a fake evacuation order on the Internet, telling locals they should clear out because the volcano was going to blow.

“They said people should evacuate the Yellowstone area because of the earthquake swarm,” said USGS spokesperson Jessica Robertson. “We’re not sure if people actually did.”

It’s easy to see how words like “swarm,” “eruption” and “super volcano” trigger calamitous thoughts, Heasler said. And amid the December rattling, some folks said Yellowstone officals were intentionally keeping a lid on the threat.

“Some people worry about conspiracy and cover-ups,” he said.

But folks would know if an explosion were imminent by visible warning signs, like swelling earth and a shift in gasses escaping from the ground, he said.

“That’s not something we can quite hush up,” Heasler said.

In turn, researchers would be able to give a heads up if the volcano were preparing to blow, he said.

But a volcanic eruption doesn’t appear to be imminent, he said.

The Yellowstone volcano hasn’t flowed to the surface for more than 70,000 years, and the last super-eruption was 640,000 years ago.

“For humans, that’s almost incomprehensible,” Heasler said. “But for geologists, that’s like yesterday.”

When it does erupt, it could be on the scale of the Mount Saint Helens eruption, which blasted nearly 230 square miles with volcanic debris.

Or it could generate a smaller, more benign flow, he said.

“There will be another lava flow in Yellowstone’s volcanic future,” he said. “But we don’t know if there will be another big catastrophic explosion again.”

Really it’s the earthquakes, because they occur more frequently, that pose a greater threat, he said.

But Heasler reiterated that science can’t yet explain all of the park’s geological quirks.

“The more we understand or know, the more we realize we don’t know,” he said. “There’s a lot more to be learned about Yellowstone.”

Another one:

www.billingsgazette.net...

Yellowstone uplift pushes Earth's crust
By BRETT FRENCH
Of The Gazette Staff

The gradual uplift of Yellowstone National Park's caldera is pushing the Earth's crust southwest along the Snake River Plain, affecting much of the Great Basin.

"It adds energy to the whole system that we see," said Bob Smith, a University of Utah geophysicist who works with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. "It adds to the whole deformation and expands the Great Basin to the west."

The finding is one of several that Smith will discuss at a talk in Bozeman on Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Emerson Cultural Center.

Smith has spent 40 years working in the park and said he is constantly learning something new.

"We've just finished about five papers" discussing new discoveries, he said, the caldera's push westward among them.

He'll also talk about the origin of the Yellowstone hot spot and what scientists have discovered about it by using thermal imaging. He'll describe how the hot spot is driving the deformation on the surface, an uplift that has accelerated since 2000. And he'll talk about the earthquake swarm in December and January, the second-largest ever recorded, which was concentrated largely around the northwest corner of Yellowstone Lake.

One thing researchers found in measuring water temperatures from the south end of the lake and comparing them with the north, where the earthquake activity occurred, was a heat fluctuation measured in milliwatts that ranged from 50 at the south to 30,000 near Fishing Bridge in the northeast.

"These are enormous numbers," he said, showing how closely aligned the quake swarm was with the lake's underwater geyser basin.

Smith said he's curious to find out more about how the hot fluids are interacting with existing faults.

"We'll only understand that with instruments that measure horizontal movements," he said. "This is a whole new level of technology that's very important."

That would mean improving the Yellowstone monitoring system, which Smith said is badly outdated. He estimated that it would take about $750,000 to install new equipment in the park. Much of the existing network was built in the 1970s and '80s and is "just dilapidated," he said.

The quake swarm drew media and public attention from around the world, including declarations that the supervolcano underlying Yellowstone would soon erupt. The volcano observatory's information is readily accessible online, Smith said, and the first four hours of the swarm saw 10,000 hits to the Web site.

As to the movement of the earth's crust, Smith said researchers have found a push west of 4 millimeters, or 0.16 inches, a year. Although he said that may not sound like much, the movement from Yellowstone across the entire Great Basin to Reno, Nev., is only 12 millimeters a year. So, one-third of the entire shift is occurring in a very small area of about 80 kilometers, he said.

As the crust is pushed, Smith said, geophysicists are seeing a clockwise rotation of the different tectonic plates across the interior of the West.

"Yellowstone affects a much bigger area, 10 times as big as Yellowstone Park," Smith said. "So it plays a major role in the plate tectonics framework."