The supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park

AccuWeather

Yellowstone National Park was the first national park in the world.  It is famous for its geothermal attractions, like the Old Faithful geyser.  The park's got a secret, a volcanic secret!

Transcript

00:00 (upbeat music)

00:02 Yellowstone is the world's first national park.

00:07 Its main attractions are spectacular geysers,

00:10 hot springs, and mud pots.

00:12 These geothermal features are made possible

00:15 by an enormous magma chamber, a super volcano.

00:19 - It's not a pointy mountain

00:20 like Mount Fuji or Mount St. Helens.

00:22 It's sort of a large volcanic field

00:25 that's experienced a major collapse,

00:28 meaning that it's had a large eruption

00:30 and the ground has collapsed into the space

00:33 that was evacuated when the magma chamber emptied.

00:37 - The volcano had at least three eruptions

00:39 in its ancient past.

00:40 An eruption today could devastate much of the United States

00:44 and even have climatic impact worldwide.

00:47 Fortunately, scientists do not expect

00:49 an eruption anytime soon.

00:51 - There's no indication

00:52 that the Yellowstone magmatic system

00:54 is really gonna be waking up anytime soon.

00:56 The Yellowstone magma system is mostly solid.

00:58 It's only about five to 15% molten.

01:01 The rest of it is just hot, kind of plasticky, solid rock.

01:05 - Michael Polan, who monitors the volcano's activity,

01:08 says the park is a very seismically active area,

01:12 receiving an average of between 15

01:14 and 2,500 earthquakes per year.

01:18 - They're very small events caused by all of the water

01:20 that's moving around in the subsurface,

01:21 and the area is chock full of faults

01:25 because it's in a very tectonically active part

01:27 of the Western US, and it's also weak

01:29 because of the heat that's being input to the system

01:33 by the Yellowstone volcanic system.

01:35 - Even though the volcano will not erupt anytime soon,

01:37 scientists said it will erupt again one day.

01:41 Polan says they can make forecasts on the volcano

01:44 by looking for indicators.

01:46 - If we saw earthquake activity begin to pick up

01:48 in very significant ways,

01:50 instead of seeing thousands of earthquakes every year,

01:53 we were maybe seeing tens of thousands,

01:55 but we would also see ground deformation.

01:57 The ground at Yellowstone rises and falls.

01:59 It goes up and down at rates of an inch or two per year.

02:03 If it were to suddenly start rising very quickly,

02:06 that might be another indicator.

02:08 - Do not let that discourage you, though.

02:11 Yellowstone remains a spectacular destination.

02:13 Its volcanic secret is what fuels

02:16 the park's geothermal natural scenery that visitors enjoy.

02:20 Reporting for AccuWeather, I'm Chris Nellen.

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