Images

Helicopter with airborne electromagnetics sensors dangling beneath as it flies over a portion of Yellowstone National Park.  Photo by Jeff Hungerford, November 2016.

Kullenberg coring platform from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Continental Scientific Drilling facility used to collect long (up to 12 m, or 40 feet) sediment cores from Yellowstone Lake.  Photo taken in September 2016 by Lisa Morgan.

Cut polycarbonate sections of sediment core collected from core YL16-3A from the Deep Hole, the deepest part of Yellowstone Lake at about 119 m (390 feet) depth, southeast of Stevenson Island. Photo taken in September 2016 by Lisa Morgan.

Photograph of north and eastern rim of the 9400-year-old Turbid Lake explosion crater showing the primary explosion ejecta rim with a secondary explosion ejecta rim inside the lake-occupied explosion crater.  Many, if not most, larger explosion craters have multiple explosion histories and are long-lived hydrothermal systems. 

Beartooth Mountains looking west northwest from near Beartooth Pass, Wyoming. Photo by Jeff Havig, University of Minnesota, July 20, 2016.

A Ehmania walcotti trilobite from Yellowstone National Park. Scale is in millimeters.  Specimen located at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

A Ptychopariid trilobite from Yellowstone National Park. Scale is in millimeters.  Specimen located at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Map of the Heart Mountain slide block. From Mitchell et al., 2015 ("Catastrophic emplacement of giant landslides aided by thermal decomposition: Heart Mountain, Wyoming." Earth and Planetary Science Letters 411: 199-207), modified from Anders et al. (2010).

Yellowstone subsurface cross-section schematic oriented SW-NE, depicts rise of magma beneath mantle plus heating and movement of mantle and crustal material. Credit Univ Utah. Click to enlarge.

(Left) Sample of the Pitchstone Plateau rhyolite flow, which erupted about 72,000 years ago, making it is the youngest rhyolite at Yellowstone. The blocky white crystals in this sample are the mineral sanidine, whereas the rounded crystals are quartz.

Gas collection from a bubbling source within Pelican Creek, Yellowstone. Inverted funnel placed over gas source, gas travels through tubing into evacuated/vacuum glas flask to be analyzed in lab.

Gas flask sampling at West Astringent Creek, Yellowstone. Open tube with attached gas chamber inserted into ground, gas travels through tube into vacuum flask being held by scientist.

Lidar coverage of the Hebgen and Red Canyon faults collected in 2014. Magenta lines show fault scarps mapped by USGS geologists shortly after the 1959 earthquake. Yellow lines show fault scarps interpreted from lidar data 55 years after the earthquake.

Lava Mountain, Wyoming.  (A) View from Dubois, WY, in the Wind River basin looking northwest ~30 km toward Lava Mountain.

Frosted trees in the Fairy Falls area of Yellowstone National Park near the Firehole River.  National Park Service photo by Annie Carlson, 2014.

Schematic cross section of the magmatic and hydrothermal systems underlying Yellowstone Caldera, showing magmatic volatiles emitted during crystallization of the rhyolitic magma and/or from basalt intrusions or convection, and the hypothesized relation with earthquake swarms on the caldera margins.  The exsolved fluids accumulate at lithostatic pressures in the

The contact (red arrow) between Huckleberry Ridge Tuff ignimbrite members A and B is marked by a time break of probably weeks to a month or so.

Example model output of possible ash distribution from a month-long Yellowstone supereruption. Results vary depending on wind and eruption conditions. Historical winds for January 2001 used here.

Beryl Spring's strongly boiling blue pool is about 8 m (25 ft) wide and contains high-chloride liquid water with a near-neutral pH. Immediately behind the pool is a loud, hissing fumarole producing a white cloud of steam. USGS Photo by Pat Shanks, 2002.

The left axis shows the number of earthquakes per week. The right axis is the total cumulative number of earthquakes, which means it has to always increase. It increased a lot in the period 1996-2003 when there was a period of uplift near Norris.

Seismograms of the magnitude 4.8 earthquake that occurred in Yellowstone on March 30, 2014, as recorded by seismometers at station YNR near Norris Geyser Basin.  Top: Seismogram recorded on the accelerometer, which stayed on scale during the shaking.  Bottom: “Clipped” seismogram recorded on the broadband seismometer, which went off scale during the shakin