YELLOWSTONE volcano scientist Dr Mike Poland has warned of the “devastating” capacity of the volcano after his team performed simulations of ashfall across the US in the event of a super eruption.
The caldera inside Yellowstone National Park was formed during the last three big events over the years. It is constantly monitored by the USGS (United States Geological Survey) for any changes to the system that could suggest history is going to repeat itself. Scientist-in-charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), Dr Poland, laid bare the sobering power of the volcano during the USGS’s ’Overview, Monitoring, Hazards, and Noteworthy Results’ video.
He said: “The Yellowstone system is composed of multiple magma chambers. We have this mantle-melting anomaly deep beneath the surface.
“But there’s a couple of magma chambers that this melting anomaly feeds.
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“One is quite deep, 15 miles or so beneath the surface, and it’s full of very low viscosity magma called basalt.
“That’s the kind of thing that erupts from Hawaii, low viscosity, it flows very easily.
“In turn, that basaltic magma body feeds a higher-level reservoir of rhyolite – a sticky magma, prone to be more explosive, and this sits about three miles beneath the surface in parts of Yellowstone.”
Dr Poland explained why these chambers are not thought to be full of molten rock.
He added: “But don’t think of these as gigantic magma bodies that are just full of roiling, boiling liquid material.
“In fact, most of this is solid. The upper reservoir is only five to 15 percent molten, and this lower reservoir here is only about two to five percent molten.
“It’s a mushy plastic-y zone with little bits of melt in the middle.
“That’s what the Yellowstone magma system looks like, and this is what drives the hazards in the region.”
Despite this, the expert then sent a warning about the capabilities of Yellowstone in the event of a supereruption.
He said: “Everyone knows about the giant world-ending explosions.
“They are very big explosions, not end-of-the-world events, but there have been a few of these that have happened in the years
“If that size of thing happened today, it would be very devastating to the central part of the US.
“We’ve done simulations on how ash would fall and ash would blanket much of the US, this is probably what happened when this caldera first formed thousands of years ago.”
However, the expert detailed the kind of eruption that is more likely to be seen in the near geologic future.
He continued: “But the chances of this sort of event are very remote, they occur once or twice every so often
“The interval between these things, there’s over the years between events.
“What happens more often are lava flows. Since the last big Yellowstone explosion, there have been about two dozen lava flows, and you can see them here in these different color’s.
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