Shaded relief map showing the path of the Yellowstone hotspot. More than 20 such flows, totaling about 1,600 feet (500 meters) thickness, can be seen in Picture Gorge within the monument. Three distinct types of hotspots in the Earths mantle. Crustal structure and thickness along the Yellowstone hot spot track: Evidence for lower crustal outflow from beneath the eastern Snake River Plain Huaiyu Yuan, Huaiyu Yuan Department of Earth Science, University of California, Berkeley, California, 94720 USA Search for more papers by this author Ken Dueker, Ken Dueker dueker@uwyo.edu A lock () or https:// means youve safely connected to the .gov website. Softer layers of lake, river, and volcanic ash deposits contain an extraordinary array of horse and other fossils. The big island of Hawaii sits atop a large mantle plume that marks the active hotspot. This map shows the movement of the Yellowstone hotspot over the last 16 million years, with 7 known supereruptions marked accordingly. UTM Zone 12: 4986275 N, 522949 E, Northeast Entrance Thus defined, the Yellowstone Supervolcano is the volcanic field that produced the latest three supereruptions from the Yellowstone hotspot; it also produced one additional smaller eruption, thereby creating the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake[12] 174,000 years ago. "Insights into the Yellowstone hotspot." It is the source of the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff that is found from southern California to the Mississippi River near St. Louis. [4], The caldera formed during the last of three supereruptions over the past 2.1 million years: the Huckleberry Ridge eruption 2.1 million years ago (which created the Island Park Caldera and the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff), the Mesa Falls eruption 1.3 million years ago (which created the Henry's Fork Caldera and the Mesa Falls Tuff), and the Lava Creek eruption approximately 640,000 years ago (which created the Yellowstone Caldera and the Lava Creek Tuff). At depth within the Earth, the water is under great pressure. First postulated by J. Tuzo Wilson in 1963, a hotspot is an area in the lithospheric plate where molten magma breaks through and creates a volcanic center, islands in the ocean and mountains on land [82]. What makes it different is this hotspot is located under a thick, continental plate. Yellowstone Caldera; between 70 and 150ka; 1,000 cubic kilometers (239.9cumi) intracaldera rhyolitic lava flows. Fox, 61, describes Parkinson's disease as 'the gift that keeps on . Contrary to some media reports, Yellowstone is not 'overdue' for a supereruption. 89. For a limited time, you can take out a digital subscription to any of our best-selling science magazines for just $2.38 per month, or 45% off the standard price for the first three months. 88. The greater Yellowstone "geoecosystem" is outlined in blue. Letters are abbreviations for NPS sites listed near the top of this page. 120 degrees west. When the lamp is off, the cold wax is more dense than the oil. The event responsible for this fall of volcanic ash was identified as Bruneau-Jarbidge. [3], Geologists closely monitor the elevation of the Yellowstone Plateau, which has been rising as quickly as 150 millimetres (5.9in) per year, as an indirect measurement of changes in magma chamber pressure.[38][39][40]. Non-explosive eruptions of lava and less-violent explosive eruptions have occurred in and near the Yellowstone Caldera since the last super eruption. Plate Tectonics and Our National ParksSite Index, Plate TectonicsThe Unifying Theory of Geology, Tectonic Settings of NPS SitesMaster List, HAFEHagerman Fossil Beds National Monument, JODAJohn Day Fossil Beds National Monument, Oregon[. Below the picturesque geysers and rainbow-tinted hot springs of Yellowstone National Park lurks one of the most destructive volcanoes on Earth. Geological Society of America. At least 2,800 cubic kilometers (672cumi) of volcanic material. Three extraordinarily large explosive eruptions in the past 2.1 million years each created a giant caldera within or west of Yellowstone National Park. 45 00 12.09 (Lat) -110 00 04.62 (Long) The first three caldera-forming rhyolites Blacktail Tuff, Walcott Tuff and Conant Creek Tuff totaled at least 2250km3 of erupted magma. 5. Schematic of the hotspot and the Yellowstone Caldera, West Thumb Lake is not to be confused with West Thumb Geyser Basin. Elle Macpherson coordinates with boyfriend Doyle Bramhall in gold lam padded jackets during romantic bike ride in LA Michael J. Accessibility StatementFor more information contact us atinfo@libretexts.org. The largest of these shocks was a magnitude 3.8 that occurred on January 21, 2010. Yellow and orange ovals outline past caldera eruptions during the time periods indicated (orange calderas are the most recent). As the hotspot drifted beneath what is now Nevada and Oregon, it increased ecological beta diversity locally by fragmenting previously connected habitats and increasing topographic diversity in western North America.[5]. The Yellowstone hotspot is one of a few volcanic hotspots underlying the North American tectonic plate; another example is the Anahim hotspot. Much of the complex crater has become obliterated by later Cascadia and Sierra orogenies. What distance does longitude vary from? It turned out that a smattering of volcanic deposits previously attributed to a series of small eruptions actually resulted from two gargantuan ones. At times the rising wax develops a mushroom shape, with a large head and narrow stem. The calderas progress from oldest in northern Nevada to youngest in Yellowstone National Park as the North American plate passed over the relatively stationary hotspot. The caldera measures 43 by 28 miles (70 by 45 kilometers), and postcaldera lavas spill out a significant distance beyond the caldera proper. Modified from Parks and Plates: The Geology of our National Parks, Monuments and Seashores, by Robert J. Lillie, New York, W. W. Norton and Company, 298 pp., 2005, www.amazon.com/dp/0134905172. Magma rising from that level melts its way through thick, silica-rich continental crust, forming high-silica (rhyolite/granite) magma chambers in the upper part of the crust. In this scenario, hotspot volcanism began offshore and migrated to the east-northeast across northeastern California, northern Nevada, southeastern Oregon, and southern Idaho to its current position at Yellowstone National Park. One such caldera, the Bruneau-Jarbidge caldera in southern Idaho, was formed between 10 and 12 million years ago, and the event dropped ash to a depth of one foot (30cm) 1,000 miles (1,600km) away in northeastern Nebraska and killed large herds of rhinoceros, camel, and other animals at Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park. These deposits provide just the right soil and drainages conditions for meadows like Hayden Valley, in the heart of Yellowstone, where bison, elk, bear, waterfowl and other wildlife thrive. In an attempt to map the Hawaiian mantle plume as far down as the lower mantle [92], scientists have used tomography, a type of three-dimensional seismic imaging. In the western part of the continent, divergent plate boundary forces are beginning to rip the continent apart, forming the Basin and Range Province and its adjacent eastern arm, known as the Rio Grande Rift. 8.99Ma, McMullen Supereruption; VEI 8. The combination of silica-rich soil, high elevations, glacial deposits, and hydrothermal features creates a unique ecosystem on the Yellowstone Plateau. The hotspot appears to move across terrain in the east-northeast direction, and is responsible for the eastern half of Idaho's Snake River Plain, but in fact the hotspot is much deeper than the surrounding terrain and remains stationary while the North American Plate moves west-southwest over it. Jordan Meadow Caldera, (size: 1015km wide); 15.6Ma; 350 cubic kilometers (84cumi) Longridge Tuff member 23. The Yellowstone River has carved through the younger flows, exposing them along the walls of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. Yellowstone Hotspot. According to the study authors, the new discovery rewrites the hotspot's ancient history. The Island Park Caldera is sometimes referred to as the First Phase Yellowstone Caldera or the Huckleberry Ridge Caldera. Produced under a Cooperative Agreement for earth science education between the National Park Service's Geologic Resources Division and the American Geosciences Institute. The Yellowstone hotspot is well known for generating supereruptions in the geologic past that are far more explosive than historic examples. UTM Zone 12: 4945010 N, 492295 E. Check the status and seasonal closing dates of park roads. The USGS states these swarms are likely caused by slips on pre-existing faults rather than by movements of magma or hydrothermal fluids. The next biggest supereruption formed the Yellowstone Caldera (640,000 years ago) and produced the Lava Creek Tuff. (Click on arrows and slide left and right to see labels.). An analysis of crystals from Yellowstone's lava showed that prior to the last supereruption, the magma chamber underwent a rapid increase in temperature and change in composition. Observing what happens when we turn on a lava lamp can help us understand the evolution of the Columbia PlateauYellowstone Hotspot track. When only the stem remains, the magma mixes with melted continental crust and is enriched in silica, forming the rhyolite lavas that poured out across southern Idaho and Yellowstone. Speedy Robo-Gripper Reflexively Organizes What Made Us Human? Hagstrum, J. T. Antipodal hotspots and bipolar catastrophes: Were oceanic large-body impacts the cause? But when it does it expands like the hot wax in a lava lamp. One of the many outstanding murals at the Thomas Condon Visitor Center at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument depicts ancient life on the Columbia Plateau landscape. Geological Society of America. [27], An alternate theory to the mantle plume model was proposed in 2018. Geological Society of America. Similar to the Big Island of Hawaii, a very high region, the Yellowstone Plateau, lies directly above the hotspot. Hawaii sits on a thin oceanic plate, which is easily breached by magma coming to the surface. Vehicle Navigation Systems and GPS units may provide inaccurate information, sending drivers the wrong way on one-way roads, leading them to dead ends in remote areas, or sending them on roads which are closed at certain times of year. 82190-0168, Download the official NPS app before your next visit. Some well-known examples include the Tahiti Islands, Afar Triangle, Easter Island, Iceland, Galapagos Islands, and the Samoan Islands. Smaller steam explosions occur as well an explosion 13,800 years ago left a 5 kilometer diameter crater at Mary Bay on the edge of Yellowstone Lake. 93. Sheep Rock in John Day Fossil Beds National Monument is capped by resistent Columbia Plateau Basalt. Geist, D. & Richards, M. Origin of the Columbia Plateau and Snake River plain: Deflection of the Yellowstone plume. Together they are called the lithosphere . [48], In 2017, NASA conducted a study to determine the feasibility of preventing the volcano from erupting. At Yellowstone, the thick continental plate . Hot water reaches the surface as geysers, hot springs, mudpots, and fumaroles. The wax rises as it becomes less dense than the surrounding oil. The massive outpourings of basalt lava covered the Columbia Plateau and Steens Basalt regions. But superimposed on these active tectonic features is a line of volcanic activity stretching from the Columbia Plateau of eastern Oregon and Washington all the way to the Yellowstone Plateau at the intersection of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. When the Yellowstone Hotspot initially reached the surface 17 million years ago, it was shaped like a mushroom, with a large head and narrow stem. Credit: Photo Courtesy of Robert J. Lillie. Only by diligently monitoring seismic activity around the park will scientists have a clue as to when it's coming. Glacial lake deposits in Hayden Valley form wetland meadows ideal for bison and other wildlife. [18][19] Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, In this case Yellowstone could be expiring. Along with black lights and hookahs, lava lamps are iconic fixtures of the psychedelic 1960s. Although the McDermitt volcanic field on the NevadaOregon border is frequently shown as the site of the initial impingement of the Yellowstone Hotspot, new geochronology and mapping demonstrates that the area affected by this mid-Miocene volcanism is significantly larger than previously appreciated. The Yellowstone hotspot is a volcanic hotspot in the United States responsible for large scale volcanism in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Wyoming, formed as the North American tectonic plate moved over it. 12201 Sunrise Valley Drive Reston, VA 20192. Live Science is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. The most recent lava flow occurred about 70,000 years ago, while the largest violent eruption excavated the West Thumb of Lake Yellowstone around 150,000 years ago. Secure .gov websites use HTTPS Only the islands southwest of Yellowstone are part of the North American continent. The latest large eruption at Yellowstone produced about 1,000 to 2,000 times the volume of material as the 1980 eruption of Mt. Modified from Beauty from the Beast: Plate Tectonics and the Landscapes of the Pacific Northwest, by Robert J. Lillie, Wells Creek Publishers, 92 pp., 2015, www.amazon.com/dp/1512211893. There, two hundred fossilized rhinoceros and many other animals were preserved in two meters of volcanic ash. The caldera is bounded by the Ashton Hill on the south, Big Bend Ridge and Bishop Mountain on the west, by Thurburn Ridge on the North and by Black Mountain and the Madison Plateau on the east. Feature labels. National Park Service sites in this region showcase block-fault mountains and volcanic features forming as the thick crust stretches and . The magma melting off the mantle at a hotspot initially has a low-silica, basalt composition. The most recent major eruption of this hotspot created the Yellowstone Caldera and Lava Creek tuff formation approximately 631,000 years ago [95]. Tectonic plates are composed of Earth's crust and the uppermost, rigid portion of the mantle. The lowest is at the base of the crust, retaining a low-silica (basalt/gabbro) composition. The resulting calderas include the Island Park Caldera, the Henry's Fork Caldera, and the Bruneau-Jarbidge caldera. Secure .gov websites use HTTPS As the Yellowstone Hotspot rises, it expands like a hot-air balloon, causing the Yellowstone Plateau to elevate to great height. St. Helens and the caldera of Mt. Latitude: 44 25' 48.00" NLongitude: -110 40' 12.00" W, Satellite map of Yellowstone hotspot in Google Maps. Scientists are divided over how magma is generated in hotspots. This enormous volcanic island chain, much of which is underwater, stretches across the Pacific for almost 6,000 km. The Pacific Northwest of the United States has a variety of active tectonic settings, including plate convergence at the Cascadia Subduction Zone and divergence in the Basin and Range Continental Rift Zone. Letters are abbreviations for NPS sites listed below. The Yellowstone Hotspot track is superimposed on other tectonic provinces of the Pacific Northwest. ", Related: Rainbow basin: Photos of Yellowstone's colorful Grand Prismatic Hot Spring. [3] These calderas, along with the Virgin Valley Caldera and McDermitt Caldera, are interpreted to have formed during a short interval 16.515.5 million years ago, in the waning stage of the Steens flood basalt volcanism. 0 degrees at the equator to 90 degrees at the poles. 3. [7] At least a dozen of these eruptions were so massive that they are classified as supereruptions. As the Yellowstone hotspot traveled to the east and north, the Columbia disturbance moved northward and eventually subsided. The largest, most cataclysmic of these eruptions are called supereruptions. The region is so high that a small ice capsimilar to the one that currently covers the island of Icelandformed during ice ages. But where does the hot water come from? 52, No. The youngest of the hotspot calderas, the Yellowstone Caldera, formed 640,000 years ago and is about 34 miles (55km) by 45 miles (72km) wide. . As a lava flow cools it shrinks, putting the surface of the flow under tensional forces that form cracks, known as joints. If the cooling is uniform, circular columns try to form, but there are spaces between the cracks. The Kilauea volcano is the main vent for this hotspot and has been actively erupting since 1983. Therefore, we targeted the Yellowstone hotspot track in the United States because it is one of the best-preserved intraplate large igneous provinces, where time-transgressive magmatism (due to 2 cm/yr plate motion; Armstrong et al., 1975; Anders et al., 2019) allows study of the temporal relationships among magma production, residence . As happened at Crater Lake, volcanic material poured out onto the floor of the Yellowstone Caldera. The major features of the caldera measure about 34 by 45 miles. Some geologists have suggested another geological process not involving plate tectonics may be involved, such as large space objects crashing into the earth [89]. The origin and sustained longevity of the hotspot is less understood but is focused on two competing models, where the ascent of hot mantle is derived from either a deep-seated mantle plume or a shallow mantle source. During recent ice ages, the Yellowstone Plateau was covered by a 3,000-foot (1,000-meter) layer of ice, similar to the modern ice cap that covers part of Iceland. 84. Photo courtesy of Robert J. Lillie. 12201 Sunrise Valley Drive Reston, VA 20192. Hot material rises from deep within Earths mantle and melts, forming basalt magma at the base of the crust. Younger basalt lava flows (some from Basin and Range continental rifting) cover much of the earlier rhyolite supervolcanic centers. Scientists have identified a number of current and past hotspots believed to have begun this way. A bow-wave or parabola-shaped zone of mountains (browns and tans) and earthquakes (red dots) surrounds the low elevations (greens) of the seismically quiet Snake River Plain. It has been suggested the Yellowstone hotspot is connected to the much older Columbia River flood basalts [93] and even to 70 million-year-old volcanism found in the Yukon region of Canada [94]. [15][16] The most recent lava flow occurred about 70,000 years ago, while a violent eruption excavated the West Thumb of Lake Yellowstone 174,000 years ago. The Wilson Cycle provides a broad overview of the tectonic plate movement. The Islands are located in the northern part of the Nazca plate, which is slowly drifting in a southeasterly direction at a rate of approximately 5cm per year. Hoppin Peaks Caldera, 16Ma; Hoppin Peaks Tuff. [48] Two of those areas are associated with lava flows aged 174,00070,000 years, and the third is a focus of present-day seismicity. Shaded relief map of the Pacific Northwest highlighting National Park Service sites along the Yellowstone Hotspot track. Like Hawaii, the Yellowstone region lies directly above a hotspot. Plate motion carries the region of extensive basalt lava away, but the magma rising from the stem must somehow work its way to the surface. As the plate moves across the hotspot, the volcano center becomes extinct because it is no longer over an active magma source. There are now six recorded supereruptions that occurred during the Miocene epoch, between 23 million and 5.3 million years ago. Researchers have recorded at least four other supereruptions over the past 12 million years, but one 2016 study estimated that at least a dozen supereruptions have occurred since then. Lava from large fissures in northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington was so fluid that it flowed considerable distances, forming the numerous layers of basalt familiar to visitors to the Columbia Gorge. Figure is from the book "Windows into the Earth: The Geologic Story of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks," by Robert Smith and Lee Siegel. Modified from Oregon's Island in the Sky: Geology Road Guide to Marys Peak, by Robert J. Lillie, Wells Creek Publishers, 75 pp., 2017, www.amazon.com/dp/1540611965. The appearance of "light" magmas would seem to indicate that the uppermost portion of the continental crust has largely been consumed by the earlier caldera- forming events, exhausting the melting potential of the crust above the mantle plume. As North America drifted southwest over the hotspot, the volcanism progressed northeast, beginning in northern Nevada and southeast Oregon 16.5 million years ago and reaching Yellowstone National Park 2 million years ago.