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Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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 Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 2:02 am Post subject: 250 tremors in Yellowstone National Park |
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081230/ap_on_sc/yellowstone_quakes
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| Yellowstone remains very geologically active � and its famous geysers and hot springs are a reminder that a pool of magma still exists five to 10 miles underground. |
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| Yellowstone National Park was jostled by a host of small earthquakes for a third straight day Monday, and scientists watched closely to see whether the more than 250 tremors were a sign of something bigger to come |
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sojourner1
Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Location: Where meggi swim and 2 wheeled tractors go sput put chug alugg pug pug
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| Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 3:54 am Post subject: |
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| Yellowstone could blast up at any time and become a brand new volcano. What a geological case in study that will be. |
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dmbfan
Joined: 09 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 4:11 am Post subject: |
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Well, I guess my home in Whitefish will be gone.
That sucks.
dmbfan
P.S. I did watch the special about this topic on the Discovery Channel, though. |
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Gatsby
Joined: 09 Feb 2007
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| Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 5:21 pm Post subject: |
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To say that Yellowstone could become a "brand new volcano" is inaccurate.
Yellowstone already is a volcano, one that has erupted with devastating effect many times over geological history.
To say that it is a "dormant" volcano seems to me misleading. People don't come to Yellowstone to see a dormant volcano; they come to see the hotsprings and geysers, and wildlife and scenery.
Yellowstone is geologically active. And it is apparently building pressure that is raising the height of some features, combined with a trend of increasing seismic activity over several years.
The reports remind me of the news stories that preceded the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. But Yellowstone is a different situation. The geologists probably have some idea what is going to happen. But until they can give a warning of reasonably high probability, they probably aren't going to tell this to the press because when it does blow, it has the potential to be one of the biggest eruptions in the world in millions of years.
This is because Yellowstone is a "supervolcano" or "megavolcano," the most powerful volcanoes on Earth.
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The Yellowstone Caldera is the volcanic caldera in Yellowstone National Park in the United States. It is located in the northwest corner of Wyoming extending into portions of Montana and Idaho. The major features of the caldera measure about 55 kilometers (34 mi) by 72 kilometers (45 mi) as determined by geological field work conducted by Bob Christiansen of the United States Geological Survey in the 1960s and 1970s. After a BBC television science program coined the term supervolcano in 2000, it has often been referred to as the "Yellowstone supervolcano." |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera
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Known super eruptions
Satellite image of Lake Toba, the site of a VEI-8 eruption ~75,000 years ago.
Estimates of the volume of ejected material are given in parentheses.
VEI 8 eruptions have happened in the following locations.
Lake Taupo, North Island, New Zealand - Oruanui eruption ~26,500 years ago (~1,170 km3)
Lake Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia - ~75,000 years ago (~2,800 km3)
Whakamaru, North Island, New Zealand - Whakamaru Ignimbrite/Mount Curl Tephra ~254,000 years ago (1,200-2,000 km3)[5]
Yellowstone Caldera, Wyoming, United States - 640,000 years ago (1,000 km3)
Island Park Caldera, Idaho/Wyoming, United States - 2.1 million years ago(2,500 km3)
Kilgore Tuff, Idaho, United States - 4.5 million years ago (1,800 km3)
Black Tail Creek, Idaho, United States - 6.6 millions years ago (1,500 km3)
La Garita Caldera, Colorado, United States - Source of the truly enormous eruption of the Fish Canyon Tuff ~27.8 million years ago (~5,000 km3)
A National Geographic documentary called Earth Shocks portrayed the destructive impact of the rapid eruption at Lake Toba approximately 75,000 years ago, which caused a phenomenon known as the Millennial Ice Age that lasted for ~1000 years and killed an estimated 60 to 75%[16][17][18][19][20] of the human population of the time.
An eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano is one of the scenarios depicted in the docu-drama End Day, BBC website.
In 2005 a two-part television docudrama entitled Supervolcano was shown on BBC, the Discovery Channel, and other television networks worldwide. It looked at the events that could take place if the Yellowstone supervolcano erupted. It featured footage of volcano eruptions from around the world and computer-generated imagery depicting the event. According to the program, such an eruption would have devastating effect across the globe and would cover virtually all of the United States with at least 1 cm of volcanic ash, causing mass destruction in the nearby vicinity and killing plants and wildlife across the continent. The dramatic elements in the program were followed by Supervolcano: The Truth About Yellowstone, a documentary about the evidence behind the movie. The program had originally been scheduled to be transmitted in early 2005, but it was felt that this would be insensitive so soon after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The program and its accompanying documentaries were released on DVD region 2 simultaneously with its broadcast. Nova featured an episode Mystery of the Megavolcano, examining such eruptions in the last 100,000 years.[21] |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano
Yellowstone will erupt again. The question is when. |
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Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 8:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Gatsby wrote: |
it has the potential to be one of the biggest eruptions in the world in millions of years.
This is because Yellowstone is a "supervolcano" or "megavolcano," the most powerful volcanoes on Earth. |
I lived at worked at Yellowstone in the summer of 1992.
I do recall that as well, that when this thing blows, it is going to be powerful. |
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moosehead
Joined: 05 May 2007
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 9:29 pm Post subject: |
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there was a show on the Discovery channel maybe 1999, 2000?
someone had been taking surveys of the land over time and realized a certain area which turned out to be dome shaped had risen a dramatic 12 inches over a decade (or 2?) (don't recall).
the show went on to explain about the area underneath and yes, how it is active and it could very well emerge again as a volcano and if so, it would be absolutely devastating to the region.
I tried to discuss it at work at the time and this one woman sneered and laughed and said it was "doomsday sensationalism" - but then - she was a scientologist 
at any rate - yes, scientists do know about Yellowstone and the potential but no doubt came up against the same sort of ignorance I did -
can you imagine trying to explain this to a Washington bureaucrat??
"uh, we need to apply for funding for the possibility of Yellowstone erupting into a major volcano"
"yes, ok, you need to submit x, y, z and provide ample proof, references, a, b, c, and a date as well as all conceivable evidence"
"well, that's just it, we aren't really sure, but the event could be catastrophic"
"next!"
everyone saw Katrina coming and still not enough was done - an event like this - can you even imagine people trying to plan? they'd be labeled as crazy -
just don't plan any vacations there or buy any property w/i at least a thousand miles! |
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Gatsby
Joined: 09 Feb 2007
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 6:20 am Post subject: |
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I don't think warnings from volcanologists would be ignored in D.C. concerning Yellowstone. The U.S. takes these sort of warnings seriously these days. But we aren't at the point of an immanent eruption. And if we were, chances are it wouldn't be on the scale of a normal volcano, say a Mt. St. Helens. Yellowstone eruptions could be some 300 times more powerful.
Think about that for a minute.
If that happened, what could the U.S. do to prepare or even respond? The whole world would be affected. Jet travel would come to a halt, perhaps for months or years, because of volcanic ash in the air. Most satellite communication would be blocked. Crops would fail almost everywhere, perhaps for several years.
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More Blasts From Yellowstone's Past: Hotspot Generated 142 Huge Eruptions, 40 Percent More Than Previously Known
ScienceDaily (July 16, 2002) � July 15, 2002 -- The Yellowstone hotspot, which powers Yellowstone National Park's geysers and hot springs, produced 142 huge volcanic eruptions during the last 16.5 million years - far more than the 100 previously known blasts, University of Utah geologists found.
The cataclysmic explosions - known as "caldera eruptions" - typically generated 250 to 600 times as much volcanic ash as the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state, and some were up to 2,500 times larger, covering as much as half the continental United States with inches to feet of volcanic ash.
While geologists Michael Perkins and Barbara Nash identified many more of these catastrophic eruptions than had been known previously, they also showed the rate of such eruptions has slowed: about 32 giant eruptions per million years before 15.2 million years ago, slowing to 10 to 20 huge eruptions per million years between 15.2 million and 8.5 million years ago, and then only 2.5 cataclysmic blasts per million years during the past 8.5 million years.
Caldera eruptions have that name because they create giant craters known as calderas that measure tens of miles wide. They are the most devastating but most rare type of eruption.
The Yellowstone hotspot - which many scientists believe is a plume-like zone of hot and molten rising from at least 125 miles beneath Earth's surface - produced its three most recent caldera eruptions at or near the present site of Yellowstone National Park 2 million, 1.3 million and 642,000 years ago. The other, earlier eruptions happened as western North America drifted southwest over the hotspot during the past 16.5 million years, creating a chain of volcanic fields or centers extending from the Oregon-Nevada-Idaho border northeast across southern Idaho toward Yellowstone's present location in Wyoming.... |
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/07/020716081303.htm
Here is the show "Supervolcano":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF-RKzqNtz0&feature=PlayList&p=83F6492FA7EACDEA&index=0&playnext=1 |
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Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
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| Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 5:33 pm Post subject: |
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Garrison Keillor has written a nice article on it - he advises fleeing to France and living the good life till your money runs out ...
Here's a small excerpt:
... The volcano hasn�t blown for 70,000 years, which suggests to me that the Big Belch is overdue. And when the volcano blows and Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah and Nevada go 30,000 feet into the air and drift east to become part of the Midwest and Eastern seaboard, you will be able to watch it on Google Earth until the boulders start dropping on your roof and fifty feet of topsoil and the power goes out and you lose your Internet connection and all your Facebook friends disappear and you must now bang on the pipes and hope the rescue parties hear you.
I would rather be in Paris.
A Yellowstone spokeswoman says, "There doesn�t seem to be anything to be alarmed about." When a government spokeswoman says that, a person looks around for the nearest exit...
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/36903604.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ |
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samcheokguy
Joined: 02 Nov 2008
Location: Samcheok G-do
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| Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 6:08 pm Post subject: |
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| the nice thing about the yellow stone caldera (I went to a science school, fail math, and ended up in geology class) is you can't even plan for it. So why worry? It would be a literally earth-shattering event. |
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chris_J2
Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Location: From Brisbane, Au.
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TexasPete
Joined: 24 May 2006
Location: Koreatown
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| Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 11:53 pm Post subject: |
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| I hope we're all lonnnnnnng dead when it does finally go. I seriously do not want to imagine thee effect this would have on the world. |
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moosehead
Joined: 05 May 2007
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| Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 12:31 am Post subject: |
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| Gatsby wrote: |
I don't think warnings from volcanologists would be ignored in D.C. concerning Yellowstone. The U.S. takes these sort of warnings seriously these days. But we aren't at the point of an immanent eruption. And if we were, chances are it wouldn't be on the scale of a normal volcano, say a Mt. St. Helens. Yellowstone eruptions could be some 300 times more powerful.
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I appreciate what you are saying, however, I think the above paragraph
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If that happened, what could the U.S. do to prepare or even respond? The whole world would be affected. Jet travel would come to a halt, perhaps for months or years, because of volcanic ash in the air. Most satellite communication would be blocked. Crops would fail almost everywhere, perhaps for several years.
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is contradicted by this one. 
most govts do not eagerly anticipate, much less plan for, major catastrophes they feel helpless about - it only leads to voting in someone who is less pessimistic and more likely to be willing to avoid talking about the painful realities we live in - look at the AIDs crisis and how hard it was to get govt talking about that - I recall R Reagan didn't even mention AIDs when he was president? |
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