August 27 is the anniversary of the final explosion of Krakatoa in 1883. This week we’ll take a look at Supervolcanoes, fact and fiction.🌋
Sharon Lyon
Editor, GeoLifestyle
Yellowstone National Park
Clockwise from upper left: Old Faithful Geyser; Norris Geyser Basin; Travertine steps; Mudpots.
Yellowstone National Park was the first national park established in the world. The park encompasses parts of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.
Geology: Yellowstone sits atop a stationary volcanic hotspot, with the North American tectonic plate moving in a southwest direction over it.
Three enormous caldera-forming eruptions occurred in the last 2.1 million years. The last supereruption formed the massive Yellowstone Caldera about 640,000 years ago. The three nested calderas are partially filled with the world’s largest rhyolite lava flows, with a thickness of 300 feet.
Pyroclastic flows during the explosive caldera-forming eruptions filled valleys and deposited welded tuffs in the surrounding mountains.
Basaltic lava flows also occurred. The last lava flow was 70,000 years ago.
The park is geothermally and tectonically active, underlain by a magma chamber and a deeper mantle plume. Between 1,000–2,000 earthquakes occur annually.
Yellowstone hosts more than 10,000 hydrothermal features, powered by the heat from the underlying magma chamber, interacting with groundwater.
Early History: Indigenous peoples lived in and traveled through the Yellowstone region for at least the past 11,000 years.
In 1807, John Colter, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, described the geothermal marvels in the area, but his report was met with skepticism.
In 1871, the Hayden Geological Survey mapped, photographed, and documented the area. The photographs and reports were shared with Senators and Congressmen to promote preservation.
In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act.
Recent History: In 1978, Yellowstone was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In 1988, major fires scorched one-third of the park, aided by dry summer conditions and high winds.
In June 2022, a rain-on-snow event caused substantial flooding along the Yellowstone River and its tributaries, with rockslides, mudslides, and damage to roads and critical infrastructure.
In July 2024, Yellowstone was in the news after a hydrothermal explosion occurred at the Biscuit Basin. The area remains closed.
Geyser Basins: More than 500 geysers are found in Yellowstone—the largest concentration of active geysers in the world.
Old Faithful Geyser is the most famous in the park, easily accessible, and erupting on a regular schedule. It is found in the Upper Geyser Basin, along with many other geysers, some predictable, some not.
The Midway Geyser Basin includes Excelsior Geyser Crater, a boiling spring, and Grand Prismatic Spring, a colorful hot spring. The colorful green to red edges of the hot spring are caused by microbial mats of thermophilic bacteria.
The Lower Geyser Basin features geysers such as Fountain Geyser and Great Fountain Geyser, mud pots, hot springs, and fumaroles.
The Norris Geyser Basin features Steamboat Geyser, the world’s tallest active geyser, along with loud and hissing fumaroles and steam plumes.
The West Thumb Geyser Basin, on Yellowstone Lake, includes the famous Fishing Cone where fishermen could catch a trout, swing the pole around, and cook the fish in the boiling water. The Fishing Cone is now off-limits.
Travertine Terraces: Walk across the boardwalk at Mammoth Hot Springs to see these beautiful limestone steps, formed by hot water dissolving and depositing calcium carbonate.
Mud pots and Fumaroles: Bubbling, acidic mud pots and fumaroles (gas vents) are best seen in the Mud Volcano area. The rotten egg smell is from hydrogen sulfide gas.
Visiting Tips: Yellowstone is immense. We stayed in two different locations inside the park to access different sites—Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel and Grant Village Lodge. National Park Service accommodations are adequate but not luxurious.
Start your day early to see the animals. Bear jams and bison jams tie up traffic. Do not get too close to the wildlife!
Stay on the marked trails and boardwalks. The geysers and hot springs are boiling, and the crust can be thin. The hottest spring, deep beneath Yellowstone Lake, is 345°F.
The Bottom Line: Yellowstone National Park is a must-see locale for any geoscientist. The park contains the largest assortment of easily accessible hydrothermal features in the world.
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Paradise is a post-apocalyptic thriller set in a dystopian underground city. Because the story unfolds in a series of flashbacks, the reason to include the series in GeoLifestyle only becomes apparent halfway through Season 1. Note: this contains spoilers, so if you haven’t yet viewed the series, you may want to skip reading the rest.
The premise: Twelve years prior, billionaire Samantha Redmond (Julianne Nicholson) commissioned the excavation and construction of an underground city in Colorado, named Paradise.
Initially, the viewer only knows that a worldwide catastrophe has occurred. In Paradise, a group of billionaires manipulates U.S. President Bradford (James Marsden) and controls the city of 25,000 people.
In episode 1, the president is found murdered in his bedroom.
The big questions: Who killed the president? And what earth-shattering event has occurred to force the survivors to live underground?
It is up to Secret Service Agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) to solve the murder. The first person to discover the body, he has his own reasons for hating the president. Who can he trust? Can viewers trust him?
The catastrophe: Through the flashbacks the show uses to good effect, we learn a supervolcano has exploded beneath the glaciers in Antarctica. The eruption melted massive amounts of ice and generated 500-foot tsunamis, which hit all coastal areas, including Washington, D.C. Top government officials and their families are evacuated, but not all planes survive the trip to Paradise. The billionaires all seem to make it there, however.
Immediately after the eruption, Russia and China launch nuclear weapons to claim the remaining earth resources. (I’m unsure how nuclear obliteration would accomplish this).
Instead of retaliating, President Bradford launches an EMP weapon to destroy Earth’s electronics and therefore stop incoming missiles. We do not know if this effort was successful.
Are there surface survivors? To find out, a team of Paradise scientists goes on a mission to the surface. They find the air breathable and encounter one survivor. They are murdered for their discovery and do not return.
What’s Next? After solving the president’s murder, Agent Collins steals a plane and heads to the surface.
Burning Questions: Will there be additional survivors? Is his missing wife still alive? How exactly do the underground gardeners grow all those fresh vegetables for the grocery stores? Stay tuned for Season 2.
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