Monday, February 14, 2011

A lil about how its created...

Yellowstone National Park sits atop a hot spot, which is responsible for the creation of many of the geographic features of the park. As the North American plate moved over the hotspot, a series of volcanic eruptions left behind a trail known as the Snake River Plain. 
                                                               Topographic map of the Snake River Plain

 (http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/vwdocs/vwlessons/hot_spot_pics/SRP_Thematic_Map.gif&imgrefurl=http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/north_america/yellowstone.html)

One of the violent eruptions caused the overlying land to collapse and resulted in a geographic depression known as a caldera. Yellowstone is known for its geothermal activity such as geysers and hot springs, which is caused in part by the large chamber of magma under the calderas' surface heating the recirculation ground water. 

(http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/Thumblinks/yellowstone_page.html)

                                                                               A Yellowstone hot spring

(http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://media.away.com/images/ideas/rockies/yellowstone-national-park.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.gorp.com/parks-guide/travel-ta-trekking-backpacking-wyoming-hiking-yellowstone-national-park-gardiner-fishing-sidwcmdev_059157.html)


The magma chamber is inflating, which stretches the crust above the chamber, causing extension faulting like at Mirror Lake. Pressure from the magma below has caused the land at two faults to snap and the area between them is depressed, which is called graben. On the west side of this graben, fault scarp is visible. Mirror Lake is also a sagpond, and fills a depression in the uneven ground at one of the faults. 

                                   Mirror Lake and the graben resulting from the two faults

(http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/images/1992-rbs-aerialmirror_large.jpg&imgrefurl=http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/images/1992-rbs-aerialmirror_caption.html)

                              Fault scarp at Mirror Lake

 (http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/images/1992-rbs-aerialmirror_caption.html)


These volcanic systems unfortunately produce 1000-3000 earthquakes a year, which can be devastating to the humans inhabiting the region.

                                            Earthquakes in Yellowstone from 1973-2001

(http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2010/02/the_structure_of_calderas.php)


http://www.nps.gov/yell/naturescience/smithtranscript.htm
  http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/images/1992-rbs-aerialmirror_caption.html

2 comments:

  1. Brittany-

    Great blog! I love the formatting and writings, it makes it feel like your writing this in a journal! Your explanations of the forms and processes are wonderful. My only thing I would comment on is try to show examples in the pictures. IE: This picture explains the _______. As stated in class today (Tuesday Feb 22), Kaelin said to use the captions to explain something, and then in the actual writing explain the caption more in depth! Good work so far on the blog! Hope this information helps out a little!

    Kara DeGeneres

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  2. Brittany,

    Yellowstone is on my list of places I want to visit soon. Between class and your blog I now have a greater understanding of the park. The graphic illustrating the interaction of Yellowstone's hotspot and the ground water is a great way to describe how the geysers occur. I would be interested to know when the last big earthquake occured. I will have to do some research.

    Brad Boland

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