Yellowstone eruption threat high

[Makalakumu]

Check out this article...

Yellowstone eruption threat high
Kilauea, Mount St. Helens, Rainier, Hood, Shasta top list

The Associated Press

Updated: 10:46 a.m. ET May 9, 2005



YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. - The Yellowstone caldera has been classified a high threat for volcanic eruption, according to a report from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Yellowstone ranks 21st most dangerous of the 169 volcano centers in the United States, according to the Geological Survey's first-ever comprehensive review of the nation's volcanoes.

Kilauea in Hawaii received the highest overall threat score followed by Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier in Washington, Mount Hood in Oregon and Mount Shasta in California. Kilauea has been erupting since 1983. Mount St. Helens, which erupted catastrophically in 1980, began venting again in 2004.

Those volcanoes fall within the very high threat group, which includes 18 systems. Yellowstone is classified with 36 others as high threat.

Recurring earthquake swarms, swelling and falling ground, and changes in hydrothermal features are cited in the report as evidence of unrest at Yellowstone.

The report calls for better monitoring of the 55 volcanoes in the very high and high threat categories to track seismic activity, ground bulging, gas emissions and hydrologic changes.

University of Utah geology professor Robert Smith, who monitors earthquakes and volcanic activity in Yellowstone, said more real-time monitoring should be helpful. "We've really been stressing over the last couple of years that the USGS should consider hazards as a very high priority in their future," he said. "We need to get the public's confidence and the perception that we're doing it right."

The university has joined the Geological Survey and Yellowstone National Park in creating the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, which uses ground-based instruments throughout the region and satellite data to monitor volcanic and earthquake unrest in the world's first national park.

The USGS report recognizes Yellowstone as an unusual hazard because of the millions of people who visit the park and walk amid features created by North America's largest volcanic system, Smith said, a status he has been advocating for years.

Smith does not paint the devastating picture portrayed in a recent TV docudrama but said smaller threats exist. For example, a lower-scale hydrothermal blast could scald tourists strolling along boardwalks.

Emissions of toxic gases from the park's geothermal features also pose a threat. Five bison dropped dead last year after inhaling poisonous gases trapped near the ground due to cold, calm weather near Norris Geyser Basin.

Stepped up monitoring and a new 24-hour watch office could lead to more timely warnings and help avoid human catastrophes at Yellowstone and nationally, according to the USGS.

Forty-five eruptions, including 15 cases of notable volcanic unrest, have been documented at 33 volcanoes in the U.S. since 1980, according to the report, released April 29.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

© 2005 MSNBC.com

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Now, check out this link...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano

What do you think?[/font]

 

[Tgace]

Check out this article...



Now, check out this link...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano

What do you think?

Dude..what is it with all the doomsday stuff? How can you live thinking about all this ****? If a supervolcano wipes out the human race what the heck are we going to do about it? I used to listen to Art Bell overnight too..then I stopped when I realized that 99% of the stuff was fearmongering. If I worried about everything that "might" happen to me whan I leave the house Id never make it through a day of work.

 

[Makalakumu]

Dude..what is it with all the doomsday stuff? How can you live thinking about all this ****? If a supervolcano wipes out the human race what the heck are we going to do about it? I used to listen to Art Bell overnight too..then I stopped when I realized that 99% of the stuff was fearmongering. If I worried about everything that "might" happen to me whan I leave the house Id never make it through a day of work.

Morbid Fascination, I guess...except that this Yellowstone stuff is for real. I've been out there and I've seen the data and observations. I'm wondering why the USGS would put out a report that would absolutely scare the **** out of anyone who knows the slightest bit about supervolcanoes? What kind of recent data are they looking at?

 

[Bammx2]

I just watched the documentary about super valcanoes here in the UK about a month and a half ago......

I can't remember the exact numbers,but for explaination sake.....
it said something along the lines of....
"yellowstone erupts on the average of every 40,000 years.
Give or take a century or two.
The last time was almost 47,000 years ago........"

They did a computer sim of it.....

we's all in trouble!

 

[PeachMonkey]

If we're actually going to talk about the USGS report on the Yellowstone "supervolcano" (not a word that vulcanologists actually use, by the way, but one cooked up by a BBC documentary), let's look at their actual findings (emphasis mine):

Any renewed volcanic activity at Yellowstone would most likely take the form of such mainly nonexplosive lava eruptions. An eruption of lava could cause widespread havoc in the park, including fires and the loss of roads and facilities, but more distant areas would probably remain largely unaffected.

Speaking about the "super-eruptions" people are freaking out about:

Fortunately, the Yellowstone volcanic system shows no signs that it is headed toward such an eruption in the near future. In fact, the probability of any such event occurring at Yellowstone within the next few thousand years is exceedingly low.

Unless you expect your regimen of Ginsana to keep you alive longer than the next few thousand years, I don't think you have too much to worry about.

 

[Makalakumu]

If we're actually going to talk about the USGS report on the Yellowstone "supervolcano" (not a word that vulcanologists actually use, by the way, but one cooked up by a BBC documentary), let's look at their actual findings (emphasis mine):

Speaking about the "super-eruptions" people are freaking out about:

Unless you expect your regimen of Ginsana to keep you alive longer than the next few thousand years, I don't think you have too much to worry about.
[/size]

Do you have a link to that report?

Also, Ivan Watkins was calling em "supervolcanoes" before the BBC show came along...

 

[MA-Caver]

They did a computer sim of it.....
we's all in trouble!

WE's all in trouble? No, you're safely tucked in the UK homey thus according to the seismic monitors nothing has happened there in quite a long time.
I've been to Yellowstone too, gorgeous place by the way and worth a visit or two. Of course the area is ripe for some seismic activity and volcanic displacement of liquid hot mag-ma. :wink1: There are hundreds of hotsprings and gysers all around the park, it's what makes it so unique and beautiful, which is indicative of underground (love it!) activity.
But again the seismic monitors don't show any major activity in the area for quite some time either.
The site of the tsunami disaster is still very active, and probably will be for some time now as the settling of the plates still occur.
I only live roughly less than 200 miles (south) of the Yellowstone basin. The whole range of mountains are overdue for some type of geological event. Catastrophic? :idunno: I'm only an ameteur geologist (read: caver) and can only speculate that something is going to happen. Closer to home we get tiny quakes a little south of us from time to time, nothing to even register or get into a huff about.
Lots of people want to go into a hue and cry about the end of the world. It makes money... among other things. On a geological scale of things there nothing at all to do about it except the aftermath where we can put our national and individual humanity to the test.

 

[Bammx2]

WE's all in trouble? No, you're safely tucked in the UK homey thus according to the seismic monitors nothing has happened there in quite a long time.
I've been to Yellowstone too, gorgeous place by the way and worth a visit or two. Of course the area is ripe for some seismic activity and volcanic displacement of liquid hot mag-ma. :wink1: There are hundreds of hotsprings and gysers all around the park, it's what makes it so unique and beautiful, which is indicative of underground (love it!) activity.
But again the seismic monitors don't show any major activity in the area for quite some time either.
The site of the tsunami disaster is still very active, and probably will be for some time now as the settling of the plates still occur.
I only live roughly less than 200 miles (south) of the Yellowstone basin. The whole range of mountains are overdue for some type of geological event. Catastrophic? :idunno: I'm only an ameteur geologist (read: caver) and can only speculate that something is going to happen. Closer to home we get tiny quakes a little south of us from time to time, nothing to even register or get into a huff about.
Lots of people want to go into a hue and cry about the end of the world. It makes money... among other things. On a geological scale of things there nothing at all to do about it except the aftermath where we can put our national and individual humanity to the test.

I agree...and IF it was to go off like the simulation...it would have catostrophic results world wide...even here in the UK.
BUT....I hope to be back home in the next 2 years anyway.
But I have to admit you are right about one thing....
if someone in malaysia sneezes......someone in idaho is gonna get the samoan chicken flu because of it

People do have a tendancy to blow things out of proportion and panic at the slightest little thing.
But at the end of the day...all this technology can't save us from the natural progression of the universe.And just because we are comfortable in the thought of "it won't happen in our lifetime"...dosen't make it so.
oops...going the wrong way again...sorry y'all.
MACaver...I hope you didn't take this as a dig towards you.
You just made me think of something else.
Something that made me go...hhmm............

 

[MA-Caver]

MACaver...I hope you didn't take this as a dig towards you.
You just made me think of something else.
Something that made me go...hhmm............

:idunno: How would I take it as a dig against ME? :idunno:
No worries mate.

 

[Tgace]

This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper...

http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.596/pop-cult.596

 

[rmcrobertson]

It's interesting that one would link to that site, given its citations of libs and lefties like Baudrillard, Derrida and Heilbroner...including this, a reutation of Francis Fukuyama's blithe psalm to the triumph of capitalism:

"This think-tank idealism's blithe elision of the
manifest empirical facts of our time prompts Jacques Derrida
to write:

it must be cried out, at a time when some
have the audacity to neo-evangelize in the
name of the ideal of a liberal democracy
that has finally realized itself as the
ideal of human history: never have violence,
inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus
economic oppression affected as many human
beings in the history of the earth and of
humanity. Instead of singing the advent of
the ideal of liberal democracy and of the
capitalist market in the euphoria of the end
of history, instead of celebrating the "end
of ideologies" and the end of the great
emancipatory discourses, let us never neglect
this obvious macroscopic fact, made up of
innumerable singular sites of suffering: no
degree of progress allows one to ignore that
never before, in absolute figures, never have
so many men, women, and children been
subjugated, starved, or exterminated on
the earth. (85)"


Yellowstone going boom. Cool summer movie topic.

 

[Makalakumu]

Yellowstone going boom. Cool summer movie topic.

I'd go to see that, but seriously, magma chamber eruptions are bad news. Yellowstone has multiple caldera (they overlap) in it that exceed 40 km in diameter.

 

[PeachMonkey]

Do you have a link to that report?

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2005/3024/

 

[Tgace]

It's interesting that one would link to that site, given its citations of libs and lefties like Baudrillard, Derrida and Heilbroner...including this, a reutation of Francis Fukuyama's blithe psalm to the triumph of capitalism:

Why do you think I chose it?

 

[Makalakumu]

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2005/3024/

Thanks Peach...this is from the above source...

The Yellowstone region has produced three exceedingly large volcanic eruptions in the past 2.1 million years. In each of these cataclysmic events, enormous volumes of magma erupted at the surface and into the atmosphere as mixtures of red-hot pumice, volcanic ash (small, jagged fragments of volcanic glass and rock), and gas that spread as pyroclastic (“fire-broken”) flows in all directions. Rapid withdrawal of such large volumes of magma from the subsurface then caused the ground to collapse, swallowing overlying mountains and creating broad cauldron-shaped volcanic depressions called “calderas.”

The first of these caldera-forming eruptions 2.1 million years ago created a widespread volcanic deposit known as the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff, an outcrop of which can be viewed at Golden Gate, south of Mammoth Hot Springs. This titanic event, one of the five largest individual volcanic eruptions known anywhere on the Earth, formed a caldera more than 60 miles (100 km) across.

A similar, smaller but still huge eruption occurred 1.3 million years ago. This eruption formed the Henrys Fork Caldera, located in the area of Island Park, west of Yellowstone National Park, and produced another widespread volcanic deposit called the Mesa Falls Tuff.


The region’s most recent caldera-forming eruption 640,000 years ago created the 35-mile-wide, 50-mile-long (55 by 80 km) Yellowstone Caldera. Pyroclastic flows from this eruption left thick volcanic deposits known as the Lava Creek Tuff, which can be seen in the south-facing cliffs east of Madison, where they form the north wall of the caldera. Huge volumes of volcanic ash were blasted high into the atmosphere, and deposits of this ash can still be found in places as distant from Yellowstone as Iowa, Louisiana, and California.

Each of Yellowstone’s explosive caldera-forming eruptions occurred when large volumes of “rhyolitic” magma accumulated at shallow levels in the Earth’s crust, as little as 3 miles (5 km) below the surface. This highly viscous (thick and sticky) magma, charged with dissolved gas, then moved upward, stressing the crust and generating earthquakes. As the magma neared the surface and pressure decreased, the expanding gas caused violent explosions. Eruptions of rhyolite have been responsible for forming many of the world’s calderas, such as those at Katmai National Park, Alaska, which formed in an eruption in 1912, and at Long Valley, California.
If another large caldera-forming eruption were to occur at Yellowstone, its effects would be worldwide. Thick ash deposits would bury vast areas of the United States, and injection of huge volumes of volcanic gases into the atmosphere could drastically affect global climate. Fortunately, the Yellowstone volcanic system shows no signs that it is headed toward such an eruption. The probability of a large caldera-forming eruption within the next few thousand years is exceedingly low.

Nobody has every witnessed anything like this. Nobody even knows what the warning signs would be. I'm curious as to what current data the USGS used to upgrade Yellowstone's status. Heck, people aren't going to cry wolf about this type of eruption. There would be mass panic. Of course, it wouldn't make much difference if the eruption was expected. You couldn't run far enough on this globe...and if you survive, you will wish you hadn't.

 

[OUMoose]

Just curious, but haven't they been saying Yellowstone was going to pop for years now? Same with the with the largely inactive fault that runs through the midwest? Unfortunately this is the kind of thing that if it happens, there is no one in this world that can stop it or control it.

*shrug* I'm sure it'll be on CNN just like everything else...

 

[PeachMonkey]

I'm curious as to what current data the USGS used to upgrade Yellowstone's status.

You can see the exact current data in this PDF file, linked off the report you posted:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1164/2005-1164.pdf

The cataclysmic eruptions you discuss are still not expected in the next few thousand years. The threats from Yellowstone are considered high because of recurrent earthquake swarms and ground deformation and changes in hydrothermal features; these activities are considered consistent with potential lava explosions and steam explosions within close proximity of areas where over three million tourists visit each year and a huge amount of civil aviation takes place.

The report also points out that Yellowstone hosts a great deal of earthquake activity not linked to volcanic activity.

 

[Makalakumu]

You can see the exact current data in this PDF file, linked off the report you posted:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1164/2005-1164.pdf

The cataclysmic eruptions you discuss are still not expected in the next few thousand years...

Again, nobody has ever witnessed a magma chamber eruption. Nobody has any real data as to what they would look like before or after the event. I think the "thousands of years" prediction is more "public peace of mind" then science. I can't see how someone studying this could be able to make that prediction.

The threats from Yellowstone are considered high because of recurrent earthquake swarms and ground deformation and changes in hydrothermal features; these activities are considered consistent with potential lava explosions and steam explosions within close proximity of areas where over three million tourists visit each year and a huge amount of civil aviation takes place.

Large scale swelling measured in Yellowstone. Large movements of the Earth, usually start as small movements. There is no real way to differentiate between the small and large scale events.

The report also points out that Yellowstone hosts a great deal of earthquake activity not linked to volcanic activity.

What is causing the earthquake activity? Tectonic forces in that region are dominated by the Yellowstone hotspot and less by the basin/range tectonics of the further west. In Yellowstone, it is hard to say that an earthquake is purely seismic or purely volcanic.

 

[Rynocerous]

Dude..what is it with all the doomsday stuff? How can you live thinking about all this ****? If a supervolcano wipes out the human race what the heck are we going to do about it?

What are you saying Tgace? We can't do anything about it? I heard a rumour that a team of old guys are going to drill to the core of the earth and set off a nuke to re-establish the proper flow of magma in the center of the earth. Then they will all come back to the surface and be hero's, and we can go on living in the false sense of security that we had before. I just live out my short pointless life and try not to worry about the end of the world. When it comes it comes, and I just hope I have enough time to stick my head between my legs and kiss my *** goodbye.

Cheers,

Rynocerous

 

[theletch1]

I used to listen to Art Bell overnight too..then I stopped when I realized that 99% of the stuff was fearmongering.

What?! You mean there really aren't secret alien underground facilities that are working in conjunction with the New World Order to bring about a world government by using sub-particle technology to cause the super-volcanoe under Yellowstone to explode and thereby dropping the overall world population to 500,000? Man, am I ever gonna write a nasty letter to George Noory letting him know what Art has been up to. Seriously, it gets really lonely on the interstate at night and coast to coast is great for a good laugh now and then. :ultracool