How old is the yellowstone hotspot

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The small smart display with big potential: Google Home Hub review. The geysers and hot springs that make the park famous the world over are all volcanic in origin. In other word the park sits on top of an active volcano!!!! This is a map of Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone sits atop a continental hot spot. As the North American plate moves steadily westward the hot spot affects different areas of the continent.

Volcanic activity can be traced across the United States as the plate has moved across this hot spot. This caldera is one of the largest calderas in the world. It is over 65 miles across!! Millions of years ago the North American plate was hundreds of miles east of where it is today. As the plate moved west it slowly moved over the hot spot that is now under Yellowstone. The hot spot has created volcanic features through the western portion of the United States.

Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho was created by the same hot spot. Open image in another window to see animation. This is exactly the same process that formed the Hawaiian Islands. The North American plate continues to move, which means that millions of years from now the hot spot will be under South Dakota or Iowa!!

Remember as you watch the animation, the hot spot is stationary and the North American plate is moving westward!!! Today Yellowstone National Park sits directly over the hot spot. The volcano is quiet today, only the geysers and hot springs remind us that there is a huge volcano under the beautiful scenery. Only , years ago a huge eruption filled the area with lava flows. After the huge eruption there was a void under the top of the volcano.

The weight of the volcano caused the top to come crashing down forming the large caldera in the park. Write the answers to the following questions in complete sentences on a piece of paper. The eruption spewed copious volcanic ash and gas into the atmosphere and produced fast, super-hot debris flows pyroclastic flows over the existing landscape.

This eruption 2. The total volcanic material ejected is estimated to have been 6, times the volume of material ejected during the eruption of Mt. Helens, in Washington. A second significant, though smaller, volcanic eruption occurred within the western edge of the first caldera approximately 1. The third and most recent massive volcanic eruption , years ago created the present by mile-wide Yellowstone Caldera. Since then, 80 smaller eruptions have occurred. Approximately , years ago, one of these created what is now the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake.

During and after these explosive eruptions huge lava flows of viscous rhyolitic lava and less voluminous basalt lava flows partially filled the caldera floor and surrounding terrain. The youngest of these lava flows is the 70, year old Pitchstone rhyolite flow in the southwest corner of Yellowstone National Park. Since the last of three caldera-forming eruptions, pressure from the shallow magma body has formed two resurgent domes inside the Yellowstone Caldera.

Magma may be as little as 3—8 miles beneath Sour Creek Dome and 8—12 miles beneath Mallard Lake Dome, and both domes inflate and subside as the volume of magma or hydrothermal fluids changes beneath them.

The entire caldera floor lifts up or subsides, too, but not as much as the two domes. In the past century, the net inflation has tilted the caldera floor toward the south. Remarkable ground deformation has been documented along the central axis of the caldera between Old Faithful and White Lake in Pelican Valley in historic time.

Surveys of suspected ground deformation began in using vertical-motion surveys of benchmarks in the ground. By the surveys documented unprecedented uplift of the entire caldera in excess of a meter 3 ft. Later GPS measurements revealed that the caldera went into an episode of subsidence sinking until when the caldera returned to an episode of extreme uplift.

The rate of rise slowed in and the caldera began to subside again during the first half of The uplift is believed to be caused by the movement of deep hydrothermal fluids or molten rock into the shallow crustal magma system at a depth of about 10 km beneath the surface. A caldera may undergo episodes of uplift and subsidence for thousands of years without erupting. Notably, changes in uplift and subsidence have been correlated with increases of earthquake activity.

Lateral discharge of these fluids away from the caldera, and the accompanying earthquakes, subsidence, and uplift relieves pressure and could act as a natural pressure release valve balancing magma recharge and keeping Yellowstone safe from volcanic eruptions. Over the next thousands to millions of years? In the next few hundred years? Not likely. The most likely activity would be lava flows, such as those that occurred after the last major eruption.

Human history in the region goes back more than 11, years. The earliest intact archeological deposits in the park were discovered at a site on the shore of Yellowstone Lake. Yellowstone is a supervolcano. The first major eruption of the Yellowstone volcano occurred 2. That's among the largest volcanic eruptions known, and marks Yellowstone as a supervolcano a term used to describe any volcano with an eruption of more than cubic miles of magma.

With the U. Geological Survey and University of Utah, the National Park Service established the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory in to monitor volcanic and seismic activity in the area. Yellowstone is home to the largest concentration of mammals in the lower The list of mammals includes grizzly bears, wolves, lynx, fox, moose and elk.