[Rockhounds] Volcanic Activity Beneath Yellowstone's Massive Caldera Could Be on The Move

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Volcanic activity bubbling away beneath the Yellowstone National Park in
the US appears to be on the move.

New research shows that the reservoirs of magma that fuel the supervolcano
<https://www.sciencealert.com/yellowstone-supervolcano>'s wild outbursts
seem to be shifting to the northeast of the Yellowstone Caldera. This
region could be the new locus of future volcanic activity, according to a
team led by seismologist Ninfa Bennington of the US Geological Survey.

"On the basis of the volume of rhyolitic melt storage beneath northeast
Yellowstone Caldera, and the region's direct connection to a lower-crustal
heat source, we suggest that the locus of future rhyolitic volcanism has
shifted to northeast Yellowstone Caldera," they write in their paper
<https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08286-z>.

"In contrast, post-caldera rhyolitic volcanism in the previous 160,000
years has occurred across the majority of Yellowstone Caldera with the
exclusion of this northeast region."

Yellowstone is one of the world's largest supervolcanoes; a vast, complex,
dynamic region of Earth's crust that is both spectacularly beautiful and deeply
dangerous
<https://www.sciencealert.com/the-ground-just-exploded-in-front-of-tourists-at-yellowstone-heres-why>
.


https://www.sciencealert.com/volcanic-activity-beneath-yellowstones-massive-caldera-could-be-on-the-move