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| Yellowstone River flowing through the Yellowstone Caldera |
A seismic imaging study conducted by geophysicists from the University of Utah indicates the volcanic plumbing and magma chamber underlying Yellowstone is more voluminous than realized.
A volcano may be considered as a cannon of immense size.A University of Utah video animation shows the extent of the volcanic plumbing and magma reservoir revealed by the imaging study (below).
— Oliver Goldsmith, Goldsmith’s Miscellaneous Works, 1841
| Yellowstone magma reservoir | Source: University of Utah |
Color Key
| Green line | Yellowstone National Park boundary |
| Orange | Previously known magma chamber (3 - 9 miles beneath the surface) |
| Red | Previously unknown magma reservoir (12 - 28 miles beneath the surface) |
| Yellow | Hotspot plume that supplies molten rock from Earth's mantle |
| Black line | Boundary of the caldera |
| White dots | Epicenters of earthquake data used in the study |
Our earth is very old, an old warrior that has lived through many battles. Nevertheless, the face of it is still changing, and science sees no certain limit of time for its stately evolution. Our solid earth, apparently so stable, inert, and finished, is changing, mobile, and still evolving. Its major quakings are largely the echoes of that divine far-off event, the building of our noble mountains. The lava floods and intriguing volcanoes tell us of the plasticity, mobility, of the deep interior of the globe.
— Reginald Aldworth Daly
REFERENCES
- Magma expanse under Yellowstone supervolcano more vast than thought, Ben Brumfield, CNN 14 May 2015.
- Our Mobile Earth, Reginald Aldworth Daly, 1926.
- Scientists see deeper Yellowstone magma, Phys.org, 23 April 2015.
- The Yellowstone magmatic system from the mantle plume to the upper crust, Hsin-Hua Huang, Fan-Chi Lin, Brandon Schmandt, Jamie Farrell, Robert B. Smith, Victor C. Tsai, Science, 15 May 2015
- University of Utah seismologists discover magma reservoir under Yellowstone, The University of Utah, 21 April 2015.
