Rumblings, geyser eruptions and growing magma chambers at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming have been unnerving citizens in and around the area lately, causing many to wonder if the super volcano underneath the park is about to erupt.
MaxPixel.net[/caption] A new study just release by academics from Illinois should help allay those fears. A paper authored by geologist Patricia Gregg and PhD student, Haley Cabaniss, both of the University of Illinois, is claiming that any imminent large-scale eruption would be proceeded by hundreds if not thousands of years of increased tectonic activity, a growing magma chamber and geological ‘uplift’ measured in meters and not inches. Cabaniss has used computer 3D modeling of Yellowstone’s magma chamber to test how its active tectonic surroundings can impact and possibly cause a massive eruption of the supervolcano.
Wikimedia Commons[/caption] What Cabaniss’ models and Gregg’s analysis found was that tectonic shifts do increase the risk of an event, as was known, but there was a bigger factor. EarthSky quotes Cabaniss as explaining: “Any tectonic stress will help destabilize rock and trigger eruptions, just on slightly different timescales. The remarkable thing we found is that the timing seems to depend not only on tectonic stress, but also on whether magma is being actively supplied to the volcano.” The tectonic activity of a region may be quiet for hundreds of thousands and even over a million years and then flare up in intensity over a relatively small period of a thousand or hundreds of years. The Illinois scientists believe that the activity occurring presently at the Yellowstone caldera area is nothing to get alarmed about as it does not signal an awakening.
Gregg and Cabaniss’s paper, which was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters on April 19, 2018, also announced an unintended benefit of their work. EarthSky writes that the “researchers unexpectedly found that their models could help forecast supervolcano eruption timing and inform experts on what to expect, geologically, well before an eruption. Gregg acknowledged that people tend to panic whenever they hear that Yellowstone or, say, the Taupo Volcanic Zone in New Zealand, experience any change in seismic or geyser activity. But she said this new research suggests that the precursors to catastrophic eruption will be far greater and long-lasting than anything yet documented.”