"Screw America, I'm the planet!"

[Bippy_the_Beardless]

This is a question for discussion about the lava buildup under Yellostone National Park. (sorry about the jokish title).
I heard about the possibility of a ‘Super Volcano’ several years back, but have heard little since. These two scholarly looking sites supply details both for and against the risk of a ‘super volcano’.
http://www.unmuseum.org/supervol.htm
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/new.html
http://amos.indiana.edu/library/scripts/volcanoes.html

Since vulcanology is on somewhat unstable grounds (pun intd) I thought Great Debates rather than GQ as I don’t think anyone can give precise answers. But…

How much risk do you consider there is of a cataclysmic volcano in the region within the next few hundred years? What, if anything should we do about this perceived risk? Are we doing what we can to at least measure the lava buildup to predict the risk factor more accurately in the future? Do you think Northern American human life could survive after such an event?

[Bippy_the_Beardless]

OK I’ll bounce this once.

Does noone have any views/knowledge about the apparent potnential super-volcano forming under Yellowstone National park. Would it be possible to keep a modern country like America with all its resources functional after massive West Coast damage and huge environmemtal changes due to atmospheric dust (that would also effect most of the Northern Hemisphere.
The last volcano of similar magnitude was 70000 years ago, and such events happen on average every 60000 so humanity has obviously survived several of these in ancient times, but could a modern economic society survive without being reduced to ‘stone age’ conditions.

[Zagadka]

@Bippy the Beardless

OK I’ll bounce this once.

Does noone have any views/knowledge about the apparent potnential super-volcano forming under Yellowstone National park. Would it be possible to keep a modern country like America with all its resources functional after massive West Coast damage

Did California move a thousand miles east or something?

Seriously, the largest threat here is the ash destroying the crops (in multiple ways - ruining soil, blocking sunlight, etc) that are what really fuels America (and good chunks of the rest of the world). An American famine would be disastrous.

[Mtgman]

@Bippy the Beardless

Does noone have any views/knowledge about the apparent potnential super-volcano forming under Yellowstone National park. Would it be possible to keep a modern country like America with all its resources functional after massive West Coast damage and huge environmemtal changes due to atmospheric dust (that would also effect most of the Northern Hemisphere.
The last volcano of similar magnitude was 70000 years ago, and such events happen on average every 60000 so humanity has obviously survived several of these in ancient times, but could a modern economic society survive without being reduced to ‘stone age’ conditions.

I question the evidence that there is in fact a supervolcano forming(or more accurately, the supervolcano that is actually there getting ready to erupt). According to the United States Geological Survey’s Yellowstone Volcano Observatory FAQs

Is it true that volcanic activity at Yellowstone has recently increased?

No. The volcanic system in Yellowstone National Park is displaying the same general types of restless activity today as it has since volcanic activity was first analyzed more than 50 years ago. Current behavior includes extensive seismicity, periods of uplift and subsidence of the caldera related to the movements of hydrothermal fluids that are produced and maintained by deeper magma beneath the Park, and intermittent changes to hydrothermal features at the surface.

I have seen discussions debating the conclusions of the USGS by variously qualified and amateur geologists, but nothing I would take over the word of the USGS at this point. The investigations of some of the people in that thread ended up leading to this exclusive interview with the supervising geologist of the YVO.

Q: Do you feel that there has been enough disclosure to the general populace, either through formal USGS press releases, or media coverage, on the current conditions at Yellowstone to create an awareness level appropriate for the current situation?

A: Yes. The interest in Yellowstone’s volcanic aspects provided an excellent opportunity to educate people about Yellowstone National Park. Inquires from the press were answered and the press were encouraged to travel to Yellowstone for first-hand observations. Local press agencies (such as the Cody Enterprise, the Billings Gazette, the Bozeman Chronicle), regional agencies (such as the Kansas City Star) and national and international media (such as the New York Times) all carried articles on Yellowstone’s highly dynamic geology. Discussions were also carried on the radio (such as National Public Radio) and television (such as Salt Lake City, Utah; Denver, Colorado; Billings, Montana; Cheyenne, Wyoming). The Internet has also carried a great deal of information. Unfortunately, many of the internet stories were based in fiction rather than fact. Rumors such as the reported closure of Yellowstone Lake or the closure of all of Norris Geyser Basin could easily be checked and found to be false.
Q: Concerning the radius for damage if the supercaldera were to erupt, is there a contingency plan in place for a defined area around Yellowstone? If so, what is it and what are the parameters of the defined area?

A: Our job at YVO is to provide adequate warning of volcanic activity at Yellowstone. The USGS Volcano Hazards Program has this responsibility at Yellowstone and at all other US volcanoes, nationwide. We also provide information on the present state of seismicity, ground deformation and other measurable parameters. We are not a civil defense agency. Such planning is left to the park and to the surrounding communities and states.
As an aside, Yellowstone has erupted about 30 times since the last caldera-forming eruption, 640,000 years ago. Nearly all these eruptions produced relatively smaller lava flows than the notorious three giant eruptions that formed the calderas of Yellowstone. If this sort of eruption were to occur today, as would be the most likely scenario for a Yellowstone eruption, there would be minimal effects outside the Park. Thus, the supposed radius of damage you quote is only for an extremely unlikely kind of volcanic eruption.

Yellowstone is a very unsettled area and some, possibly most, of the apparent recent activity may be nothing more than the result of better ways to measure and detect activity that had been below our radar previously(GPS stations, better seismographs, etc). This interview with other seismologists who study Yellowstone indicates that technology used to monitor the volcanic activity in the park has increased drastically in the recent past. This allows us to detect more than we’ve ever seen before, which is a completely different thing than there actually BEING more than there has ever been before. It also indicates that no super eruption is eminent.

If the park were poised for a major eruption, the signs wouldn’t be subtle, Heasler said.

“I doubt you’d need seismographs to know that changes were happening in Yellowstone,” he said.

Early signs of an impending outburst would be similar to the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state. Scientists knew something big was brewing months ahead of time although they couldn’t predict exactly how big or when the eruption was coming.

The current geologic activity in Yellowstone appears to be much closer to the surface than would be exhibited by magma flows. At such shallow depths, water heated by the earth is driving the changes.

“We’re not searching for magmatic fluids,” said Bob Smith, a geologist at the University of Utah who has studied the park for three decades. “We think this is a very shallow system.”

Norris is the most dynamic of the park’s geyser basins and Jacob Lowenstern, a researcher at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., said it always experiences increased activity in summer.

But this year is exceptional, with a new mud pot welling up, 200-degree temperatures on the ground and geysers that haven’t erupted in years spouting off.

And unlike years past, dramatic improvements in equipment are allowing scientists to peek deeper and more precisely record changes in the upper plumbing. They are using precision seismometers and satellite-mapping systems to record the changes.

“Let’s say we’re doctors and Norris Geyser Basin is our patient,” Heaslier said. “Before, we had the ability to take its pulse and temperature. Now we have a stethoscope and an X-ray machine, and we can look inside.”

Enjoy,
Steven

[Bippy_the_Beardless]

An appology, the 60000 and 70000 years values quoted in my last post were a mistake. I was writing the bounce post from memory, and was an order of magnitude out.

The last Yellowstone erruption was 650,000 odd years ago (variously quoted as about 600,000 or 650,00 on different sites) and it is now considered on some of the sites to be ‘overdue’ another one. Still the last super volcano was 74,000 years ago, so humanity has survived them before.