Yellowstone's Geysers: How Do They Work and Why They Exist - Answers From A Geologist

[@shawnwillsey]

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[@lavaphile]

Hi Shawn, some food for thought: (1) As the bubbles start to form and expand in the superheated water deep in the geyser, water starts getting pushed out of the vent, lowering the weight and corresponding pressure on the superheated water. This lowers the boiling point which causes more of the water to boil, which pushes out more water, creating a runaway condition. (2) As the bubbles rise, the pressure upon them decreases, causing them to expand further, ejecting more water, and contributing to the runaway condition. (3) The boiling of the water removes a lot of thermal energy from the hot rock at depth, which means that the rock lining the geyser deep down gets cooled somewhat, and it will take some time for that temperature to rise back up again. That should help the geyser refill. (4) Without a vent restriction, and/or with too low a refill rate, it is likely that incoming water would be boiled off and escape as vapor as fast as the water came in. They geyser would become a fumarole instead. (5) I speculate that Steamboat may be in a related state where a restriction needs to form in order for it to reach a point where the incoming water is not able to boil off as quickly as it enters, only for that restriction to be partially or totally blown apart during the next eruption. The restriction may be from sinter buildup or some other minor collapse event. This and variations in rainfall would cause unpredictable intervals between eruptions. Anyway, those are the thoughts that came to mind watching this video. Thanks for spreading education the way you do!

[@ecmarks438]

Great explanation, thanks for posting.

[@pattilemonhouse7911]

That was quite helpful, thanks. All 3 of those features in the one spot was handy.

[@kaiteton-qw7uq]

This is wonderful information, it is awesome how these features work! Great video!

[@davec9244]

"OLD FOLKS", can remember percolating coffee pots kind of like that! good job thank you ALL stay safe

[@parismac421]

I love this video. I spent a summer working in Yellowstone and had the opportunity to visit the Norris Geyser Basin and others. It was amazing to see this and thanks for your explanation. I really suggest everyone visit Yellowstone if you get the chance. It is an amazing place. Thanks Shawn

[@herbieschwartz9246]

Have you seen a thermal profile(s) of Yellowstone? That would give us a better idea of the depth / temperature gradients and how they interact with groundwaters and the temperatures of the magma body.

[@thomasp.crenshaw185]

This was brilliant. Thank you so much for this educational video. Fascinating. Thank you so much for your effort.

[@b.a.erlebacher1139]

Thanks for this video. I enjoyed it. Please consider making more videos this length, I like your longer videos, but don't often have time to watch a video of 1-2 hours. A shorter, more concentrated format like this has advantages for many viewers.

[@5-speed]

Excellent, easy to follow explanations. Thank you!

[@서수미-p1t]

Shawn, understanding how much trauma the Steamboat geyser creates for the trees as you described beginning 10:08. My question: How ever did that tree get so big before the geyser output killed it, and what does that say about the age of the current geyser location compared to the age of the tree? We see the geysers, we assume they are pretty old. Are they really temporary, or subject to shifting location in the overall geyser timeline?

[@steveegbert7429]

The 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake changed the behavior of a lot of Yellowstone features, 300 according to the park website. Steamboat had not erupted for 50 years before the quake, then 2 years after, it erupted again. That may be part of the story of the dead trees.

[@xwiick]

Thanks for all the hard work on these videos

[@jwardcomo]

My favorite place to visit. Thanks for the explanation!

[@williamsohveymah5550]

...Anyway. i wanna go to yellerstone national park and see the hot spots. Thank you tons again Dr.Wilsey

[@susansmart8086]

Norris is my favorite. I had to cancel this year’s trip so I’m having to visit virtually.

[@ejwerme]

I first visited Yellowstone in 1974, part of a 2,700 mile solo bicycle tour. I didn't get to Norris until a 2003 visit, a time of moderate activity throughout the park. The Bozeman newspaper had a story "Is Yellowstone Ready to Blow?" Sigh. Norris was hot too that summer and half of it was closed after a ranger checking ground temperatures noticed his boots were melting. It was the only basin that made me feel uncomfortable, just too reminiscent of leaky high pressure steam lines. I found the cooler basins more comfortable - and interesting. The cooler temps allow algae and bacteria to grow and color the area. I found the smaller geysers where you could be closer and see steam trailing off the water droplets more interesting than big geysers. A hot springs especially are really neat with their different colors and water that's so clear. I'm finally getting the 200(!) best slides online, and on their 50th anniversary. Today's upload was from close to the US Glacier National Park, so not quite to Yellowstone.

[@garyb6219]

And mudpots, those are fun to watch.

[@lhaaa1059]

Gosh, I miss seeing Yellowstone. You can NEVER visit it enough !!!!!!

[@ejwerme]

It's one of the few places I've been to where I don't cringe when I hear the word "unique."

[@lhaaa1059]

@@ejwerme Well said, my friend.

[@jackmcmichael3560]

Good morning from Santa Monica CA 🌴

[@loisrossi841]

Amazing, thank you.

[@hestheMaster]

I can only imagine how hot the watertable is just 20 feet below the walkway. Hence the walkway. I wonder with the two resurgent domes ( Mallrad Creek and Sour Creek) there if small volcanoes could occur at either one of them in our lifetimes? I guess that is why they are closely monitored. Thanks for the class on geysers professor.

[@christinedaly2694]

Thank you very informative I love leaning about yr country

[@Dragrath1]

The detailed high resolution seismic tomography project deployed a few years back found the melt fractions through Yellowstone's magma chambers are highly variable forming a really complex network of dikes and sills with some areas which may have melt fractions approaching close to 30% where we think eruptions might start to become possible even if overall the magma chamber is mostly solidified. In that sense it is at least plausible that Yellowstone could erupt during our lifetimes in a smaller scale eruption at the very least just not a very likely event. Based off of crystal diffraction analysis it appears the current relatively quiet mostly solidified to nearly solidified crystal mush state is the most typical state to find the large caldera complex's subsurface plumbing. Rejuvenation events are rare but once they start they are quite rapid in their evolution such that the transition from this more or less passive state to an active state is abrupt even on human timescales. With the caveat that the size of an explosive eruption appears to have a particularly abrupt prerequisite timescale for these sort of eruptive precursor events such that sufficiently large pressures can build up to reach such a large sale eruption, i.e. high explosivity eruptions appear to need an abrupt mixing/rejuvenation chemical evolution timescale for the released latent heat to be able to accumulate faster than the system can discharge/outgas the pressure, the lava creek tuff only involved an active mixing/rejuvenated melt body for weeks to months prior to its 63,000 year ago VEI 8 eruption. Currently I don't think the magma chamber has recharged enough capacity to produce such a large eruption but a smaller but still likely highly explosive eruption could in principal begin to build up at any time whenever the next major melt injection event from the asthenosphere/upper mantle occurs. What that looks like is hard to say as we haven't witnessed anything like that but from the study of the Taupo volcanic system it appears abrupt likely tectonic shifts are typical of such systems.

[@hestheMaster]

@@Dragrath1 I think you should get your own channel . You seem to know far more than anyone here!

[@poppawolf26]

Aloha from Makaha.....Kilauea upper east Rift zone is experiencing earthquake swarms over the past 24 hours.....have you checked this out?

[@robmez]

Brilliant once again, feed the brain

[@stephaniefoster1964]

I was 9 when my family visited Yellowstone (and Grand Teton).

[@Grandmamama-bv1wr]

What is different about the geology of the mud pots?

[@soepie17]

Was that fire beneath the geyser???

[@TheMedCentre]

How does the smell of lava/volcanic action compare to that of the steam in thermal features? I'm a geyser gazer, and have long wondered.

[@ejwerme]

I can't answer wrt lava, but on my first visit to Yellowstone in 1974, it was mildly similar to Pittsburgh PA with its steel mills and coke plants. One reason I was there was that after six years in Pittsburgh, I had to get out. Pittsburgh also had diesel buses and gasoline engines before catalytic converters, so it had a more complex aroma.

[@leechild4655]

I have an idea that any amount of pressure that pushes water to melted rock up out of the ground is magma. we just dont call the mimimal pressure that causes steam to come out of the ground magma but its all the same source just varying in degrees of pressure. it may not mean anything but thats what it all seems to be in layman`s terms.

[@tammylynn2138]

I'm interssted in knowing what caused the geyser to errupt the way it did yesterday. The way those rocks, etc. flung into the air was wild. Typically from what I've seen its just water. But the one that recently errupted was throwing rocks all up in the air. Scientists and Geologists need to keep an eye on that area for a while.

[@williamsohveymah5550]

You mentioned the yellowstone eruptions occured about 430,000 y.o., which also coincides with eruptions here in N Az. Ex., SanFrancisco mtn. last erupted around that time 460,000 y.o., volcanos in GC were also active in that same time period or time line. What would be happening to our earth on this side for this activity to occur around near same time up and down our continent?

[@davehollowell2104]

630,000 years ago.

[@chrismusix5669]

Hot stuff!

[@leokaloper4132]

by just lookng the area, I thik one could assume the size of the underground water "lake".

[@JCD83]

"It's important for the area to get lots of rain and snow". You make the implication that in order for these pools and geysers to be there is from the snow and rainfall. There is water underneath us. Lakes, rivers, and even entire ecosystems like the one found in the cavern in Asia.

[@poppawolf26]

You mentions deposits called "Center"....is this the correct spelling?.....CC translated the spelling as it sounded "center"

[@garyb6219]

Sinter.

[@karin7765]

❓ I think I became to understand most of the process besides; How come the rock become 'hot'?

[@Steviepinhead]

Shawn alluded to the heat source, a volcanic system that is ultimately fed by a "hot spot" or mantle plume. The plume is stationary and thought to arise from a source deep in the mantle. The lithospheric "lid" of the North American plate is slowly moving over the mantle plume, driven by tectonic forces.

[@karin7765]

@@Steviepinhead Thank you so much for explaining. Highly appreciated!

[@SuntoSet77]

⁠@@Steviepinheadthanks for giving further explanation on the heat source below. So is the one hot spot aka mantle plume responsible for heating the entire geyser area? I recall being taught back in 1970s in 5th grade that a mega volcano that was below the surface was responsible for heating the geysers. And, would also be responsible for the” big one” that would take out a large portion of land & civilization from Wyoming to Arizona. Like the big one,, earthquake predicted for California. As I spent a big portion of my childhood in Southern California, West Hollywood and then Northridge. I experienced the frightening 1970 Sylmar quake that shook Hollywood area and south. Quite a few good size quakes in the 1980s,, but always amazing that the earth shake travels .. shake shake. The 1987 one ,, I think it was the Cerritos Quake.. that shook a large swath. Then the big big one , the Northridge Quake and I lived within 3 miles of the epicenter and the subsequent months of aftershocks left us traumatized. Sounded like huge monsters coming down the street .. all night for months… boom boom closer then it would pick up the house shake it like a snow globe and set it back down gently or drop the house ,, and boom boom continue its travels. So so frightening. I’ve not been to Yellowstone… somehow I’ve missed it. Shawn and the Hveri sight coming from Hawaii it’s been great learning about Volcanoes. Mother Nature is in charge,, with ever changing plans.

[@3xHermes]

👍

[@poppawolf26]

or is it spelled Cinter

[@susiesue3141]

My husband and I went to Yellowstone in 2010, the year we got married. We had such a great time! Such fun, except when we had a bear outside our tent two nights in a row. It even hit our tent. No, we had no food in our tent. We put it up high. Scary! 😳 Thank you for giving us a lesson in the geysers. 😊

[@brj_han]

Years ago there used to be a sign in one of the geyser basins that the trees were called dead dogs, because they had no bark... Need to get back to Grand Teton/Yellowstone one of these days. Did you ever do a video on how the Tetons were formed? I sorta had a hard time believing it...😁

[@johnlord8337]

Someone should really be looking away from Yellowstone and its 5 super magma chambers ... and look to the (discovered) 5 super magma chambers of the Oregon-California border Siskiyou-Klamath mountain range, and there implications for shattering, and causing the entire Oregon and California coastlines to head toward Alaska, British Columbia, and Vancouver Island !!!! If this section goes, then the whole San Andreas, San Francisco, Hayward (say Fremont !!!) Calaveras twin-pronged fault line will all snap, ... as well as the basalt triangle of the Grapevine, north of Los Angeles (where all the eastern rumblings have happened), and the whole Oregon to Baja peninsula will have new state address locations !

[@garyb6219]

Ignore the sensationalism of The Discovery Channel and similar shows.

[@johnlord8337]

@@garyb6219 Magma chambers and super=magma chambers are nothing to laugh at or ignore. They are real time underground volcanoes - just as much as Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa, Kileauea. Having lava shoot forth in rocks and boulders with toic gasses, let alone lava flows come down the sides of the slope and burn up your entire village is nothing to ignore. Tell the Hawaiians, even Japanese and Indonesians to ignore their surroundings. Even Mt St Helens, (or earlly 1900s Mt Lassen) blowing off its top and decimating the surrounding landscape with debris, much like Tunguska, and the future Mt Rainier to explode and send down superheated melted glaciers and lahars down the valleys into Seattle, and you have some great life dramas.

[@johnplong3644]

Well there are a bunch of Bozos saying Yellowstone is going to blow… Nice to have real Geologists speaking about Yellowstone But hey Shawn you better not stay or go there anymore because it’s going to blow. I wonder what Ned Zinger hasn’t to say ..Nice video

[@hestheMaster]

No but it is possible that lava could pour out from either of the two resurgent domes which would NOT be a huge volcanic explosion that they claim will happen. There are a lot of faults everywhere including a big round ring of a fault surrounding the caldera. Think Hawaiian volcanoes and the flows that seep out of the ground and cool slowly as they move. Some of that is happening here deep underground and under a thin watertable.