Darnell [SOURCE PHOTO]Smith directs the Yellowstone Seismic Network, which operates seismic stations around the park. He said the quakes have ranged in strength from barely detectable to one of magnitude 3.8 that happened Saturday. A magnitude 4 quake is capable of producing moderate damage.
Earthquakes Rattle Yellowstone Park
By MEAD GRUVER, AP | posted: 34 MINUTES AGO | [SOURCE]
"There doesn't seem to be anything to be alarmed about," Vallie said.Commentary and background:
Smith said it's difficult to say what might be causing the tremors. He pointed out that Yellowstone is the caldera of a volcano that last erupted 70,000 years ago.
He said Yellowstone remains very geologically active — and its famous geysers and hot springs are a reminder that a pool of magma still exists five to 10 miles underground.
"That's just the surface manifestation of the enormous amount of heat that's being released through the system," he said.
Yellowstone has had significant earthquakes as well as minor ones in recent decades. In 1959, a magnitude 7.5 quake near Hebgen Lake just west of the park triggered a landslide that killed 28 people.
I had a Geology Professor at Trinity in 1974 named Dr McGannon. He had a General George Patton attitude in his lecture delivery to us tenderfoots gathered in the geology auditorium. He closed and locked the door at the precise hour class started. He brought in the world outside with stories of "cataclysmic volcano activity." Shoot, he even made sedimentary rock formations exciting.
It is like this, Prof McGannon said in his rather loquacious fashion that the USA will suffer a large "mantle" shift toward the end of forty-five years from now... or then, and that is now within the next fifteen years. He said the only unusual thing about it will be that so many people will experience the "cataclysmic event."
God rest his soul, Dr McGannon has passed away due to a heart condition that we all knew about, as we were always careful not to startle him on field trips. However, his words echo on in my head, regardless. He touted that the degree of damages will be for the first time measured in property and casualty losses by humans. The event he says "has happened before" in earth history; evidence in the geologic formations tell the whole story of large transitions in earth's crust.
The professor certainly proved it to me over the next three semesters. I just want to point out that in this time 1974-6 Tectonics was only a theory. There was no proof of the hundreds of theories explaining global tectonics in Prof McGannon's time.
Today tectonics is taught in elementary school like Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 14-hundred and ninety-two... and landed on the Caribbean Plate thinking he had landed on the Indian Plate... badda bing; badda boom.
Therefore, I have avoided settling in seismic areas all of my years following Trinity U. Apparently Yellowstone is one area of enormous potential for large thermoplastic ash flow, similar to a caldera that formed it over 500 million years ago. National Geographic has been showing a bit of the potential in its TV series. From this story in 2007 activity is on the rise at our national park, and surface manifestations are brilliant.
Yellowstone Is Rising on Swollen "Supervolcano"
Richard A. Lovett | for National Geographic News | November 8, 2007
Yellowstone National Park is rising. Its central region, called the Yellowstone caldera, has been moving upward since mid-2004 at a rate of up to three inches (seven centimeters) a year—more than three times faster than has ever been measured.
Grand Prismatic Spring is one of Yellowstone National Park's many hot springs and geysers fueled by underground thermal energy. A new study has found that Yellowstone is rising faster than has ever been measured before, due to an influx of magma several miles beneath the surface. [PHOTO Photograph courtesy Robert B. Smith/Science]
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