“I reached for the wall, and it moved away from me,” the 91-year-old Loveland resident said this week, remembering the 1984 Wyoming earthquake that sent tremors through Loveland.

“I really thought the building was falling down.”

On Wednesday, an earthquake measuring magnitude 4.9 struck near the New Mexico-Colorado border. Those vibrations weren’t felt in Loveland.

Though earthquakes are more common in Southern Colorado than Northern Colorado, the recent temblor raises the question, can it happen here?

After all, Mariana Butte Golf Course rests on an ancient fault line.

Eric Erslev, a geology professor at Colorado State University, said a number of fault lines extend from the Rio Grande Rift, which runs from central Colorado to Mexico, into Northern Colorado.

The area from Horsetooth Reservoir south to Mariana Butte Golf Course is on an ancient fault line called the Milner Mountain Fault that hasn’t been active in 40 million years, Erslev said.

John Minsch, a geophysicist from the U.S. Geological Survey, said an earthquake has never been recorded in Loveland. But if this area does feel a tremor, it would most likely come from a quake in Wyoming or the Denver area, he said.

In 1882, an earthquake struck about 20 miles west of Estes Park. According to U.S. Geological Survey, the tremor caused plaster to fall from walls at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

People in Salina, Kan., and Salt Lake City, Utah, also felt the rumble.

In the early 1960s, a series of quakes occurred in the Denver area that extended as far north as Laramie, Wyo., after workers from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal northeast of Denver pumped waste into a well. The pumping basically lubricated the faults, Erslev said.

The Army removed the waste in 1968.

In 1981, a magnitude 4.1 earthquake struck the Denver-Thornton area, sending shocks to Weld County.

And in October 1984, while Roller patched holes inside the Loveland bank — now Chase Bank — a magnitude 5.5 earthquake centered about 40 miles southeast of Casper, Wyo., sent tremors south to the Front Range.

No injuries or damage were reported, but people said coffee spilled out of their cups, bookcases swayed, pictures tilted and papers fell off desks.

“It shook the building pretty good,” said Roller, who has lived in Loveland since 1976. “I’ve never been anywhere where there was an earthquake before.”

Tuesday, July 5, 2005

Yellowstone geologist discusses supervolcano threat

By: ALLISON BATDORFF - Associated Press

CODY, WYO. -- Could a basalt flow erupt from Yellowstone National Park without warning? Yes, says geologist Henry "Hank" Heasler.

Could a Mount St. Helens-size eruption take scientists by surprise? No. Nor could an earth-destroying catastrophic supervolcano like the one in a recent BBC-Discovery Channel docudrama about Yellowstone, Heasler told a standing room-only crowd Tuesday.

"The bigger eruptions are, the more indications we have," said Heasler, a Powell native. "We would see a catastrophic event months to years before it would occur."

Technology is making the prediction of eruptions easier than ever in one of the world's greatest laboratories - Yellowstone National Park. Three-dimensional imagery of the "lava-lamplike blebs" under Norris geyser basin gives geologists a picture of what's bubbling beneath the surface.

To help monitor the park's volcanic activity, a 25th seismic station will be added this year. More aerial work and satellite imagery is planned for this fall. The number of GPS stations around Mary's Bay and West Thumb will double.

Meanwhile, the temperatures of 40 of the park's 10,000 geothermal features are constantly watched.

"We are trying to monitor closely," Heasler said during a presentation Tuesday at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center's Coe Auditorium.

For geologists, Yellowstone holds many anomalies that aren't fully understood, he said.

"The words you say most as a scientist in Yellowstone are 'I don't know,' " Heasler said.

Interest is surging in Yellowstone geology, even though most people believe the made-for-television "Supervolcano" was just another disaster movie, Heasler said.

"Instead of saying 'I don't know and I don't care,' people are now saying 'I don't know and I'm curious,' " Heasler said.

The movie was based on the Huckleberry Ridge eruptions that scientists believe happened 2.1 million years ago in the park. Since then, Yellowstone has seen two other catastrophic eruptions - one 1.3 million years ago and another 640,000 years ago.

One of these is 6,000 times larger than the Mount St. Helens eruption. Heasler illustrates this using a financial analogy.

"Most of us have written a check for $1,000. Six thousand times that is $6 million. I don't think many of us will ever cut a check for that amount."

But this is a "low frequency" possibility and "geologically, we don't know when another would happen, if ever," Heasler said.

On a day-to-day basis, Heasler is more concerned with keeping people safe from the existing geothermal dangers and monitoring the dynamic park's constant changes. The park had 1,293 earthquakes last year. There were 130 just during this past June. People don't even notice most of them, and the activity is considered normal.

He also keeps an eye out for the telltale signs of bigger doings: earthquake swarms and dramatic surges in ground deformation, gas emissions, steam explosions and hydrothermal activity.

All of these happened in Yellowstone in the past decade, but they haven't been in the same place, Heasler said.

"These need to be in the same area to signify a big eruption," Heasler said.

He also will work with local and state Homeland Security Offices in preparing a Volcano Hazard Plan in the next year or so.

"If something was to occur, there's no way the park would be able to handle everything," Heasler told Park County Homeland Security Coordinator Alex Gisoldi. "We would need your expertise."

April 2005 Yellowstone Seismicity Summary

During the month of April 2005, 82 earthquakes were located in the Yellowstone region. 
The largest of these shocks was a magnitude 2.4 on April 2, 2005 at 2:18 AM MST, 
located about 4.9 miles northwest of West Yellowstone, Montana. 

http://story.news.yahoo
com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1894&e=3&u=/ap/20050507/ap_on_sc/yellowstone_volcano_hreat


Yellowstone Rated High for Eruption Threat


YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. - The Yellowstone caldera has been classified a high threat for volcanic eruption, according to a report from the     U.S. Geological Survey.

Yellowstone ranks 21st most dangerous of the 169 volcano centers in the United States, according to the Geological Survey's first-ever comprehensive review of the nation's volcanoes.

Kilauea in Hawaii received the highest overall threat score followed by Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainer in Washington, Mount Hood in Oregon and Mount Shasta in California.

Kilauea has been erupting since 1983. Mount St. Helens, which erupted catastrophically in 1980, began venting again in 2004.

Those volcanoes fall within the very high threat group, which includes 18 systems. Yellowstone is classified with 36 others as high threat.

Recurring earthquake swarms, swelling and falling ground, and changes in hydrothermal features are cited in the report as evidence of unrest at Yellowstone.

The report calls for better monitoring of the 55 volcanoes in the very high and high threat categories to track seismic activity, ground bulging, gas emissions and hydrologic changes.

University of Utah geology professor Robert Smith, who monitors earthquakes and volcanic activity in Yellowstone, said more real-time monitoring should be helpful.

"We've really been stressing over the last couple of years that the USGS should consider hazards as a very high priority in their future," he said. We need to get the public's confidence and the perception that we're doing it right."

The university has joined the Geological Survey and Yellowstone National Park in creating the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, which uses ground-based instruments throughout the region and satellite data to monitor
volcanic and earthquake unrest in the world's first national park.

The USGS report recognizes Yellowstone as an unusual hazard because of the millions of people who visit the park and walk amid features created by North America's largest volcanic system, Smith said, a status he has been advocating for years.

Smith does not paint the devastating picture portrayed in a recent TV docudrama but said smaller threats exist. For example, a lower-scale hydrothermal blast could scald tourists strolling along boardwalks.

Emissions of toxic gases from the park's geothermal features also pose a threat. Five bison dropped dead last year after inhaling poisonous gases trapped near the ground due to cold, calm weather near Norris Geyser Basin.

Stepped up monitoring and a new 24-hour watch office could lead to more timely warnings and help avoid human catastrophes at Yellowstone and nationally, according to the USGS.

Forty-five eruptions, including 15 cases of notable volcanic unrest, have been documented at 33 volcanoes in the U.S. since 1980, according to the report, released April 29, 2005.

____

On the Net:

U.S. Geological Survey: http://www.usgs.gov

Volcano Threat Report: http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1164

Yellowstone Volcano Observatory: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/index.html

Professor says findings confirm Yellowstone's fiery geothermal network

By MIKE STARK - Billings Gazette Staff - 4/25/05

Ken Dueker knows he won't end the debate about what drives the roiling volcanic system beneath Yellowstone National Park. But he may move it ahead.

Dueker, an assistant geology professor at the University of Wyoming, and a team of researchers say they have confirmed the existence of a long column of hot rock that originates 300 miles beneath Yellowstone's surface.

Evidence of the ‘‘mantle plume'' — which stretches 60 miles in diameter — supports the long-running idea that Yellowstone's fiery geothermal network is fueled by a pipe of magma rising from deep within the Earth, Dueker said.

The findings, set to be published next month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, are the latest salvo in an ongoing dispute among scientists about the existence of deep plumes of hot rocks that play a key role in places like Yellowstone, Iceland and Hawaii.

The newest work by Dueker and others used a technique called ‘‘seismic tomography,'' which uses instruments to track earthquake waves as they travel through the Earth. The waves change as they enter material that is hotter. Scientists used those changes to map what they think is happening beneath Yellowstone.

Dueker and his team used 48 seismic stations scattered around Yellowstone, including some near Billings, Missoula, Pocatello, Idaho, and Riverton, Wyo.

During 2000 and 2001, they said they collected data that, among other things, showed a narrow pipe of hot rock extending 300 miles below Yellowstone's surface. The plume tilts at about 15 degrees so the bottom is beneath Dillon, Dueker said.

The findings should help tell the story about how Yellowstone works and further the debate about plumes beneath places like the first national park.

‘‘The weight of the evidence is going to show there are some plumes,'' Dueker said.

Several years ago, some scientists said they had evidence that contradicted at least 30 years of theory about deep plumes and the creation of volcanic features at Yellowstone and elsewhere on the planet.

Instead of deep plumes, they said volcanoes and other features could be driven by a shallow skin of magma beneath the Earth's crust. As continental plates shift and stretch, the magma bubbles up to filled in the gaps, they said.

Those studies ignited a debate that has fractured the scientific community, with some scientists siding with the older plume theory and others putting their support behind the shallow magma theory.

Dueker said the latest research, which included research at the universities of Wyoming, Utah and Oregon, is more definitive because of the large amount of data that was collected.

‘‘I still admit there's a 10 percent probability that we could be fooled,'' Dueker said. ‘‘But we'd really have to be fooled.''

Experts weigh supervolcano risks

By Paul Rincon BBC News science reporter --> The drama imagines what a super-eruption at Yellowstone would be like We don't want to be sensationalist about this, but it's going to happen Prof Stephen Self, Open University Geologists have called for a taskforce to be set up to consider emergency management in the event of a massive volcanic eruption, or super-eruption. The recommendation comes in a report timed to coincide with a BBC TV drama that depicts a fictional super-eruption at Yellowstone Park in Wyoming, US. Experts say such an event would have a colossal impact on a global scale. A super-eruption is also five to 10 times more likely to happen than an asteroid impact, the report claims. The authors want to highlight the issue, which they feel is being ignored by governments. They emphasise that while catastrophic eruptions of this kind are rare in terms of a human lifetime, they are surprisingly common on a geological scale. The effects, say the authors, "could be sufficiently severe to threaten the fabric of civilisation" - putting events such as the Asian tsunami into the shade. The fallout from a super-eruption could cause a "volcanic winter", devastating global agriculture and causing mass starvation. High frequency It would have a similar effect to a 1.5km-diameter space rock striking Earth, they claim. But while impacts of this type are estimated to occur once every 400-500,000 years, the frequency of equivalent super-eruptions is about once every 100,000 years. "These are minimum estimates. Super-eruptions could be even more frequent; we just don't know," said Professor Stephen Self, a geologist at the Open University in Milton Keynes and a member of the working group that produced the report. The Mount Pinatubo eruption was the biggest recorded in photos "We still have a lot of unassessed regions of the world. The US is the place where we see the largest number of super-eruptions. But that may be because more work has been done there." One past super-eruption struck at Toba in Sumatra 74,000 years ago and is thought by some to have driven the human race to the edge of extinction. Signs from DNA suggest human numbers could have dropped to about 10,000, probably as a result of the effects of climate change. The TV drama, called Supervolcano, sticks closely to scientific understanding of these events. The plot revolves around a series of violent eruptions at Yellowstone in Wyoming that send thousands of cubic kilometres of rock, gas and ash spiralling up in cloud that rains down over three-quarters of the United States. Contingency plans Highways become blocked with cars as millions flee the unfolding disaster, and as the chain of eruptions unzips Yellowstone's volcanic crater, hundreds of thousands are killed as the ash swamps whole towns and cities. Yellowstone is the largest volcanic system in North America America's food-producing regions are devastated, communications are knocked out and planes are forced out of the sky. Sulphuric acid droplets form in the atmosphere, blocking out sunlight, and causing global temperatures to plummet. Professor Stephen Sparks, of Bristol University, an author on the new report, said civil contingency plans would need to be similar to those for a nuclear war. "You would need contingencies for food and shelter. But you would need to put a serious amount of resources into any effort to cope with an event on this scale, so it poses a dilemma," he said. The volcanic winter resulting from a super-eruption could last several years or decades, depending on the scale of an eruption, and according to recent computer models, could cause cooling on a global scale of 5-10C. Damage limitation Ailsa Orr, producer of Supervolcano, said that when the programme team presented the scenario to the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), the agency admitted it had given little thought to such an event happening on American soil. "We don't want to be sensationalist about this, but it's going to happen. We just can't say exactly when," said Professor Self. "But we have just had a natural disaster affecting hundreds of thousands of people. Now is the time to be thinking about this." Yellowstone is the largest volcanic system in North America. The area's cauldrons of bubbling mud and roaring geysers attract nearly three million visitors each year. It was an obvious choice for the programme makers as the site of their super-eruption because of its location on a highly populated continent and because it has already had three of these events, which have occurred roughly 600,000 years apart from each other. The crater from the last super-eruption, 640,000 years ago, is large enough to fit Tokyo - the world's biggest city - inside it. The report, released by The Geological Society in the UK, identifies at least 31 sites where super-eruptions have occurred in the past. They include Lake Taupo in New Zealand and the Phlegrean Fields near Naples, Italy. The drama Supervolcano is broadcast in two parts, on BBC One on Sunday 13 March and Monday 14 March. Both transmissions are at 2100 GMT. Two science documentaries called Supervolcano: The Truth About Yellowstone are broadcast after the drama, on BBC Two. Again, these air on Sunday and Monday but at the later time of 2200 GMT

By Kevin Krajick
July 2004
Smithsonian Magazine

http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues04/jul04/phenomena.html

Yellowstone Grumbles

Pent-up water and steam threaten to burst through the park's surface (And we're not talking Old Faithful here)

Yellowstone National Park is a land of many perils. Occasionally, one of the three million yearly visitors strolls up to a 2,000-pound bison and is gored. Others eat poisonous plants, snowmobile on avalanche-prone slopes, or plunge off a cliff on that last step backward to frame the perfect photograph. And at Yellowstone's 10,000 volcanically driven hot springs, geysers, bubbling mud pots and fumaroles—earth's largest concentration of hydrothermal features—about two dozen people have been boiled alive after falling or jumping in.

"People do a lot of crazy things," says Lisa Morgan, a volcanologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) who conducts research in the park for a few weeks every summer. She is trying to protect the sandal-clad innocents not from these mishaps, however, but from the ultimate "thermal accident": hydrothermal explosions. They can happen when magma-heated water and steam build up in underground pockets. This pressure causes parts of the landscape to rise and fall like merry-go-round horses. Usually they settle back down again harmlessly. But now and then, things blow up.

One of Morgan's best guesses for the next big blowout—maybe the biggest in 3,000 years—is a 2,100-foot-wide, 100-foot-high swelling on the bed of Yellowstone Lake. No one has observed any of the park's ground movements long enough to say which ones signal danger, but she says the lake bed could conceivably burst open. If so, lakeside picnickers could see a tsunami or truck-size rocks heading their way. "I wouldn't want to be here," says Morgan. Then she thinks of the spectacle. "Well, maybe in an airplane."

The park sits on a still-active 30- by 45-mile caldera, a depression created when a volcano erupted 640,000 years ago. Chances of a lava eruption in the next 10,000 years appear remote, but magma simmering four to five miles beneath the caldera's trapped groundwater drives the park's hydrothermal convulsions. Geysers like Old Faithful release pressure, but it can build to the breaking point when heated fluids get sealed in by shifts in rock structures, clogged vents or overlying sediment and mineral deposits.

In and around Yellowstone Lake—which lies near the caldera's center—Morgan and colleagues have identified several areas heavily pocked by past hydrothermal explosions. The pits, which appear to untrained eyes as ponds or depressions in the ground, are a few yards to hundreds of yards wide. Along the lake, in eroded beach cliffs and creek banks, Morgan has found layers of sand and sharp-angled rock up to three feet thick; the debris was hurled as far as three and a half miles by past explosions in the lake bed. Arrowheads jumbled in lakeshore deposits suggest unlucky prehistoric Native Americans were around for some of the explosions.

Major ones occurred from 3,000 to 14,000 years ago, according to radiocarbon dating of wood fragments mingled with the deposited rock and soil debris. Since people started keeping track, in 1872, there have been at least 20 minor blowouts at sites around the park, including several at favorite tourist spots such as Biscuit Basin and Norris Geyser Basin. The last notable one was in 1989, when the throat of Norris Basin's Pork Chop Geyser apparently clogged with minerals. When it burst, boulders rained down near tourists more than 200 feet away. (They were unscathed.)

Only recently did scientists realize the entire park was heaving up and down. In the 1970s, geophysics professor Robert Smith of the University of Utah compared new scientific surveys of ground elevations with surveys made for road building in the 1920s. He found the caldera's center had risen nearly three feet. It kept rising until 1985, when a series of earthquakes rocked the park. Scientists speculate that the tremors coincided with the sideways escape of pent-up gases. Afterward, the caldera began deflating by three-quarters of an inch a year. In 1995, some parts of it reversed direction and started reinflating, until stopping in 2002. In the meantime, a previously undetected 25-mile-wide swelling began outside the caldera, near Norris Basin, surrounded by smaller swellings one to three miles in diameter.

Though no one is sure what all of this heaving means, it's given researchers a sense of urgency about understanding the park's contortions. "Protecting visitors is our No. 1 concern," says park geologist Hank Heasler, who is working with other scientists to come up with a threat-assessment plan.

New problem spots are popping up all the time as well. In March 2003, fourteen new steam vents opened along a 230-foot line north of Norris Basin, releasing plumes of dense water vapor and powdered glass shards in a tremendous roar. Then, last July, geysers began erupting at odd times. The park had to close off much of Norris when ground temperatures shot up in places from 80 degrees Fahrenheit to 200, and the earth near a boardwalk became more acidic and began to dissolve. The basin has since calmed down, and rangers have reopened most of it, but scientists are monitoring trailside areas with thermometers stuck in the ground, seismographs peppering strategic hills, and radar images taken from satellites. "Yellowstone is like a medical patient, but we haven't studied it long enough to know its normal pulse or respiration rate," says Heasler, standing half a mile from the new steam vents.

Morgan is still tracking the dome on the Yellowstone Lake floor called the "inflated plain." She first spotted it in 1999, while she and colleagues were mapping the lake bottom. The rise, she says, is apparently the result of steam or carbon dioxide building up under the lake bed, sealed in by sediments and overlying water pressure. The swelling seems to have grown in the 1990s and is suspiciously close in size to major blowout craters nearby. In fact, it lies along a nearby fissure, a crack that forms the bed of curiously straight Weasel Creek and continues through the lake bed itself. Morgan says the fissure may have been formed by the caldera's rise and fall, like the crack atop a loaf of bread rising in the oven.

At the lakeshore opposite the inflated plain one summer day, Morgan and USGS geochemist Pat Shanks investigate some small, inactive craters. They insert a temperature probe into the soil; six inches down, it registers 152 degrees F. Something is still fuming there. Suddenly, some tourists armed with cameras and collapsible walking sticks crest a ridge and charge down, and their guide collars Morgan for an impromptu lecture on the craters. She cheerfully obliges, telling the visitors that the craters are old features—probably not dangerous right now. She barely mentions the inflated plain. "I don't want to scare them too much," she says. "These people are on vacation."

By Kevin Krajick

http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues04/jul04/phenomena.html

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THE WORLD IS IN CRISIS DUE TO GLOBAL WARMING!

Hydrologist's recommended links:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ClimateArchive/message/608