The Grand Teton Mountains Are Subsiding While Yellowstone Rises

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The Grand Tetons are sinking, not rising and the floor of the huge Yellowstone caldera is rising and falling as if the earth is breathing uneasily. Time to talk about catastrophic caldera events and the lithosphere.

Yellowstone isn't the largest one in the world but is certainly one of the most potentially active ones in the world right now.

Supervolcanoes can sleep for centuries or millennia before producing incredibly massive eruptions that can drop ash across an entire continent.

One of the largest supervolcanoes in the world lies beneath Yellowstone National Park, which spans parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

Though the Yellowstone system is active and expected to eventually blow its top, scientists don't think it will erupt any time soon.

I like how scientists always have the dangers hedged heavily. They are afraid of panicking people and then being blamed when nothing happens so they play it safe by giving us really, really bad news and then assure us, it won't happen soon so we have nothing to worry about.

Only this is also false. Frankly, we haven't the faintest idea when it will happen: all we know is, it will. Just like the San Andreas fault and all the other great faults fracturing California: all of them will, over time, cause great earthquakes. We can't say what day. This doesn't mean they should be ignored, quite the contrary. Humans like to pretend we control this planet and even as we dig down deep, suck up fluids or rearrange the soil on top and alter the air, our efforts are truly puny when compared to what Mother Nature can do with a flick of her smallest finger.

From the article:

The data shows that the caldera floor sank 4.4 inches from 1987 until 1995. From 1995 until 2000, the northwest rim of the caldera rose about 3 inches, followed by another 1.4-inch rise until 2003. Then between 2000 and 2003, the caldera floor sank a little more than an inch.

And then from 2004 to 2006 the central caldera floor rose faster than ever, springing up nearly 7 inches during the three-year span.

"The rate is unprecedented, at least in terms of what scientists have been able to observe in Yellowstone," Smith said.

These results could explain another surprise finding: The ground along the Teton fault — an active fault running 40 miles north-south along the eastern base of the Teton Range in the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming just south of Yellowstone — moves in the opposite direction compared to what's been previously thought.

I cannot say, 'IF Yellowstone blows up,' because there isn't the slightest doubt it will blow up. 'WHEN Yellowstone blows up, we will pretty much be destroyed as a nation,' is pretty much correct. For past explosions have blanketed the Midwest with volcanic tuff. And of course, there would be some re-arrangement of all those faultlines in California, Oregon, Washington and maybe all the way over to Arizona and New Mexico.

Most farms would vanish in our vast grain belt. And we would relearn the lessons our distant ancestors learned: evolution's tools are death and climate change. Certainly, our climate will undergo some revision. So if one wants to worry about something major, this is it. Since our farms feed a good part of humanity, the very least would be many humans would cease to worry about obesity. If an Ice Age begins, then we are in stupendous trouble.

We can't stop, deflect or change the facts here. There is no 'cure' for this problem. Nonetheless, it is good to understand the planet we live upon. Frankly, I am not happy to hear the Grand Tetons are dropping. This isn't a good sign and the fact that scientists were sufficiently alarmed, they talked to the press proves there is more to this than the bland article paints.

More from the article:

Researchers found that just the opposite is happening with Jackson Hole — the valley below the Teton. The valley is rising up slowly and the mountains are dropping down.

What the researchers think is happening, on a short-term basis at least, is that the bulging Yellowstone hotspot north of the Tetons is pushing against the north edge of Jackson Hole and jamming it against the mountains.

Under Yellowstone sleeps a dragon which is now shuddering and flexing his armored coils. How does this volcanic caldera act? This has not been witnessed by humans except they looked up to the skies one day when they were figuring out how to use stones and sticks and saw a thick blanket of white ash suddenly come running out of the West and there were a series of eerie, loud, hollow booms and the earth shook ever so slightly and the air suddenly smelled really bad.

Then the weather turned really, really foul. Lots of these human ancestors died. How do these mega-caldera events happen?

Just this year, a geologist used chemistry to decode how these volcanic events unfold.

ILYA N. BINDEMAN
Geochemist and assistant professor in the department of geological sciences at the University of Oregon

We began our analyses with a focus on a particularly efficient oxidant, ozone. Ozone is a gas molecule made up of three oxygen atoms best known for shielding the earth from the sun's dangerous ultraviolet rays. Because of rare chemical transformations that certain gases undergo in the presence of that intense solar radiation, ozone is characterized by an anomaly in its so-called mass-independent oxygen isotope signature, which in simple terms can be thought of as an excess of oxygen 17.

When ozone or any other oxygen-rich molecule in the stratosphere interacts with SO2, it transfers its oxygen isotope signature to the resulting acid--that is, the oxygen 17 anomaly persists in the new acid. In 2003 geochemists at the University of California, San Diego, found the first evidence that this signature is also preserved in the oxygen atoms of the acid that later falls as rain and in the sulfate compounds that form as the acid rain reacts with ash on the ground.

Namely, by tracing these isotopes in the ground where these sort of volcanic events have happened, he can figure out how each step of the eruption progressed. The data explains the mechanics of mega-caldera eruptions and from this data, he was able to suggest a theory as to how the earth's magma doesn't just come bubbling out of the ground or huffing and puffing, bulding a volcanic mountain but intead, blows up totally.

He continues:

A supereruption occurs after the pressurized magma raises overlying crust enough to create vertical fractures that extend to the planet's surface. Magma surges upward along these new cracks one by one, eventually forming a ring of erupting vents. When the vents merge with one another, the massive cylinder of land inside the ring has nothing to support it. This "roof" of solid rock plunges down--either as a single piston or as piecemeal blocks--into the remaining magma below, like the roof of a house falling down when the walls give way.

Dr. Bindeman makes a good analogy here. When it snows too much, sometimes the outer walls of barns will bulge and then with a loud roar, the roof caves in. When I see buldging walls on buildings, I know they will eventually collapse. Same with retaining walls or dams: bulging outwards means they will explosively give way very suddenly.

I also adore this scientist, he thinks the same way as I do:

Scientific techniques for studying and monitoring volcanoes of all sizes are developing with all deliberate speed. But no matter how much we learn, we cannot prevent an eruption. And what can be said about the aftermath of the most catastrophic occurrences is still speculative at best. The good news, though, is that researchers now know enough about the sites of possible eruptions to predict with reasonable assurance that no such catastrophe will happen anytime soon.

Except I am crueller: we do know what happens next! This is how we and all sorts of creatures evolved! And this goes even more so with us humans for the Yellowstone and the Toba, Indonesia calderas created us as humans, they are the rock and hard place that forced us on a deadly march of survival of the fittest, in our case, the smartest.

The equivalent of geniuses coped better with the violent changes than the less thoughtful specimens of our race. The level of catastrophe is Toba blows is bad enough but Yellowstone is that and more plus it sits smack dab in the center of our nation and its effects will be tremendous.

Increasingly during this last 20 years as geologists begin to really understand the meaning of plate tectonics, their ability to track and analyse the Yellowstone area in a 500 mile radius brings up more and more uncertainties and questions.

Sylvester found that, between 1988 and 1991, the valley east of the fault (Jackson Hole) rose ten millimeters relative to the Teton Range. This was probably due to the rise of the water table caused by refilling Jackson Lake, eight kilometers north of the leveling line. Additionally, the valley tilted toward the mountains.

However, between 1991 and 1993, to Sylvester's surprise, measurements indicated that the valley tilted slightly eastward, away from the Teton Range. This is contrary to the long range tectonic tilt inferred from the slope of the valley floor and from its subsurface strata.

At first Sylvester and Smith postulated that the uplift and tilting was caused by raising and lowering of the water table due to the relatively rapid draining and filling of Jackson Lake. But the 1997 survey results resembled those of the 1989 and 1991 surveys, and the uplift of the valley near the fault increased another eight millimeters. The uplift of the valley, instead of the mountains, implies that the Teton fault is back-slipping in response to regional crustal shortening. Global Positioning System satellite measurements that Smith has acquired in both Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks in the past decade support this hypothesis.

The entire Western North American landmass is being yanked along in one direction while the Atlantic rift is violently shoving it westards while the Pacific Plate is being shoved northwards by Australia. Along the Asian/Australian side of this mess, there are many vast earthquakes, many more than on the North/South American side. The violence of this half of the planet is greater than the other half. The Pacific Plate's center is relatively quiet except for the Hawaiian hot-spot. But the North American Plate is seeing increasing deformation of the western half of its own landmass. The complexity of these plates and some underlying plates our continent has already steamrolled under makes the geology of the Rocky Mountains region so complex.

Based on these subsurface data, the Granite Ridge fault is described here as a true tear fault confined to the hanging wall of an uninterrupted, 30°-dipping Piney Creek thrust, segmenting hanging-wall thrust displacement between the Piney Creek block on the south and Walker Mountain block on the north. Slip on the Granite Ridge tear fault is expressed at the surface along the eastern margin of the Bighorn Mountains, west of Story, Wyoming, as a resequent fault-line scarp with 2000 ft (600 m) of relief, and with 3.3 mi (5.3 km) of left separation of steeply dipping, Paleozoic rocks. Based on measurement between piercing points produced by the lines of intersection of the steeply, east-dipping Cambrian-Precambrian unconformity with the Piney Creek thrust surface along either side of the Granite Ridge tear fault, a (reverse) left-oblique slip of 15,000 ft (4500 m) is measured on this tear fault zone. Thus, 30,000 ft (9100 m) of net slip on the Piney Creek thrust in the Piney Creek block decreases to 15,000 ft (4500 m) of net slip in the Walker Mountain block, and slip on the thrust further declines northward. The described Granite Ridge tear fault–Piney Creek thrust geometry may provide a useful model in the investigation of similar fault-offset mountain fronts within the Laramide foreland province of the Middle Rocky Mountains.

This is a topographic map showing some of the major volcanoes or caldera that I could map over this image so far (I only got some of them). The main thing is the long line of major caldera events caused by the North American continent moving over the spot where, like with Hawaii and the Solomon Islands, there is some deformation in the lithosphere which deforms the crust. I also show where the lithosphere broke away and fell, according to researchers last month.

Here is a graph showing how the land on one side of a fault zone is stable while the other is rising and falling as if a dragon were moving about below.

Graph of height changes among permanent bench marks in leveling base line across Teton normal fault in Grand Teton National Park. Graph assumes 1989 survey as the datum, bench mark GT42 is arbitrarily held fixed. The fault is depicted as the vertical dashed line - the Teton Range (footwall) is west of the fault, the north part of Jackson Hole (hanging wall) is east of the fault. Uncertainty of bench mark heights in each survey is about equivalent to the diameter of each dot or circle. Standard deviation of bench mark heights per kilometer of leveling is 0.08 mm. The data are extrapolated into a 17 km-long straight line that extends from GT01 at the Snake River near Deadman Bar to GT44 in the core of the Teton Range. The traverse path distance is 22.1 km.

The dotted line in the middle of the graph represents the faultline running along the Grant Tetons.

All of the main geological features of this area are fairly recent, all occuring during the Age of Mammals.

In Miocene time about 9 million years ago, a 40 mile (64 km) long steeply east dipping normal fault system deepened the Jackson Hole basin and started to uplift the westward-tilting eastern part of the Teton Range (the youngest mountain range in the Rocky Mountains).[11] Eventually all the Mesozoic rock from the Teton Range was stripped away and the same formations in Jackson Hole were deeply buried. A prominent outcrop of the pink-colored Flathead Sandstone exits 6,000 feet (1830 m) above the valley floor on the summit of Mount Moran. Drilling in Jackson Hole found the same formation 24,000 feet (7300 m) below the valley's surface, indicating that the two blocks have been displaced 30,000 feet (9100 m) from each other. Thus an average of one foot of movement occurred every 300 years (1 cm per year on average).[12]

One has to marvel how the earth must have shaken like a rung bell when that rather large object struck it at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs! The lithosphere must have buckled and cracked badly as well as every fracture zone disturbed. One imagines more than one volcano blew up in this same time period. Perhaps the indentation that caused the Yellowstone caldera chain to form at this time was directly caused by the Chicxulub asteroid/meteorite event?

North America was partially underwater back when this happened. I drew this crude map to show where the latter day Yellowstone caldera formed. It is interesting that this occured on the edge of this vast sea which was shoved higher and higher as the North American continent shoved itself over other plates to the west.

The path Yellowstone's volcanic activity has taken has been only for a relatively short period, geologically speaking.

Yellowstone's volcanism is only the most recent in a 17 million-year history of volcanic activity that has occurred progressively from southwestern Idaho to Yellowstone National Park. At least six other large volcanic centers along this path generated caldera-forming eruptions; the calderas are no longer visible because they are buried beneath younger basaltic lava flows and sediments that blanket the Snake River Plain.

I was looking very closely at the maps while trying to higlight the various geological features around the Yellowstone caldera when I noticed right at the top of the beginning of the Yellowstone basin where previous incarnations of that caldera formed was this huge, perfectly round geological formation. So I spent a few hours figuring out what on earth that was.

It is the site of one of the greatest volcanic events in North American history!

Flood basalts appear to form during the initiation of hotspot magmatism. The Columbia River basalts (CRB) represent the largest volume of flood basalts associated with the Yellowstone hotspot, yet their source appears to be in the vicinity of the Wallowa Mountains, about 500km north of the projected hotspot track. These mountains are composed of a large granitic pluton intruded into a region of oceanic lithosphere affinity. The elevation of the interface between Columbia River basalts and other geological formations indicates that mild pre-eruptive subsidence took place in the Wallowa Mountains, followed by syn-eruptive uplift of several hundred metres and a long-term uplift of about 2km. The mapped surface uplift mimics regional topography, with the Wallowa Mountains in the centre of a `bull's eye' pattern of valleys and low-elevation mountains. Here we present the seismic velocity structure of the mantle underlying this region and erosion-corrected elevation maps of lava flows, and show that an area of reduced mantle melt content coincides with the 200-km-wide topographic uplift. We conclude that convective downwelling and detachment of a compositionally dense plutonic root can explain the timing and magnitude of Columbia River basalt magmatism, as well as the surface uplift and existence of the observed melt-depleted mantle.

Here is a geological diagram showing all the major fault lines which seem to all converge on or run out of the very spot where the greatest volcanic activity happened in the past: the center of the Blue Mountains.

Indeed, looking at maps like the ones here showing the volcanic flow from that one spot. (Click to see maps) I was stunned to see the extent of the lava flows: it covered much of Washington State and Oregon! The Blue Mountains are not as spectacular as some of the other mountains out there but because of its very size, it is hard to see as something gigantic except from space where it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Recently a geologist my husband worked for at the NY State Museum discovered a good-sized meteorite strike in New York State at Panther Mountain when he was examining satellite photographs. These photos are fantastic tools for seeing the bigger picture.

I am now guessing that the Blue Mountains were actually the first Yellowstone events. It began very explosively, a massive amount of magma flowed because the break was deep and very significant. Only the Deccan and Siberian Traps are possibly greater and each of them happened at the same time as a major asteroid strike and die-off of species.

Yellowstone today is the quieter manifestation of this disturbance. But due to its internal structure, if the 'roof' collapses suddenly, it just won't sink into the ground and melt, it will blow up. And we still don't know exactly why or how or much of anything except by intelligent guesses and patient detective work.

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Comments

[blues]

I always try to explain what I am talking about, rather than just assume people will know everything. So I come to find out that [17]O, unlike the usual [16]O, (oxygen bearing 8 protons + 8 neutrons), bearing an extra neutron, tends to be incorporated into sunlight-generated 0(3), or ozone. Ordinary oxygen tends to occur as 0(2), which is just two oxygen atoms bound together.

More detail:
Ozone mystery is solved
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/3/1/6/1

The sulfur from supervolcanoes tends to 'rob' the extra oxygen from the O3 that is ozone, and that oxygen often turns out to be the [17]O.

[blues]

I predict that windmills will be more helpful than solar panels under darkened skies. And caves would be handy. Stout boots and warm mittens would help for the trek to Paraguay. And your swords and arrows might come in handy after the Blackwater insurgents run out of ammo. We must raise up a generation of young Doom Scouts (to hell with the boy/girl scout sissies).

Also, solar panels, which can now be made with a variety of new materials, are generally just huge semiconductor diodes, which are sadly vulnerable to any EMP attacks, which someone will perpetrate before the calderas crack. But ask me if you would like more info on EMP shielding.

[Canuck]

He Blues I think you’ll abandon your Farady Cage when you reach for your bow and arrow

[John Szczesniak]

All electronics I keep " just in case" are stored in a faraday cage equivalent. Have been for over 15 years. Anything that is kept for ready access during garden variety disasters has it's equivalent or duplicate in the " cage".

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

And the most important tool of all: power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Heh.

[blues]

If I was looking for some serious EMP shielding, the typical Faraday cage, which consists of copper screen mesh, would not be my option. If the EMP is spiky enough, it may contain millimeter wave components with photons that can squeeze through the mesh. I would use something like solid copper foil, soldered together, and then an inner layer of steel foil. Almost nothing would block all that energy, but a poor conductor like steel would soak a lot of it up. It is also advisable to keep the greatest physical length of each individual shielding container as short as possible. The EMP will be electrostatic, but the currents it could induce in the copper could translate into a magnetic pulse, which could revert back in the enclosure, but could be blocked somewhat by the steel. There are no guarantees with this stuff.

[JSmith]

"'WHEN Yellowstone blows up, we will pretty much be destroyed as a nation,' is pretty much correct."

If you think the consequences of a supervolcano eruption would be limited to the North American continent... you need to rethink your position. Of course, your concerns do tend to stop at America's borders...

"If an Ice Age begins, then we are in stupendous trouble."

Of course, that's just 'we' here in the US, right? The Chinese and Japanese will do OK because they have trillions in FOREX reserves...

"So if one wants to worry about something major, this is it. ... There is no 'cure' for this problem."

In my experience, no good comes from worrying about things over which we have no control. I suppose we COULD play it safe and abandon those areas most likely to be affected - which is, as you say, most of the continental US...

I predict that sooner or later we will all be destroyed.

Question: are Blues and John hoping for a disaster so they can show off their preparedness?

Funny story: I used to work with a couple of guys who were absolutely certain that Y2K would be the end of civilization as we knew it. They'd spent a year or so stocking up on everything they thought they need to see themselves and their families through the coming Dark Ages, bought cabins (or "safe houses") in the mountains (in North Carolina, I think), and generally had a great time. One of them asked me what preparations I'd made; I told him I'd bought an extra bottle of Maker's Mark and would probably get $50 (just in case) from the ATM on the way home from dinner on New Years' Eve. He told me I was making a terrible mistake.

I had a great deal of fun with these guys for the next six months or so.

[JSmith]

The only possible response to Cassandra ("Dooom. Doooom. Dooom.") is, "Yes, dear. Of course."

If history teaches us any lesson at all, it is this: one thing we can never have is security. No one lives forever, nothing lasts forever, and everything eventually goes bung. If you can give up the idea of being 'secure', and enjoy living your life while poised over the abyss into which we must all eventually plunge... you'll be fine.

[blues]

I should mention if the Drunken Decider ever should attack Iran, the Iranians, like every significant power, have ultra-hot-shot hackers, who would turn 99% of US computers into pumpkins. So maybe just listen to the radio for the week it will take the wizards at FEMA to isolate the problems. By then, the phone companies will probably be absolute cyber-toast. (With all computers down, we will have other social problems as well.) Ham radio might be an option. A totally oddball operating system could be a big plus, for example, Debian GNU/Hurd:

http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/

[Canuck]

Hey Blues you might be fascinated by my story about when I knocked all the elevators in a city of about 40,000 offline. The Power Factor Corrector I was working with introduced eddy currents in the aluminum doors which would burn your hands after about 20 seconds.

[blues]

Great work, Canuck!!! If this was encrypted so the lawyers couldn't find me, I'd tell you about the day I screwed up the lead shield interlock system, and the ensuing X-ray burst. The people in town never heard a peep. Creepy.

[JSmith]

"Iranians, like every significant power, have ultra-hot-shot hackers"

And we don't, of course.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

um, Smith, you kind of went off the cliff there, dude. Did you lose money on your investments this month?

[JSmith]

???

"Off the cliff", where? And I'm certainly no further off it than you, Elaine dear!

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

I'm not a dear, I am equine.