Yellowstone National Park in the USA, with its geysers and hot springs, is a major attraction for tourists. However, especially in times of little news, the media often focuses on the Yellowstone supervolcano, which last erupted about 630,000 years ago. Inevitably then, the question of the underlying geological structures will be posed.
A recent study by Bernhard Steinberger of the German GeoForschungsZentrum and colleagues in the USA helps to better understand the processes in the Earth's interior. The paper will soon appear in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems published by the American Geophysical Union. It is based on modelling the Earth's mantle.
A recent study by Bernhard Steinberger of the German GeoForschungsZentrum and colleagues in the USA helps to better understand the processes in the Earth's interior. The paper will soon appear in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems published by the American Geophysical Union. It is based on modelling the Earth's mantle.
According to the model, beneath the Yellowstone volcano lies a so-called mantle plume: a chimney-like structure that reaches thousands of kilometres deep to the border of the Earth's core and mantle. The origin of the plume lies under the Baja California, more than a thousand kilometers southwest of the national park. Evaluations of earthquake waves had already suggested something like this, but the idea of such a "mantle plume" did not fit in with the movement of the Earth's lithospheric plates.
