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Yellowstone National Park · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

0:03
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: Hey, just a quick note before we get started here.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: If you are listening to this now, first off, congrats.
0:18
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0:20
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0:27
SPEAKER_01: If you're curious about the geology of Yellowstone National Park, we have been making audiovisual books, what we are calling conversational textbooks, and we just released one that is all about Yellowstone National Park.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: So, if you are curious about the geology of Yellowstone, this is what you should do.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: You can find it now on our web app by clicking the first link in your show notes.
0:47
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0:53
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0:55
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1:02
SPEAKER_01: Again, it's the first link in your show notes.
1:04
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1:07
SPEAKER_01: And again, the discount code that's PlanetGeoYnP20 for your 20% discount.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: Enjoy.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: What's going on, man?
1:25
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: How you doing, Jess?
1:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm doing really well.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: Excited about today.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: I'm excited.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: You bet.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: This is a near and dear to us kind of place, Yellowstone National Park.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's uh Yellowstone National Park is one of the coolest places on the planet.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: So you and I getting to sit down and talk about this.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: This is uh I've been looking forward to this for a long time.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's great.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: I mean, so let's start out with a couple introductions briefly here.
1:50
SPEAKER_01: You're Chris Bullheis, a nationally recognized earth science teacher in the great state of Michigan.
1:56
SPEAKER_01: You taught me the basics of geoscience.
1:58
SPEAKER_01: I was a student sitting in your class.
1:59
SPEAKER_01: You teach astronomy, you teach ninth grade earth science, you teach an upper-level geology class, you teach a field course, which is where I learned the geology of Yellowstone.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: And you are Dr.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: Jesse Rymink.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: You uh, like you said, one of my former students went on to get your PhD in the geosciences and now work as a professor of geoscience at Penn State University.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: So that's pretty cool.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, super cool.
2:22
SPEAKER_01: And we've known each other for a long time.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: Going on 20 years now.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: Going on 20 years.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: We like to talk about geoscience a lot.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: We love the geosciences.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: So, with that, what and where is Yellowstone, Chris?
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Yellowstone is it first of all, it's a huge place.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: It's in the northwest corner of the state of Wyoming, but it actually overlaps into Idaho and Montana.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: It's about the size of Rhode Island.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: So it's a big place.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: And this is something that a lot of people don't realize is when you go to Yellowstone and you want to go from one place to another, you know, you need to be ready for an hour plus car ride to get from one location to another.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: It's just an enormous place.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and Yellowstone is this place that I think most non-Americans that I know, they sort of associate Yellowstone with America.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's sort of the it goes on the advertising page of outdoor America.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's the one of the world's first national parks, if not the first.
3:17
SPEAKER_01: You see these pictures of bison, of geysers.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: It's this stunning, beautiful park.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: And it is, in many ways, the premier national park in the United States.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is for sure.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: It is the first national park that was designated as a national park.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it's an interesting thing though.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: 97% of the people that visit Yellowstone don't ever leave the boardwalk.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: Now, it's an extensive boardwalk.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: That's a crazy fact.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: It is.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: But you know, if you think about it, every national park that you and I have been to, they have their own personality.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: And Yellowstone, its personality, it's more of a driving park.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of trails, but most of the visitors just drive, get out, get on the boardwalk, see what they're supposed to see, and then get back in the car and go to the next spot.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: So it's more of a kind of a driving personality park, if you will.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that makes total sense.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: So, Jesse, tell me what Yellowstone means to you.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is a special place, but what is why is it special to you?
4:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I mean, both you and I have this really long relationship with Yellowstone National Park, and we share many similarities in that way.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: Both of our fathers were high school biology teachers.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: So we have these like long-standing family debates about, you know, the various pros and cons of biology versus geology.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: Summer science.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: I think we've won that debate, Jesse.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: I think you know I would like to think we have too.
4:38
SPEAKER_01: So let's just leave it at that.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: Right on.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: Back to Yellowstone, you know, this summer science field course that you lead now.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: My father led that for a while.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: And Yellowstone was always this place that we went to as a kid on this trip.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: So I went along as my dad was teaching this class, and it's just so cool.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: It kind of represents, you know, being out west to me, out in the western United States.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: But it has this really interesting biology standpoint.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: It's just a cool Yellowstone is just a cool place to experience the outdoors and experience the science of the outdoors, whether that's biology or geoscience.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I think that's one of the things about it is that it's this perfect intersection of biology and geology, actually.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna get to a couple of the biology questions, but you know, another part that's really personally important to me is that it's really where I learned geoscience from you.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: You taught me the fundamentals of geoscience, and really I was inspired in many ways by you to go into geology during that trip and in Yellowstone National Park.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna tell a couple stories about that here too.
5:41
unknown: Yeah.
5:42
SPEAKER_01: So, Chris, what about you?
5:43
SPEAKER_01: Why do you like Yellowstone?
5:45
SPEAKER_00: Um, a lot of reasons.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: The thing I love most about Yellowstone is the constant reminder that this is the biggest volcano on the planet.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: You can't get away from it.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: I pull into the parking lot of mud volcano.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, I'm driving the bus.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: I pull into this parking lot with a big old bus, and the smell of just rotten eggs, this strong sulfur stench just smacks you in the face.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: And it's not coming from the bus, it's coming from you, or well, it's hey, it's a perfect excuse to get away with some things.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: But um I sit back, I'm in the driver's seat, I sit back and I take a deep breath and I just feel my lungs and and I I kind of stretch my arms out and I say to myself, sometimes out loud, I usually say it out loud because that's me, but I'm I'm home.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's just this, it's a it reminds me of wow, you know, that smell means this is volcanic.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: And I just that's one of the things that I love about it.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: You can't get away from it.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: It just smells of a volcano.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: That's a great way to phrase it.
6:48
SPEAKER_01: For me, also, it's the world's first national park in many ways, and that's just such a cool idea, I think, that this is like a piece of exceptional property, exceptional real estate that we the people own.
7:00
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't matter your income, your race, your background, your job.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: You can go to Yellowstone.
7:06
SPEAKER_01: It's exceptionally well cared for by an exceptional group of people, and it's just one of the best places to go.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's such a cool idea.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: I love the national park idea, and I think you know, Yellowstone kind of represents that really well.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: So, what is your favorite aspect of Yellowstone National Park then?
7:22
SPEAKER_01: So let's get into it a little bit because actually I'm a big believer that the geoscience determines the biology, and Yellowstone is a perfect representation of that.
7:31
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to touch on a couple cool biology things, but I also just think it's like Yellowstone represents this really cool interaction between geoscience and biology.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about a couple of the biology problems, Chris.
7:43
SPEAKER_01: You know these really well, and and so let's get into a couple of these.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: What's going on with the lake trout in Yellowstone?
7:49
SPEAKER_00: The lake trout issue, Yellowstone Lake, it's the biggest lake in Yellowstone.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: It's an enormous lake.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's huge.
7:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's huge.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: It has all these little fingers of bays and stuff, big arms and so on.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can explore this for hours and hours.
8:02
SPEAKER_01: It's a beautiful place, huge.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: It is, it's it's amazing.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: But in 1994, there was the first documented, I think somebody caught a lake trout in Yellowstone Lake.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: And that's not a native species to Yellowstone Lake.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: And that was alarming in and of itself.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: But then it grew into this problem that is the biggest ecological concern Yellowstone National Park faces still today, and probably will for the duration of the park's life.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: It's never really gonna completely go away.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: And here's the issue that uh the lake trout eat the cutthroat trout.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: So let me just back up the the lake trout are the invasive species.
8:43
SPEAKER_01: Somebody introduced them maybe because they wanted to fish for lake trout in Yellowstone Lake or something, and the cutthroat trout are the native species, the the sort of indigenous species.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: Right.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: But the here's the deal is that the lake trout stay in the lake.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: They don't spawn upriver or anything like that.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: But the cutthroat trout, they'll leave the lake and they'll go upstream.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: Okay, now this is a major source, the cutthroat trout then in the fall for the grizzly bears, they will feed on the cutthroat trout on their way to spawn upstream.
9:13
SPEAKER_01: And cutthroat trout, I mean, the name is perfect for cutthroat trout because they have this beautiful red gash, right?
9:19
SPEAKER_01: Like at their where their throat would be if you know they were uh human.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: But they have this beautiful red gash.
9:24
SPEAKER_01: They're like they represent western fly fishing for me.
9:27
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're just like a stunningly beautiful species of fish.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: And lake trout are uh they can't be beautiful, they're a bit bigger and grayer and sort of bulkier and less beautiful.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: So I associate the you know pristine natural areas with cutthroat trout.
9:40
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're just amazing.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: Exactly, they are, but the lake trout have decimated the cutthroat trout population, they just eat several times their mass in cutthroat trout.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: And so that then puts a strain on the grizzlies, you know, they because they need this protein and this fat to go into hibernation during the wintertime, and they're just the the cutthroat trout are not present.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the grizzlies can't go and eat the lake trout.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because they're not there.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so anyway, the response then has been you know, Yellstone National Park has boats then that all they do is run a grid pattern netting and killing lake trout and putting them back into the lake.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: And what they do is they they'll net them, they'll puncture their lungs and put them back into the water.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: You're just returning the nutrients back to the system, right?
10:28
SPEAKER_00: That's what's going on.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: It's been the biggest issue because you know, up until like 2014, Yellowstone was really concerned what's gonna happen.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: Are we gonna lose the battle?
10:39
SPEAKER_00: Each year they were netting more and more and more.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Now, really a good side to the story is that since then they've kind of reached and turned the corner on this, where they're netting now less and less and less lake trout.
10:54
SPEAKER_01: That's you know an ongoing problem.
10:55
SPEAKER_01: And Yellowstone National Park is spending, I don't know, probably millions of dollars a year.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: They've got boats that all they do is go and catch lake trout.
11:02
unknown: Right.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: Um hey, one thing, one thing I want to interject.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: Um this year, I just got back from Yellowstone, you know, a month ago.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: This year was the first year in a long time that I have seen a cutthroat trout in the Yellowstone River.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: Oh, cool.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: Um, it was amazing.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: So we always do a service project in Yellowstone while we're there with my students and so on.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: So it's like a half-day project.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: And we were working on fishing bridge.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: This iconic bridge, it's beautiful, it's built with timbers that that come from the park, actually.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: The lodge pole pines, they're enormous.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: It's just it's a beautiful bridge.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: It's it's got obviously this concrete runway in the middle where the cars and trucks go over and so on, but the rest of the bridge is just made out of wood from the park itself, and it's just really cool.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, I'm standing there talking to Harlan, credit, a ranger, long-standing ranger in the park.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Look at that right there.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: And I look down there, and in Yellowstone River, just sitting there, goblin flies right off the surface, is a beautiful cutthroat trout.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: First time I've seen it in over 20 years.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: That is so cool.
12:07
SPEAKER_01: I gotta yeah, I want to go.
12:09
SPEAKER_01: All right, I gotta go.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: Next year I'm I'm tagging along.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: All right, Chris.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: So the next biological thing, and then I promise we're moving on to geoscience.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: All right.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: What about the wolves?
12:18
SPEAKER_01: The introduction of wolves.
12:19
SPEAKER_01: This is a really cool sort of story about wolves and the interplay, because I believe it was in 1926 when the last wolf died that was in the park.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're sort of hunted to extinction by different groups of people.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: So starting in 1995, they began a reintroduction project.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: This is a very, very controversial thing.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: You know, we hunted them to extinction, like you said.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: The last one died in 1926.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: So it's so controversial because Yellowstone doesn't have borders, it doesn't have fences.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: It's this is not a zoo.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: And so the, you know, you reintroduce the wolves in the park, and those wolves will come and go.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: They'll leave, they'll go into Montana.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: And so the people that are around Yellowstone in Wyoming and Montana, they have issues with the wolves because of livestock.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: I had a really good friend of mine in college who was somebody from Montana, and I mean, would shoot a wolf on site, legal or illegal, because it's harming their you know, livelihoods this way.
13:20
SPEAKER_01: They're they're taking down cattle.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: I agree.
13:23
SPEAKER_01: It's a controversial problem.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but it has this really interesting implication for the rest of the ecosystem in Yellowstone, right?
13:30
SPEAKER_01: It does when the when wolves are reintroduced in 1995.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: Uh what started to happen?
13:34
SPEAKER_00: An interesting thing that has happened since the reintroduction of the wolves is the return of the beavers to the park.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: And this is So what's going on there?
13:45
SPEAKER_01: That that that I mean that doesn't make any sense to me.
13:48
SPEAKER_01: Wolves and beavers in a reader does wolves and you get beavers back.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: What the hell?
13:52
SPEAKER_00: No.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, so go back then to the extinction of the wolves.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: The elk population, you know, the natural predator is gone.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: Wolves are the natural predator of the elk.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: And so a couple things happened.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: One is the population of the elk went just crazy, okay?
14:09
SPEAKER_00: Massive numbers of elk.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: And so did though their grazing habits.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: And they were just able to hang out in the valley, like Hayden Valley, and you know, go along the rivers and just eat the willows and so on along the river.
14:22
SPEAKER_01: Because they had no fear of getting eaten by the wolves, right?
14:25
SPEAKER_01: They're just sort of uh late, getting getting fat and lazy down in the valleys, huh?
14:29
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: And their whole behavior changed, you know, they were able to just kind of hang out.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, then since 1995 with the reintroduction, and it's been very successful, by the way.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: You know, the wolf population is stable, it's healthy.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh so the elk now have changed their grazing habits.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: They're not just able to sit there and hang out, they're always on the lookout for their predator.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: And so they're they're always moving, they're moving more than they have, and their willow has returned to the riversides.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: And this willow is this kind of like scrubby brush tree-like material.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: And so the willows returned, and that's a a source for the beavers, then with how they make their dams and so on.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: They use the willows a lot.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: So when the willows returned, the beavers returned, and it's all related to the reintroduction of the wolves.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: Wow, what an interesting phenomenon.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: It really is.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: It's this kind of what we call in biology a trophic cascade, where you know you affect one thing on the food chain of the biology food chain, and it it has this ripple effect down the line.
15:37
SPEAKER_01: Hey, and also look at you, Chris, throwing around biology terms like trophic.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: I know, we gotta get away from this.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know.
15:43
SPEAKER_01: All right, so let's get back to Yellowstone.
15:45
SPEAKER_01: Let's bring it home to the geosciences.
15:46
SPEAKER_01: Yellowstone.
15:47
SPEAKER_01: Why is it called Yellowstone?
15:48
SPEAKER_01: It helps explain the geology in some ways.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: Why is it called Yellowstone?
15:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, I there are a couple things, there are a couple theories on this actually.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: One is because of all of the yellow sandstone along the Yellowstone River near Billings, Montana.
16:04
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so outside of Yellowstone Park.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: It's outside of Yellowstone National Park.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: I don't understand that.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: So here's why it's called Yellowstone.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is the one we're going with because I like this one.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: All you know, the most of the rock inside Yellowstone is yellow.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: It's a rock called rhyolite.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and it's it's been you know hydrothermally altered into this kind of yellowish and sometimes brown and reds and some beautiful colors.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: But most of the time it's yellowstone.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, when we're inside the caldera and I'm pointing, I'm I'm pointing to rocks, you know, to my students like, what's that?
16:37
SPEAKER_00: Well, when you're in Yellowstone, it's rhyolite almost all the time.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: That's the that's the kind of rock you're looking at.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: It happens to be yellow, and so hence the name Yellowstone.
16:47
SPEAKER_01: And you know, the Native Americans, the First Peoples had many other names for it as well: land of the burning ground, land of vapors, many smoke, which is one of my favorites, uh, smoke from the ground.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: I love many smoke.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: But it those terms they really evoke this like spiritual perspective about Yellowstone National Park, which, you know, it was for ancient peoples.
17:05
SPEAKER_01: And to be honest, it is for me a little bit too.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: And for you, getting off the bus and smelling that sulfur and you just feeling like home.
17:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's just a really special place.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, and it became a national park in 1872, and that kind of set the stage for our experiences as we experience the park today.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: But it is this, like you said, driving park, very big, very wild, but very, very special place.
17:30
SPEAKER_01: So, what is Yellowstone?
17:32
SPEAKER_01: Like, fundamentally, in from a geoscience perspective, what is Yellowstone?
17:35
SPEAKER_00: Right.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Yellowstone is it's a volcano, and it's often referred to as a super volcano.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: Some people, you know, don't like the term super volcano because it it erupts a bunch of different stuff.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't always blow up massively.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: So Yellowstone does erupt other stuff, it doesn't just go big or go home.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: But it's such a good point of why certain people that really, really know Yellowstone well don't like the phrase because it always elicits this kind of biblical or cataclysmic kind of eruptions.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: And that's not true because most of the eruptions that happen are like lava flows, things that relatively non-violent things, or these hydrothermal explosions that are very common in Yellowstone.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, common in a geological sense.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but when Yellowstone does go big, it goes massive.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is like a affect the entire planet, it can put enough dust into the atmosphere to really cool the planet.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: It occurs on a catastrophic scale when it does blow up big time.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: I just came back from Yellowstone, and so I think about this every single time I'm there, and I'm thinking about this now.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: When if you've ever been there, if you haven't been there, go go go go.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: It's worth it.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: That's that's solid advice.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but like if we didn't know about plate tectonics, because that's relatively new, if we you know, we didn't have all of the technology to do seismic profiling and all this kind of stuff below the surface of the earth and find out what's going on, we wouldn't know any of this.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: Would you be able to recognize Yellowstone as a volcano?
19:06
SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't, I don't I'm amazed that these early scientists like Ferdinand Hayden or Thomas Jagger, these they recognized Yellowstone as a volcano.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I don't know if I don't actually I'm just gonna say it.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I would.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I'd be able to sit there and say, this is a volcano.
19:27
SPEAKER_01: Well, you're kind of a dumbass, Chris.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: So I don't think you would be able to either.
19:33
SPEAKER_01: But no, I well, I mean, you're right.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna argue that.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: But I wouldn't view it to either.
19:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're right.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: This is like like a such a really impressive sort of intuitive leap that they made to come to the conclusion that there is a massive volcano sitting beneath their feet here, and and it combines a whole bunch of different things.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: So if well, let me if you look at Mount St.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: Helens, okay, you and I've been there together.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if you look at Mount St.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: Helens on a clear day where you can see inside the caldera, um, you're gonna recognize that is a volcano.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: When you look at Mount Rainier, that is a volcano.
20:05
SPEAKER_01: You know, Mount Fuji or any of these big volcanoes or the little caldera at the top, you know, this peak, that's clear, that's a volcano, right?
20:11
SPEAKER_01: Yellowstone.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: It stands up and smacks you in the face.
20:14
SPEAKER_01: And hey, I'm a volcano.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: And so Yellowstone's a bit different.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: It's this relatively flat area, which we'll talk about, but it also is a much bigger eruption.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: Well, you can't see across it.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: You you know?
20:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you can't see across what is the crater version of Yellowstone.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: And Yellowstone has what's called a caldera, and we're gonna refer to this as a caldera.
20:34
SPEAKER_01: A crater is a different thing and it forms a different way.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: But you could picture this volcano, your typical volcano, with the little top knocked off of it.
20:41
SPEAKER_01: The top usually gets knocked off in a crater.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: That's a crater.
20:45
SPEAKER_01: The top gets knocked off by the explosion just blowing off the top of it.
20:49
SPEAKER_01: So the explosion is actually just blowing the top off the mountain.
20:52
SPEAKER_01: A caldera is different.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: A caldera is usually much larger, and it forms by such a large volume of magma being pushed out during the eruption that the ground around that magma chamber collapses down in because you had a bunch of magma underneath the ground.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: That stuff all gets pushed into the atmosphere, and then the ground collapses down in on itself.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: That's what forms a caldera.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: So when we refer to caldera, think of just a huge crater, it forms differently, but it's a huge crater.
21:20
SPEAKER_01: And Yellowstone's caldera is what, Chris, 30, 45 miles across, something like that.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: It's massive.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's 30 miles by 45 miles across.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: And so that's why when you stand on one rim, what we've established now as hey, this is the rim of a caldera, okay.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: And you look then across the other side, you can't see the other rim in most places.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: And that's why, that's why to me it's so difficult to understand, right?
21:44
SPEAKER_00: You can stand on the rim of Mount St.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: Helens.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: I climbed it this summer.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: You stand in the rim and look across and see the other side easily.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: Yellowstone isn't that way.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: You can't even see the other rim of the caldera from most places in the park.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: So the source of the magma in Yellowstone is kind of.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: The interesting part here, and the source of these vast volumes of magma that can form this caldera.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: So Yellowstone's a hotspot.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: There's several other hot spots on Earth.
22:10
SPEAKER_01: Hawaii is one, Iceland is one.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: There's several island chains in the oceans that are hot spots.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: There's tons of them all over the place.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: Yellowstone is one, and it's a bit of a different flavor of hotspot compared to Hawaii or Iceland.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about a hotspot, Chris.
22:24
SPEAKER_01: You have a great analogy for this.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: You can think of it like this.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: If you hand a student uh a lighter, one of those butane lighters, you know, you just flick it and like a little bic lighter, you know, like a little thumb press one.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: A little bic lighter.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: Have a student hold out their hand with the lighter in their hand and have them light it.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: And then I'll just say, all right, now don't move your hands.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: This represents the hotspot.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: And then I'll grab just a sheet of paper, a sheet of lined paper.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: And that represents the plate, the lithospheric plate moving over top of the hot spot, which generally doesn't move much.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: So as I slide the leading edge of that paper.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: So wait a minute.
23:09
SPEAKER_01: You're holding this paper with two hands holding it like horizontally over the lighter that I'm holding.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: So I'll have the student's hands out with the lighter lit.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: The little big lighter lit.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to then slide this paper over it horizontally.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just going to move very slowly.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: And I'll kind of I try to adjust the height because I don't want to like burn the, I don't want just leave it over the paper and have the paper start on fire.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: That's not what I'm doing.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm I have the paper a little bit higher.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: And as I move it across, okay, the leading edge of that paper, as I slide it over top of the lighter, it starts to scorch.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: And you can see it from above.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm not burning a hole in anything like that.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm just I'm kind of scorching the paper.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just very gradually moving that paper over.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: So by the time I've slid the entire paper over the lighter, I'll say, okay.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: All right, now let's shut the lighter off.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: And I'll hold the paper up now vertically so they can see the scorched paper, which represents the scorched earth over top of the hotspot.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
24:14
SPEAKER_01: That is, Chris, that is just a great analogy.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's exactly what's going on.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: Well done.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: Kudos to you.
24:21
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's exactly what's happening.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: The hotspot, the this mantle plume, which we don't have time to get into, but this mantle plume down deep in the earth is a source of heat.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: And the tectonic plate, this, if you bend it, it will break part of the earth is just sliding over top of that source of heat, and we're just scorching the earth.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's perfect.
24:40
SPEAKER_01: That is a perfect analogy.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: So have you ever burned a student during this analogy?
24:44
SPEAKER_00: No, I told you that I well, I I sometimes I make mistakes, but no, I haven't burned a student with anything.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: I'm holding the paper, remember?
24:52
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, okay.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: Well, all right, I've got the dangerous part.
24:55
SPEAKER_01: At least so you say now.
24:57
SPEAKER_01: Maybe uh, you know, students used to hold the paper or something.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: So, like, look, when you hold that paper up, on that paper, where is Yellowstone now?
25:10
SPEAKER_00: That's what I ask.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, we'll point to it.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: Where is Yellowstone?
25:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh now keep in mind you have this white piece of paper with this kind of dark brownish-black scorch across the middle of it, right?
25:22
SPEAKER_00: Where's Yellowstone now?
25:24
SPEAKER_00: Well, Yellowstone now, well, Jesse.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: Where is Yellowstone on that paper?
25:30
SPEAKER_01: Yellowstone now is wherever you last had the lighter.
25:33
SPEAKER_01: And so it kind of paused a little bit at the end there, and you got the end of the scorched earth.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: And this is really kind of like describes Yellowstone a little bit.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: It is the end-member volcano on Earth, really.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: When it erupts, it erupts massively.
25:47
SPEAKER_01: And it's different from Hawaii, it's different from Iceland.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: Those those eruptions are very small.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: Well, it can erupt massively.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: Good point.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: It can erupt massively.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: The big eruptions are massive.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: On Hawaii, even the big eruptions are relatively small when thinking comparing them to Yellowstone.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of the end member on our planet.
26:06
SPEAKER_01: And we'll get into some of those reasons why, but it relates to sort of this crust moving over the hotspot.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: So, what does that mean though, then about the leading edge of the paper, Jesse?
26:17
SPEAKER_00: So Yellowstone is where I last got burned.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: That's where it is right now.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean about the other end of the paper?
26:25
SPEAKER_00: How does that tie into what we see on our planet?
26:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a great question.
26:30
SPEAKER_01: And Yellowstone is kind of flat, right?
26:33
SPEAKER_01: Like compared to other national parks or compared to other regions that are well known for their beauty and for visitors going to, it's pretty flat.
26:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it has mountains, they're not the biggest mountains.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: And this comes back to like a really annoying part of my life, which was a couple hours on summer science when I was in high school.
26:54
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: Do you do you remember this, Chris?
26:56
SPEAKER_01: The story of when I can't.
26:57
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: So we're driving.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: We we had just spent, I don't know, a week in Yellowstone, right?
27:01
SPEAKER_01: Like 26 students, you and another teacher, and you're driving the bus, like a big yellow school bus down the highway.
27:07
SPEAKER_01: We're leaving Yellowstone National Park.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: We're heading to the southwest along the Snake River Plain.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: So we're driving on the highway, we're in this kind of big valley, and I got a little bit bored in the back of the bus, and you were like the source of all geoscience knowledge in my life at that point in time.
27:22
SPEAKER_01: So I came up to the front of the bus and you're sitting there driving, and I'm sitting on like the steps, right?
27:25
SPEAKER_01: I'm just kind of sitting on the steps, peppering you with questions.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know what you're trying to do, but you were pushing me a little bit.
27:32
SPEAKER_01: I just kind of wanted you to try to make sense of what we saw.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: So basically we're driving down the highway.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: You're like, all right, Jesse, what are we driving through right now?
27:43
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I don't know, a valley, right?
27:44
SPEAKER_01: He's you're like, no, no, no.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: What are we actually driving through?
27:47
SPEAKER_01: Like, like from a geoscience perspective, what is this?
27:50
SPEAKER_01: We just left Yellowstone.
27:51
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, okay, we just left Yellowstone.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: We're in a valley.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: We look to the right, there's big mountains.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: We look to the left, there's big mountains.
27:57
SPEAKER_01: Behind us, Yellowstone's pretty flat.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: We're driving in this long valley down the Snake River Plain.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: You're like, what is that?
28:04
SPEAKER_01: And I stewed about this for a long time.
28:08
SPEAKER_01: And you had to give me the answer.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: I I never really got there, which to this day irritates me a little bit.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I don't like it when I can't figure things out, and I'm fairly stubborn individual.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: But let me paint the picture a little bit differently, okay?
28:22
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: The when you when we're driving through the valley, through the Snake River Plain, all right, it's like 50 miles wide, flat to your right, to your left.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: That's like 50 miles in distance.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
28:34
SPEAKER_01: That's a good point.
28:34
SPEAKER_01: It's not just a small little river valley, it's a big wide.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: The mountains to your right, they look identical to the mountains to your left.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and then we're just driving through this really, really flat area that's about fifty plus miles wide.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of what this looked like.
28:52
SPEAKER_01: And so this is so eventually you had to give me the give me the answer.
28:56
SPEAKER_01: And the answer is that this is the track of the lighter underneath the paper.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: This is the scorched paper that we're driving along.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: We are going through where Yellowstone used to be on the paper.
29:10
SPEAKER_01: So why is it so flat then?
29:14
SPEAKER_01: Because the hot spot that is now beneath Yellowstone blew out the mountains.
29:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just erupted.
29:19
SPEAKER_01: This is former caldera country that we're driving through, like old calderas.
29:23
SPEAKER_01: It's such a cool story.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: Then what didn't get destroyed got kind of swallowed up as it collapsed down into these calderas.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: It kind of cannibalized though what didn't get destroyed in the eruptions.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: And so you're left with this relatively flat track that just marks the path of the plate over top of this hotspot.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: That's really what's going on.
29:44
SPEAKER_01: It is such a cool story.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: So a lot of people go to Yellowstone.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: If you're going to Yellowstone, go.
29:50
SPEAKER_01: If you're going to Yellowstone, also go in the Snake River Plain, or at least drive in it for a little bit because it is so cool.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: I think it's worthy to point out, like where we were going was Craters of the Moon.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: As you're driving from Yellowstone to Craters of the Moon, you're driving sort of back in time.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: You're basically driving back along this trajectory.
30:09
SPEAKER_01: And remember, we we have to go back to the paper and the lighter analogy.
30:12
SPEAKER_01: The paper is moving, not the lighter.
30:15
SPEAKER_01: And so as you're driving along, you're driving along the paper, and the paper used to be sort of back shifted, if that makes sense, to the northeast.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: So you're driving back in time, you know, 10-15 million years ago as you're driving in this direction.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: So back, sorry, Chris, back to craters of the moon.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's just craters of the moon is it's a national park, and it's the fate of what is now Yellowstone National Park.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: As where Yellowstone, what we think of Yellowstone right now is as it moves over top of the hotspot, it won't get injected then with any fresh magma.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: Because remember, that magma chamber, that hot spot, stays relatively put, it stays in position.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: So what will happen to it?
31:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, craters of the moon is black rock.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
31:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's not yellow like a yellow stone, right?
31:09
SPEAKER_01: And it's really just the dregs of a former Yellowstone.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: It's the bits of magma that are left behind, it's the lighter has already passed, and it's what's left behind that's erupting out.
31:20
SPEAKER_01: And now it's more complicated a little bit than that.
31:22
SPEAKER_01: But basically, this magma chamber has sort of erupted and it it it's lost all of its stuff, you know, 10 million years ago, and then there's a little bit left over, and that's the end of it.
31:32
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of in the drag stage here, and so it's like you know, end stage Yellowstone.
31:38
SPEAKER_01: It's like end stage Yellowstone National Park, exactly as you said.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: Because it's lost its ability to like melt rock around it because it's cooling off, it erupts this black kind of basalt, and it takes on a look much like Hawaii.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, you get these these kind of flows and cinder cones and shield volcanoes, very, very different in nature from what we think of in terms of Yellowstone National Park.
32:03
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
32:03
SPEAKER_01: And if we carry this to the conclusion, the lighter's not turning off in this analogy, right?
32:08
SPEAKER_01: The lighter's still there, the paper is still moving.
32:10
SPEAKER_01: Yellowstone will someday be this, and we will have a new Yellowstone someday in the future to the northeast of what is modern Yellowstone National Park because the plate is still moving.
32:21
SPEAKER_01: The plate paper is still moving.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: All right, Jesse.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: So let's switch gears.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: I got a question for you.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, hit me with it.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: If you had to choose one place to visit in Yellowstone, what would it be and why?
32:34
SPEAKER_01: Oh man, what a great question.
32:37
SPEAKER_01: One place to visit.
32:39
SPEAKER_01: Well, I would probably go to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: Um it's this really scenic view where is it the Yellowstone River that flows through there?
32:47
SPEAKER_01: Is that what river is?
32:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
32:49
SPEAKER_01: So it's the Yellowstone River flowing through this beautiful yellow rock.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: Yellow, there's reds in there, there's like browns, there's some different colors that I don't know the names to, but it's like this stunning sort of picturesque landscape, especially when the light hits it right.
33:04
SPEAKER_01: I mean, for me, that that just you know brings back a lot of memories sitting there watching the the waterfalls.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: So that's where I would go.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: I get you.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: I get you.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: What about you, Chris?
33:13
SPEAKER_00: Well, it would not be that.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: Um not that I I love the Yellowstone Grand.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: In fact, you know, as a kid, I would get confused between the Grand Canyon and the Yellowstone Grand Canyon, but which is really confusion that shouldn't happen.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: But I was I was a young kid because the Yellowstone Grand Canyon is it's massive, it's grand, but then it doesn't really stack up to the Grand Canyon in Arizona and so on.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: But that's true.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it's just you know, for me, it's just too busy.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: So many people.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: So if I had to pick a place or a couple places, that wouldn't make the list, even though it is absolutely spectacular.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: There's a reason why it's so busy.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: For me, I like Crater Hills, it's a place where it's in Hayden Valley, there's no trail to it, you just kind of got a bushwhack, and it's this hydrothermal area that nobody goes to.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a place to see cool features and not have to just not have to fight the masses.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: But okay, so most people are not gonna do that.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: I so I have another one that I'll just throw out there.
34:21
SPEAKER_00: To me, it's the best hike in the park, hands down, Avalanche Peak.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: It is a very steep, but it's a short, shorter four to five miles round trip hike.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: It's just you can see the rim of the caldera.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: You can't see across to the other side, but you can clearly see one rim.
34:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let me interject here because I remember this hike, and it is the best spot to go see the caldera.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can't see across it, as you said before, but it's a place where you really get a sense of the scale of what a 30 by 45 mile wide caldera looks like.
34:58
SPEAKER_01: You can't see the whole thing, but damn, it's big.
35:01
SPEAKER_01: And you really get you it kind of smacks you in the face when you're standing there looking at it.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it really does.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: And it's just it's one of the, I don't know, you have to work hard to get there.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: That makes it special.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: And then just the views, the 360s up top are amazing.
35:14
SPEAKER_01: So, Chris, that caldera that we're looking at, is there one eruption that formed that?
35:19
SPEAKER_01: Is there multiple?
35:20
SPEAKER_01: Like, what's going on here?
35:21
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, so where Yellowstone is right now, because remember, we talked about the track of the hotspot, the scorched earth.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: There have been over a hundred like cataclysmic biblical kind of eruptions, right?
35:32
SPEAKER_00: Over this the last 17 million years.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: But where Yellowstone is right now, there have been three cataclysmic eruptions.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: The first one was 2.1-ish million years ago.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: The second one was about 1.3 million years ago, and the last one, the most recent cataclysmic, like biblical eruption, was about 640,000 years ago.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you know, these eruptions have occurred what, every 600,000, 700,000 years apart for three eruptions.
36:05
SPEAKER_01: But there's this really kind of funny culture that's been built up about being really worried about Yellowstone erupting, and every year, you know, it seems like, oh, Yellowstone's gonna erupt, we're gonna die, you know, this whole sort of catastrophic mentality.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: But Chris, I know that this drives you and I crazy, but let's get it on the record right now.
36:22
SPEAKER_01: Chris, are we due for eruption at Yellowstone National Park?
36:25
SPEAKER_00: It's I guess it's one of my pet peeves.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: No, Yellowstone is not due for one of the many, one of the many.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: You know, Yellowstone, it's it's not a clock.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: There's a cycle to it for sure.
36:38
SPEAKER_00: But think about these time frames, Jesse.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: 640,000 years to 700,000 years.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: Like those are massive amounts of time.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: And for on a human scale, am I concerned about taking 26 high school students to Yellowstone National Park if it's due for an eruption?
36:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, no, I don't even give it a thought.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: I'll take my family there.
37:00
SPEAKER_01: I you know, no, I so it's an interesting thing because you know there's a lot of monitoring that goes on the volcano.
37:06
SPEAKER_01: So that means like looking at the volcanic gases that are coming out.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: That means looking at like the ground swelling and breathing in and out.
37:12
SPEAKER_01: And this is one conclusion that is really interesting, and and a reason why it's important to actually monitor these things is that volcanoes are really dynamic.
37:20
SPEAKER_01: They breathe, they emit gases of different compositions, they grow and shrink.
37:25
SPEAKER_01: Like, think of your chest as you're breathing in, your chest expands.
37:28
SPEAKER_01: As you breathe out, it compacts.
37:29
SPEAKER_01: The volcano is doing the same thing.
37:31
SPEAKER_01: The ground is rising up and sinking down.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: But you're right, on a human time scale, we do not need to worry about this.
37:37
SPEAKER_01: If you plan on living for a hundred thousand years, then you should be concerned about Yellowstone.
37:41
SPEAKER_01: But I'm not gonna make that.
37:43
SPEAKER_01: And so, no, we don't need to worry about this, right?
37:46
SPEAKER_00: So, a friend of mine who's a ranger, the long, long time ranger in Yellowstone National Park, a number of years ago, put up a sign at this.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: It's called the Sour Creek Dome.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: It's a resurgent dome where you just said that Yellowstone was kind of huffing and puffing, you know, it's it's expanding and contracting and so on.
38:01
SPEAKER_00: So you put this sign up that said, This is the fastest rising area in the world right now.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: Because it was just it was expanding.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it was breathing in, and uh just like your chest heaves, uh, Yellowstone was heaving in this one particular area, and then a couple years later it stopped, and so you had to take the sign down.
38:20
SPEAKER_00: You know, it just it it changed.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but you know, to that point too, Jesse, is that July, this past July, Yellowstone was extremely active from a seismic standpoint, or lots and lots and lots of earthquakes.
38:35
SPEAKER_00: And so every time something like this happens, I just read an article.
38:39
SPEAKER_00: And the title of the article, I'm not gonna get this exact, but it had something to do with Yellowstone's extremely active.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: Could this be a sign of the next big one?
38:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, and it's just every time I read stuff like that or I roll my eyes.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: Now the article came around and and said, no, this is not a sign of the next big one.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: But the title alone leads people to along that kind of line of thought.
39:03
SPEAKER_01: So let's run down the sizes here.
39:05
SPEAKER_01: When they do go every 650,000 years, which we don't need to worry about, but every once in a while, when it does go, they're huge.
39:12
SPEAKER_01: So, Chris, what's the side what what do they look like?
39:14
SPEAKER_00: All right.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, these three cataclysmic eruptions.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: First of all, I want to just say that generally speaking, the more infrequent a volcano is, the more violent it tends to be.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: So these are big time frames, very infrequent, and then when it does go big, it goes huge.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: And so the first one about 2.1 million years ago was 2500 times bigger than Mount St.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: Helens.
39:41
SPEAKER_00: Okay, in terms of like the amount of material that came out of it, that is hard to wrap your mind around, right?
39:49
SPEAKER_00: 2,500 times larger than a Mount St.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: Helens event.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: It's hard to comprehend, you know?
39:55
SPEAKER_00: That's enormous.
39:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so anyway, the second one, about 1.3 million years ago, was 280 times larger in terms of the material that got ejected, the volume of ash 280 times larger than Mount St.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: Helens.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: And then the most recent one, 640,000 years ago, was a thousand times larger in terms of volume of ash ejected than Mount St.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: Helens.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: So man, you know, amazing.
40:26
SPEAKER_00: That's yeah, that's why it's called often referred to as a super volcano.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: I know that's an annoying term for some.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: When it goes big, it goes big and it changes the world.
40:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, no human has ever seen this scale of this eruption.
40:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no human has ever witnessed a super volcano eruption.
40:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so cool.
40:49
SPEAKER_01: So cool.
40:49
SPEAKER_01: It is and if it happened, you know, it'd be better to maybe die in the eruption than live through what happens afterwards, the apocalypse that would happen afterwards.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I don't know.
40:58
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I'd want to like try to make my way through that.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: I'd be tempted to kind of go to Lake Butte Overlook, and you can literally dangle your legs over the rim of the caldera there.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: So I I think like if we knew Yellowstone was gonna erupt, I that's that's maybe where you would find me.
41:14
SPEAKER_01: Chris, you've always been trying to die in a volcano.
41:16
SPEAKER_01: That's been like your goal for a while.
41:18
SPEAKER_00: That is not true.
41:18
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to die, but it'd be beautiful for uh maybe a second.
41:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then that's then that's that's very true.
41:26
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's right.
41:28
SPEAKER_01: If you haven't been to Yellowstone, go.
41:31
SPEAKER_01: Please go.
41:32
SPEAKER_01: So it is absolutely worth it.
41:35
SPEAKER_01: And you know, learn about the geoscience before you go, because I think it makes the whole experience richer, right, Chris?
41:40
SPEAKER_01: And you know, you just can appreciate the place in a way that you can't if you don't know about it like that.
41:45
SPEAKER_00: That is something that I feel very strongly about.
41:47
SPEAKER_00: The more you know about places like Yellowstone, you go in with some background, the more you can appreciate it.
41:55
SPEAKER_00: And you know, everybody can go there and appreciate the beauty of the park because it's all over the place.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: Everybody can go there and appreciate the biology of it.
42:02
SPEAKER_00: But when you know a little bit about what's happening beneath you, it just makes Yellowstone a richer, deeper experience.
42:11
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
42:11
SPEAKER_01: Be a three percenter, get off the boardwalk when you can, when it's allowable to get off the boardwalk and go mix it up a little bit with Yellowstone National Park.
42:19
SPEAKER_00: I just want to say that also we're just kind of skimming the surface with this.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: There's so much more that we could talk about with Yellowstone.
42:28
SPEAKER_00: This could be uh a few episodes on Planet Geo, but but we do have more in future episodes.
42:35
SPEAKER_00: There will be much more about like hot spots in general.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: There will be uh, you know, an episode about the geysers and hydrothermal features in Yellowstone.
42:45
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna interview my friend Harlan Credit.
42:48
SPEAKER_01: A ranger at Yellowstone National Park.
42:49
SPEAKER_00: A ranger in Yellowstone, yeah.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: He's been a Harlan Credit has been a ranger in Yellowstone for 48 years and counting.
42:56
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's safe to say that there is not a human being alive right now that knows more about Yellowstone National Park.
43:03
SPEAKER_00: And so he's gonna provide some insights also in future episodes.
43:06
SPEAKER_01: And you know, you can find us on all the social medias at Planet Geocast.
43:11
SPEAKER_01: We have a new website, planetgeocast.com.
43:14
SPEAKER_01: That's planetgeocaste.com, and send us an email.
43:18
SPEAKER_01: It's planetgeocast at gmail.com, or there's a contact us link on our webpage.
43:23
SPEAKER_01: So with that, thanks for listening to Yellowstone National Park and go check it out.
43:28
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
43:29
SPEAKER_01: See you next week.
43:30
SPEAKER_01: All right, peace.