Since Yellowstone is the present location of the Snake Valley hot spot, and the present caldera is where the geysers are, I would ask for your interpretation
many small earthquakes that are occurring. Are they, and the fact the the
surface is now doming again evidence of the return to volcanic activity.
Yellowstone has blown up about every 600,000 years for 1.8 years and it is now
the 600,000 year interval now.
James
Stoness
Hi James,
I don't know the exact answer to your question. It is not a good
idea to rely too much on eruption intervals, especially if the time
is so long. 600,000 years is way longer than we have been looking
at any volcanoes, let alone Yellowstone. Just the uncertainty in
the 600,000 year number is probably greater than most of human
history. That doesn't mean that the earthquakes are NOT due to the
resumption of activity, however. We need to take a close look at
where the earthquakes are, whether they indicate upward movement of
magma, and other factors. These other factors include updoming of
the ground, changes in the temperatures and compositions of gases
coming out of fumaroles and other things.
I'm sorry I didn't have an exact answer for you, just some advice
that relying exclusively on statistics, especially statistics that
may have a lot of error in them, can be misleading.
Scott Rowland, University of Hawaii
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