Supervolcanos!

[Buffy]

[Author's note: most of this was composed while sitting on one back in July]

With the exception of a few very large rocks from space, nothing has more power anywhere on earth than a Supervolcano going off. Luckily, we don't see them go off very often, but there's more evidence to track about them than the really big meteors, and they're scary, gigantic, civilization-destroying monsters. There've been a bunch of shows--including a surprisingly good docudrama--on this year on the topic (all with the same name! I don't even need to bother to list them!), and I thought since I'm sitting on one at the moment, I'd blather a bit about them.

(source: USGS)

"You're sitting on one?" Yeah, its known as the "Long Valley Caldera", which sits in the Eastern Sierra Nevada in California, just south of Mono Lake. I spend a lot of time in Mammoth Lakes, which is right on the edge of the Resurgent Dome of the caldera. If this puppy goes off while we're here, we probably won't even notice it!

Now Long Valley is tiny compared to Yellowstone, but there's some evidence that it goes off more frequently, and if you like Earthquakes, this is the place to be! Moreover, that Resurgent Dome is something that's much more active than Yellowstone, so it really is kinda scary.

The main thing though, as with so much of nature, its ripe for some really amazing beauty. From down below, you dont really notice much unless you take a good look at the rocks. It doesn't take a degree in geology to figure out what creates things like Devil's Postpile --not one of a kind, as you can see from this picture of the San Joaquin River:



But that well known anomaly is tiny compared to some of the stuff off the beaten track like Obsidian Dome or the Mammoth Fault that runs for miles.


Is it active? Yup. In addition to the Earthquake activity, you can go see it. One of our favorite places is Hot Creek which is um, well, hot.

There are warning signs everywhere, that people ignore, but places like this are so hot and sulfurous that you get this amazing lifeless blue hue because nothing except extremophiles can stand the heat.

Got any caldera info? Questions? Post away!

Rumbling steamily,
Buffy

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Buffy

[Author's note: most of this was composed while sitting on one back in July]

With the exception of a few very large rocks from space, nothing has more power anywhere on earth than a Supervolcano going off. Luckily, we don't see them go off very often, but there's more evidence to track about them than the really big meteors, and they're scary, gigantic, civilization-destroying monsters. There've been a bunch of shows--including a surprisingly good docudrama--on this year on the topic (all with the same name! I don't even need to bother to list them!), and I thought since I'm sitting on one at the moment, I'd blather a bit about them.

(source: USGS)

"You're sitting on one?" Yeah, its known as the "Long Valley Caldera", which sits in the Eastern Sierra Nevada in California, just south of Mono Lake. I spend a lot of time in Mammoth Lakes, which is right on the edge of the Resurgent Dome of the caldera. If this puppy goes off while we're here, we probably won't even notice it!

Now Long Valley is tiny compared to Yellowstone, but there's some evidence that it goes off more frequently, and if you like Earthquakes, this is the place to be! Moreover, that Resurgent Dome is something that's much more active than Yellowstone, so it really is kinda scary.

The main thing though, as with so much of nature, its ripe for some really amazing beauty. From down below, you dont really notice much unless you take a good look at the rocks. It doesn't take a degree in geology to figure out what creates things like Devil's Postpile --not one of a kind, as you can see from this picture of the San Joaquin River:



But that well known anomaly is tiny compared to some of the stuff off the beaten track like Obsidian Dome or the Mammoth Fault that runs for miles.


Is it active? Yup. In addition to the Earthquake activity, you can go see it. One of our favorite places is Hot Creek which is um, well, hot.

There are warning signs everywhere, that people ignore, but places like this are so hot and sulfurous that you get this amazing lifeless blue hue because nothing except extremophiles can stand the heat.

Got any caldera info? Questions? Post away!

Rumbling steamily,
Buffy

OMG! Where to start!??
First, that was post #3,000 at the time of this reading; congratulations on achieving (once again) that base ten value Buffy.
My knife has butter on it, I'm just gonna have to spread it around.
I did set out to edit your quote, but alas it was to no avail and I left it all at the risk of double posting.
As you forget nothing, you know I likely have stood within the bounds of many of your wundyfull photos and of them all I had forgotten the vivid blue of the pools. Takk und takk!!
What I noticed with new interest is how fast the bulge has grown and then, more wundyfully, I see that the largest notable quakes on the map occured coincident to the May 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens whose shoulder I live on!
Well, I do run on.
Steamily Rumbling,
Turtle

[InfiniteNow]

The beauty of nature and Earth will always outweigh any ugliness of it's inhabitants and their actions.

Thank you for sharing those wonderful shots with the rest of us, Buffy.


Cheers.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Buffy

...There've been a bunch of shows--including a surprisingly good docudrama--on this year on the topic (all with the same name! I don't even need to bother to list them!),...
Got any caldera info? Questions? Post away!

Rumbling steamily,
Buffy

Did you happen to see the one on Lake Toba in Indonesia? It was a new one on me, and a fairly well watchable show.

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by Turtle

Did you happen to see the one on Lake Toba in Indonesia? It was a new one on me, and a fairly well watchable show.

Yep, that was new for me too. Immediately looked it up on Google Earth. These things look so weird from space...

Kaboom,
Buffy

[CraigD]

Volcanoes of all kinds and sizes are surely beautiful (though, as someone who considers peat bogs beautiful, my eye for beauty should be accepted guardedly), but, they’re also scarey, especially the super-periodically-kill-all-but-about-ten-thousand-humans kind.

Unlike Buffy and Turtle, who’ve enjoyed the complete sight-sound-touch-smell experience of some western US volcanoes, my experience with them has been in the form of 2-d TV. I thought the fictional 2005 movie ”Supervolcano” did a decent job, from a scientific perspective, of considering the consequences of a super-erruption.

Although the probability of such an eruption occurring in any given decade appears vanishingly small, it’s humbling to think of the potential impact on human civilization. In a time when we commonly think of our species as having “tamed nature”, the prospect of a natural catastrophe killing more people than all our past wars or imagined future ones evokes a sense of humility I think is healthy.

There’s nothing like a continent-spanning pyroclastic cloud to impress on one that, for all our culture and technology, in the extreme, we’re just another herd of social animals.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by CraigD

There’s nothing like a continent-spanning pyroclastic cloud to impress on one that, for all our culture and technology, in the extreme, we’re just another herd of social animals.

Hear hear! I just learned of yet another supervolcano I never heard of before; this one in SW Idaho. I can't locate it on Google Earth yet as I just saw the program talking about it. I did however find a Wicky article (no map! )that has a link to the transcript of the show from BBC.

Here is what I have so far:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruneau...e_supervolcano

[ck27]

Those are some awesome pictures and information buffy. I learned a few things, i knew there was other super volcanos in america but haven't heard of them. I did some research into yellowstone after that internet scare and slight media scare that it will go off in the next few decades. I didn't fall into it though but i found some interesting stuff.

I do find it interesting how we still think we are immune to natural disasters and that we are above nature. We will probably always be like that until a serious mega disaster hits us. I sidetracked off the main topic enough.

[Turtle]

Mmmmm....how did we not give Yellowstone a good working over? Let's get on with it then:

Yellowstone Earthquake Swarm: Latest Supervolcano Update - Capital Commerce (usnews.com)

Originally Posted by James Pethokoukis

Yellowstone Earthquake Swarm: Latest Supervolcano UpdateJanuary 04, 2009 09:29 AM ET |
The earthquake swarm beneath Yellowstone National Park seems to have subsided for now. At least that is what the public data from the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory are telling us about the supervolcano beneath the park. Now lots of my blog's readers have raised questions as to whether we are being told the truth by the U.S. Geological Survey. (This is my chat with the head scientist at the YVO, Jacob Lowenstern.) I have been in touch this weekend with experts from around the world. Here is some of what they are telling me. (More to come. And here is a nice, though dated, piece from the Financial TImes.) First up is volcanologist Dr. R.B. Trombley of the International Volcano Research Centre: ...

CVO Website - Yellowstone Caldera, Wyoming

Originally Posted by USGS

From: Newhall and Dzurisin, 1988, Historical Unrest at Large Calderas in the World: USGS Bulletin 1855
The Yellowstone region has produced three caldera-forming eruptions in the past 2 million years, two of those among the largest eruptions known to have occurred on Earth (each more than 1,000 cubic kilometers). Yellowstone's hydrothermal system is among the largest and most active in the world, and its historical seismicity and uplift are comparable to those at the most active calderas ...

[belovelife]

i was curious on a global level of warming if i could increase the surface temp just enought o release the super volcano

[edit]
off topic