The magma reservoir beneath the Yellowstone Caldera contains almost twice as much melted rock as previously thought
. The increased estimate, however, doesn’t meet the threshold that suggests an eruption at Yellowstone is more likely.
The Yellowstone Caldera in north-western Wyoming is one of the largest volcanoes in the world. In the past 2.1 million years, it has seen three catastrophic eruptions that blanketed North America in ash and a number of smaller eruptions where lava flowed within the caldera, most recently 70,000 years ago. Researchers closely monitor Yellowstone for any changes that could signal an eruption, such as ground deformation or earthquakes.
Eruptions are supplied with magma from two huge reservoirs beneath the caldera, one near the mantle and one a few kilometres below the surface. Once thought of merely as “big tanks” of magma, the reservoirs contain a complex “crystal mush” of melted rock and crystals, says at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The composition of this mush partly determines the volcano’s likelihood of erupting: a higher proportion of melted rock to solid crystals makes the magma more likely to mobilise.
They found the reservoir is composed of 16 to 20 per cent melted rock on average – compared with a previous estimate of about 9 per cent – depending on assumptions made about the shape of spaces between solid crystals.
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