Inside Yellowstone's fiery heart: Rice researchers map volatile-rich cap, offering clues to future volcanic activity

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Alexandra Becker
713-348-6794
[e-mail]

Alexandra Becker - Apr. 16, 2025
POSTED IN: RICE NEWS > Current News > 2025

Inside Yellowstone’s fiery heart: Rice researchers map volatile-rich cap, offering clues to future volcanic activity


The Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park (Stock photo).

Beneath the steaming geysers and bubbling mud pots of Yellowstone National Park lies one of the world’s most closely watched volcanic systems. Now a team of geoscientists has uncovered new evidence that sheds light on how this mighty system may behave in the future — and what might keep it from erupting. The findings were recently published in Nature.

A team of researchers from Rice University, University of New Mexico, University of Utah and the University of Texas at Dallas have discovered a sharp, volatile-rich cap just 3.8 kilometers beneath Yellowstone’s surface. This cap, made of magma, acts like a lid, helping to trap pressure and heat below it. Using innovative controlled-source seismic imaging and advanced computer models, their findings suggest that the Yellowstone magma reservoir is actively releasing gas while remaining in a stable state.

The research, led by Rice’s Chenglong Duan and Brandon Schmandt along with collaborators, provides new insight into how magma, volatiles and fluids move within Earth’s crust. The project was supported by the National Science Foundation.


Brandon Schmandt and Chenglong Duan (Photo credit: Linda Fries/Rice University).

“For decades, we’ve known there’s magma beneath Yellowstone, but the exact depth and structure of its upper boundary has been a big question,” said Schmandt, professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences. “What we’ve found is that this reservoir hasn’t shut down — it’s been sitting there for a couple million years, but it’s still dynamic.”

{snip}

[Vogon_Glory]

1. We gringos are also children of the shaking eath

I understand that many Mexicans and Mexicans think of themselves as the sons (and also daughters?) of the shaking earth.

It may sound silly to say this, but I believe that Americans living west of the Great Plains are also children of the shaking earth, whether we acknowledge it or not. From the silent volcanos of New Mexico to the hot-spots of the Pacific Northwest and California to the fault lines near the Sierras, those Americans are also living in a geologically-active part of the world, whether they want to believe it or not.