What type of magma does Yellowstone have?
Yellowstone is underlain by two magma bodies. The shallower one is composed of rhyolite (a high-silica rock type) and stretches from 5 km to about 17 km (3 to 10 mi) beneath the surface and is about 90 km (55 mi) long and about 40 km (25 mi) wide. The chamber is mostly solid, with only about 5-15% melt.
What does the Yellowstone magma chamber do?
Heat from the mantle plume has melted rocks in the crust, and created two magma chambers of partially molten, partially solid rock near Yellowstone’s surface. Heat from the shallowest magma chamber caused an area of the crust above it to expand and rise.
How large is the magma chamber under Yellowstone?
about 40 by 80 kilometers across
The magma chamber is believed to be about 40 by 80 kilometers across, similar in size to the overlying Yellowstone caldera. The top of the chamber is about 8 km deep and the bottom is around 16 km deep. However, the chamber is not completely filled with fluid magma.
What type of volcano is Yellowstone?
supervolcano
Yellowstone National Park is situated over a supervolcano that is capable of an eruption of magnitude 8. It has had three massive eruptions, all of which created calderas.
What is underneath a volcano?
A magma chamber is a large pool of liquid rock beneath the surface of the Earth. The molten rock, or magma, in such a chamber is less dense than the surrounding country rock, which produces buoyant forces on the magma that tend to drive it upwards.
What type of magma is Yellowstone?
The Yellowstone supervolcano is one of the largest active continental silicic volcanic fields in the world. Silicic is used to describe magma or igneous rock rich in silica.
How is a magma chamber formed in a volcano?
Magma rises through cracks from beneath and across the crust because it is less dense than the surrounding rock. When the magma cannot find a path upwards it pools into a magma chamber. These chambers are commonly built up over time, by successive horizontal or vertical magma injections.
How big are volcano magma chambers?
The width of the magma chamber is probably close to about 3 km, from the width of the summit caldera.
What is the status of Yellowstone Volcano?
The volcanic region of Yellowstone is currently at NORMAL level, which means all volcanic activity is normal in the region. If you live near a volcano with a status higher than normal, this means you need to have caution as seismic and geothermal activity are going to present as the volcano leads up to rather…