Can We Use the Heat from Yellowstone for Energy?

Week 2 Volcanoes

Can we use the heat from Yellowstone for energy?

Geothermal energy, heat energy from the earth's interior, is used to generate electricity in a variety of places throughout the world. Although Yellowstone and its surroundings are a significant geothermal resource, the Park itself is off limits to development. Because geothermal developments often cause a decrease in flow of nearby hot springs and other geothermal features, it is questionable whether anyone could get permission to develop geothermal energy in the region outside the park.

There are other natural heat sources in the United States that are being used for geothermal energy. Typically, hot water or steam is tapped from a deep reservoir through a geothermal drillhole. The fluid is then expanded through a turbine to generate electricity. In California, there are about 4 to 5 GW of electricity generated at power plants at The Geysers, Salton Sea, Coso, Casa Diablo and other geothermal systems. This is enough to provide energy for several million people. There are also power plants in Nevada, Utah, and Hawaii. Geothermal power is also used in many others countries. TheGeothermal Education Officehas a good website with lots of information about geothermal energy, its uses, and the output of different geothermal systems. The U. S. Geological Survey also has aneducational and well-illustrated booklet on geothermal energy.

Can you release some of the pressure at Yellowstone by drilling into the volcano?

No. Scientists agree that drilling into a volcano would be of questionable usefulness. Not withstanding the enormous expense and technological difficulties in drilling through hot, mushy rock, drilling is unlikely to have much effect. At near magmatic temperatures and pressures, any hole would rapidly become sealed by minerals crystallizing from the natural fluids that are present at those depths.

Could a large Yellowstone eruption significantly change weather patterns?

If another catastrophic caldera-forming Yellowstone eruption were to occur, it quite likely would alter global weather patterns and have enormous effects on human activity, especially agricultural production, for many years. In fact, the relatively small 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines was shown to have temporarily, yet measurably, changed global temperatures. Scientists, however, at this time do not have the predictive ability to determine specific consequences or durations of possible global impacts from such large eruptions.

Could the Yellowstone volcano have an eruption that is not catastrophic?

Yes. Over the past 640,000 years since the last giant eruption at Yellowstone, approximately 80 relatively nonexplosive eruptions have occurred and produced primarily lava flows. This would be the most likely kind of future eruption. If such an event were to occur today, there would be much disruption of activities in Yellowstone National Park, but in all likelihood few lives would be threatened. The most recent volcanic eruption at Yellowstone, a lava flow on the Pitchstone Plateau, occurred 70,000 years ago.

How fast is the hotspot moving under Yellowstone?

Actually, the source of the hotspot is more or less stationary at depth within the Earth, and the North America plate moves southwest across it. The average rate of movement of the plate in the Yellowstone area for the last 16.5 million years has been about 4.6 centimeters annually. However, if shorter time intervals are analyzed, the plate can be inferred to have moved about 6.1 centimeters per year from 16.5 million years ago until about 8 million years ago, then slowed to 3.3 centimeters a year for the past 8 million years.

How hot is Yellowstone?

Yellowstone is a plateau high in the Rocky Mountains, and is snowbound for over six months per year. The mean annual temperature is 2.2°C, barely above the freezing point of water. However, Yellowstone is also an active geothermal area with hot springs emerging at ~92°C (the boiling point of water at Yellowstone's mean altitude) and steam vents reported as high as 135°C. Only about 0.3% of the park's terrain is thermal ground, so most places are no hotter than anywhere else in the Rockies.
In some of Yellowstone's thermal areas, heat flow is over 100 watts per square meter, about 50 times that of Yellowstone's average and ~2000 times that of average North American terrain. This enormous heat flow is derived from the molten rock or magma in the crust beneath the caldera, which ultimately is generated by the Yellowstone Hot Spot, a partly molten region of the Earth's mantle hundreds of kilometers beneath the surface.

How is heat released in Yellowstone?

Earth's heat is released in Yellowstone by two main processes, conduction and convection:

1. Conduction is the movement of heat from hotter material to colder material. A common example of conduction is when heat from a stove is transferred through the bottom of a coffee pot to the liquid inside. Conduction in Yellowstone helps transfer heat from deep within Earth to shallower depths. Of the heat released from the ground at Yellowstone, about 25% is by conduction.

2. Convection is heat transported by hot material in motion, such as hot water or magma. Convection happens inside a coffee pot when heat is carried to the top of the liquid in the pot by hot water that rises buoyantly from the heated bottom because it is less dense than overlying cooler water. As the water boils, the rise of the hotter water and the compensating fall of cooler water from the top forms what is called a convection cell. Convection of molten rock helps carry heat up through the Yellowstone caldera. Near the surface, convection of hot ground water drives geysers, hot springs, and fumaroles. Convection accounts for roughly 75% of the heat released from the ground at Yellowstone.

How large is the magma chamber that is currently under Yellowstone?

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. It contains a partial melt, meaning that only a portion of the rock is molten (about 10 to 30%); the rest of the material is solid but, of course, remains hot.

The method that scientists use to discern this information is similar to medical CT scans that bounce X-rays through the human body to make three-dimensional pictures of internal tissue. In an analogous manner, a method called seismic tomography uses hundreds of seismograms to measure the speed of seismic waves from earthquakes and small, intentional dynamite explosions--data that allow geophysicists to make 3-D pictures of structures within the Earth. Scientists compare these seismic velocities, and infer the composition from deviations of these from average, thermally undisturbed values.

How many caldera-forming eruptions have occurred from the long-lived hotspot that is currently beneath Yellowstone?

Many eruptive units found along the path of the Yellowstone hotspot have been dated, but only a few of them represent large caldera-forming eruptions. At least five volcanic fields centered on large caldera complexes have been identified. Some of these caldera complexes erupted climatically more than once; probably 15 to 20 caldera-forming eruptions have occurred along the hotspot as itleft a trailfrom western Idaho to Yellowstone within the past 16.5 million years.

How many giant eruptions have occurred in the Yellowstone National Park region and how large were they?

Volcanic activity began in the Yellowstone National Park region a little before about 2 million years ago. Molten rock (magma) rising from deep within the Earth produced three cataclysmic eruptions. The first caldera-forming eruption occurred about 2.1 million years ago. The eruptive blast removed so much magma from its subsurface storage reservoir that the ground above it collapsed into the magma chamber and left a gigantic depression in the ground- a hole larger than the state of Rhode Island. The huge crater, known as acaldera, measured as much as 80 kilometers long, 65 kilometers wide, and hundreds of meters deep, extending from outside of Yellowstone National Park into the central area of the Park (Figure 1).

Later, activity shifted to a smaller region within the Island Park area of eastern Idaho, just southwest of Yellowstone National Park, and produced another large caldera-forming eruption 1.3 million years ago. Subsequent activity has been focused within the area of the National Park, and another huge eruption 640,000 years ago formed the Yellowstone caldera as we now see it.

The three caldera-forming eruptions, respectively, were about 2,500, 280, and 1,000 times larger than the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington State. Together, the three catastrophic eruptions expelled enough ash and lava to fill the Grand Canyon.

In addition to the three climactic eruptions, activity associated with each of the three caldera cycles produced dozens or even hundreds of smaller eruptions that produced both lava andpyroclasticmaterials.

What are potential geologic hazards at Yellowstone other than volcanic eruptions?

The heat and geologic forces fueling the massive Yellowstone volcano affect the park in many ways. Yellowstone's many geysers, hot springs, steam vents, and mudpots are evidence of the heat and geologic forces. These hydrothermal (hot water) features are mostly benign, but can rarely be the sites of violent steam explosions and pose a hydrothermal hazard. Earthquakes, another example of active geologic forces, are quite common in Yellowstone, with 1,000 to 3,000 occurring annually. Most of these are quite small, although significant earthquakes have shaken Yellowstone, such as the 1959 magnitude 7.5 Hebgen Lake quake, the largest historical earthquake in the intermountain region, and the 1975 magnitude 6.1 quake near Norris Geyser Basin. The many earthquakes and steam explosions in the past 10,000 years at Yellowstone have not led to volcanic eruptions.

What are the main monitoring instruments of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory?

Activity leading to a possibly impending volcanic eruption or a large earthquake can be evaluated using the modernseismicandGPSnetworks of YVO. The instruments are designed to provide information in near real time using modern digital instrumentation and internet and telephone links.

What is Yellowstone’s caldera?

Let’s start with somebackground information. The Earth is made of three layers: the core at the center, surrounded by the mantle, and then the crust.

Millions of years ago, a source of immense heat known as a hotspot formed in the Earth’s mantle below what today is Yellowstone. Roughly 600,000 years ago, the hotspot pushed a large plume of magma toward the Earth’s surface. This caused the crust to jut upward. Bob Smith, a seismologist at the University of Utah, described the phenomenon toFox Newslike this.

“This crustal magma body is a little dimple that creates the uplift.It’s like putting your finger under a rubber membrane and pushing it up and the sides expand,” he said.

The pressure on the surface finally gave way when cracks formed around the plume’s edges. When the surface could no longer withstand the pressure there was amassive explosion of magma, emptying more than one hundred cubic miles below the surface of molten rock. With nothing beneath the surface to hold it up, the crust caved in.

Acalderais that volcanic depression that occurs when a magma reserve is emptied, the “caved in,” typically round in shape, section. The Yellowstone caldera is 35 miles wide and 50 miles long, although a recent study suggests the caldera islarger than previously thought.

Watch Creation of Yellowstone

http://www.history.com/topics/us-states/montana/videos/creation-of-yellowstone-national-park?m=528e394da93ae&s=undefined&f=1&free=false

Monitoring Volcano Ground Deformation

Changes at the Surface Tell us about the Subsurface

Ground deformation (swelling, subsidence, or cracking) is measured with a variety of techniques, including Electronic Distance Meters (EDM), the Global Positioning System (GPS), precise leveling surveys, strainmeters, and tiltmeters. EDMs use lasers to accurately measure changes in distance between benchmarks (fixed points) with repeated measurements. GPS makes use of satellites orbiting the Earth to determine and track the locations of points. Strainmeters and tiltmeters are used to monitor subtle changes in shape of the ground surface. For more information, please seeMonitoring Volcano Ground Deformationin our Activity Section.

Changes to the surface of a volcano (volcano deformation) can provide clues about what is happening deep below the surface. Most volcano deformation can only be detected and measured with precise surveying techniques. The Volcano Hazards Program has installed networks of sensitive deformation instruments around volcanoes to monitor changes over time. These instruments, along with satellite-based technologies help us to better understand the volcanoes we watch and allow us to provide eruption warnings.

GPS

Mapping individual ground locations Earth-orbiting satellites.
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InSAR

Mapping ground deformation of large areas using radar images from Earth-orbiting satellites.
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Tilt

Measuring tiny changes in the slope angle or "tilt" of the ground.
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EDM

Measuring the distance between benchmarks placed on a volcano tens to thousands of meters apart.
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Got a Tummy Ache?

How are volcanic gases measured?

Watch this video

http://app.discoveryeducation.com/player/view/assetGuid/84BA3BA7-D2C3-4531-ABD0-0924E6B0093F

Instruments to measure sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide can be mounted in aircraft to determine the quantity of gas being emitted on a daily basis. Such instruments can also be used in a ground-based mode. An instrument that detects carbon dioxide can be installed on a volcano and configured to send data continuously via radio to an observatory. Sulfur dioxide in volcanic clouds can also be measured from space with instruments aboard satellites.

Activity:

Fill a balloon with 1/8 tsp of baking soda. Fill a test tube ¼ full. Gently place the balloon on to the test tube without spilling the baking soda into the tube. Once balloon is sealed over the test tube, lift up the end gently and empty the baking soda into the test tube - shake and fill.

What happened? Why did this happen?

How could you determine what type of gas is emitted and how could you measure how much?

What does this have to do with modern day science and detecting a volcano before eruption?

Watch this video:

http://app.discoveryeducation.com/player/view/assetGuid/84BA3BA7-D2C3-4531-ABD0-0924E6B0093F