National Parks Quiz and Trivia #78 – Yellowstone Revisited

The Constant Stirring of the Mud Volcano, Yellowstone National Park / Rebecca Latson

It should come as no surprise to any of you who have ever visited a National Park System facility more than once: there is always something new to learn. Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming/Montana/Idaho is no exception. After a summer visit to this national park, new things were learned, interesting information was picked up, and thus a new quiz and trivia piece was created. See how much you really know about this park. You might surprise yourself…or you might decide that maybe you need a return trip to brush up on your cache of Yellowstone knowledge.

1. True or False: The mud volcano is one of the most acidic springs in Yellowstone.

a) True

b) False

2. True or False: At Mammoth Hot Springs, inactive terraces underlie the largest area, including below the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel and the Albright Visitor Center, across from and above the hotel.

a) True

b) False

A view of Lower Falls and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park / Rebecca Latson

3. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River runs for ___ miles.

a) 10

b) 20

c) 30

d) 40

What’s in those milky-looking pools at Porcelain Basin in Yellowstone National Park? / Rebecca Latson

What’s in those milky-looking pools at Porcelain Basin in Yellowstone National Park? / Rebecca Latson

4. Walk along the cliffs in the Porcelain Basin section of Norris Geyser Basin. You will notice pools of milky blue water. The milky hue is due to:

a) Calcium carbonate

b) Fine-grained clayey sediments

c) Heat-loving algae

d) Silica

West Thumb Geyser Basin landscape, Yellowstone National Park / Rebecca Latson

5. True or False: The bay in which West Thumb Geyser Basin is located is actually a caldera within a larger caldera.

a) True

b) False

Watching Old Faithful erupt from the visitor center, Yellowstone National Park / Rebecca Latson

6. At the Upper Geyser Basin, rangers forecast the eruption times of five geysers there: Old Faithful, Castle, Grand, Daisy, and ___.

a) Huge

b) Spasmodic

c) Riverside

d) Artemisia

7. True or False: The lower geyser basin, which includes Fountain Paint Pot and the Firehole Lake area, contains all five types of hydrothermal features.

a) True

b) False

What is this stuff riming Doublet Pool? Yellowstone National Park / Rebecca Latson

8. True or False: During your visit to Yellowstone, you probably heard about the deposition of siliceous sinter or geyserite around the rims of hot springs and geysers. Siliceous sinter and geyserite are the same thing.

a) True

b) False

9. True or False: Water heated by the Yellowstone magma system heats Chico Hot Springs in Montana’s Paradise Valley.

a) True

b) False

Roaring Mountain, Yellowstone National Park / Rebecca Latson

10. Roaring Mountain, located between Norris Geyser Basin and Mammoth Hot Springs, is a classic example of a/an ___.

a) Acid-sulphate thermal zone

b) Tufa cliff

c) The formation of the hydrothermal explosion

d) Depository of siliceous fumaroles

Trivial

Bovine brucellosis is not the only infectious disease that can attack wildlife in Yellowstone National Park / Rebecca Latson

Humans are not the only creatures on Earth that suffer from various diseases and ailments. right Atlas of Yellowstonethis national park has a long history of infectious wildlife diseases. It’s not just bovine brucellosisalthough nowadays it may be what you hear the most, but also pneumonia, wild plague, chronic wasting diseaseParvo, hantavirus, rotatory disease, white nose syndrome, various viral and fungal diseases, and even pinkeye, which can be fatal to all or certain wildlife populations.

Map showing path of Yellowstone hot spot /Modified from Barry et al. (GSA Special Paper 497, pp. 45-66, 2013) via USGS

The Yellowstone Hot Spot—the source of heat that powers the vast Yellowstone volcanic system—was thought to have been initiated about 17 million years ago. According to an article by the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, however, it appears that this hot spot may have been around for 50 million years!

What is a hot spot? It is a stationary area on Earth that exists above a mantle plume (an area of ​​hot but not molten magma). The heat from this extra-hot magma causes the rocky crust to melt and thin, leading to widespread volcanic activity on Earth’s surface above the plume. For example, the Hawaiian Islands are creations of a hot spot.

In the case of the Yellowstone hotspot, it started off the coast of northern California, and as the North American tectonic plate moved westward, this hotspot continued to create volcanic activity in what are now Oregon and Washington. Eventually, the North American plate placed what is now the Yellowstone area over this hot spot.

Albright Visitor Center at Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park / Rebecca Latson

How many of you have visited the Albright Visitor Center at Mammoth Hot Springs? Long before it was ever a visitor center, it was part of Fort Yellowstone, built to protect the park from serious threats such as poaching, souvenir hunters breaking off pieces of fragile thermal features, and the development of tourist sites right next door fragile (and dangerous). ) hydrothermal characteristics. In 1890, Congress appropriated $50,000 (which would be over $1 million today) to build a permanent post for the US military presence to protect Yellowstone for the next 32 years. The Albright Visitor Center was once the undergraduate officers’ quarters since 1909, with an officers’ mess hall, kitchen, living room and quarters for six single officers.

Test answers

1b False

Located across from the Mud Volcano area is the Sulfur Caldron, one of the most acidic springs in Yellowstone. Sulfur Caldron has a pH of about 1-2, which is about as acidic as stomach acid.

2a True

Inactive terraces underlie most of the Mammoth Hot Springs area, including below the Albright Hotel and Visitor Center. If you park your car in that long row of parking spaces overlooking some fenced areas of a field and walk towards those fenced areas, you’ll see that they were built to protect people and wildlife from ground openings (and vice versa, to protect those openings from humans and wildlife).

What lies below at Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park / Rebecca Latson

3b

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River runs for 20 miles (32 km).

4d

The milky appearance of the hot springs at Porcelan Basin is due to the presence of silica (the main component of glass). In fact, the hot springs in Norris contain the highest concentration of silica in Yellowstone. But why is there so much silica? According to the US Geological Survey (USGS):

Igneous rock rhyolite is the most abundant rock in Yellowstone and contains 75% rhyolite. The hot groundwater in the Norris Basin reacts with the rhyolite to remove the silica from the rock and dissolve it, just as salt or sugar dissolves in hot water.

5a True

About 174,000 years ago, a volcanic eruption caused part of the landscape now covered by Yellowstone Lake to collapse, creating the West Thumb caldera. This depression filled with water to become a large bay of Yellowstone Lake. West Thumb Caldera (and Yellowstone Lake), is located within the Yellowstone Caldera, which is one of the largest in the world and encompasses the central and southern parts of the park.

6. c

At the Upper Geyser Basin, rangers forecast the eruption times of five geysers there: Old Faithful, Castle, Grand, Daisy and Riverside.

7b False

The Lower Geyser Basin, which includes the Fountain Paint Pot and Firehole Lake area, contains four of the five types of hydrothermal features: geysers, hot springs, mud pots, and fumeroles. The fifth type of hydrothermal feature is the travertine terrace, perfect examples of which you can see at Mammoth Hot Springs.

8a True

Siliceous sinter and geyserite are the same. Both are names for a light, porous, opaline variety of silica that is white or nearly white and deposited as encrustations around hot springs and geysers.

9a True

According to the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory in one of them Articles from the Caldera Chronicles:

The area between Norris Geyser Basin and Mammoth Hot Springs, informally called the Norris-Mammoth Corridor, hosts abundant thermal and tectonic activity and is a fluid transport zone, allowing water heated by the Yellowstone magma system to migrate northward from the caldera. . The corridor is defined by a series of large, active faults that provide the pathway for these fluids, which feed hot spring activity that extends well north of the park, for example, to Chico Hot Springs in Paradise Valley, Montana.

10

According to the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory:

Roaring Mountain is a classic example of the year acid-sulphate thermal zone. No geysers are present on Roaring Mountain; rather, the surface is dotted with numerous steam and gas vents. The gases that are emitted are at or above the boiling temperatures for that gradeand their acidic nature caused much of the rock in the area, which is densely welded ash, erupted during the caldera-forming event that created the Yellowstone caldera, to become transformed into clay mineralsespecially kaolinite and smectite. This modification gives the thermal zone its chalky, soft appearance.