YELLOWSTONE RHYOLITES
Yellowstone National Park and vicinity is home to three super-eruptions within the last two million years. Between super-eruptions, smaller effusions of compositionally similar lavas have erupted onto to the surface. The relationships between the timing of magma production for precursory and super-eruptions is unknown. My work seeks to test the competing hypotheses that Yellowstone super-eruptions are the culmination of gradual accumulation of magma that is periodically tapped by precursory eruptions, or alternatively, super-eruptions are the result of independent episodes of magma production without connection to any smaller eruption within the area. To assess a potential connection, morphological, chemical, thermometric, isotopic, and age data of small volume rhyolitic lavas that erupted between the 2.1 and 1.3 million year old super-eruptions will be used to model processes by which magmas are generated, as well as to examine the timescales of magma production. Specifically, the minerals zircon and sanidine are extracted from the lavas and analyzed by various state-of-the-art methods to assess the contribution of small volume magma batches to the super-eruption. Dating the intermittent eruptions will provide a framework for the recurrence interval of Yellowstone volcanism and bear upon the question of lifespans of an eruptable magma.
Yellowstone National Park and vicinity is home to three super-eruptions within the last two million years. Between super-eruptions, smaller effusions of compositionally similar lavas have erupted onto to the surface. The relationships between the timing of magma production for precursory and super-eruptions is unknown. My work seeks to test the competing hypotheses that Yellowstone super-eruptions are the culmination of gradual accumulation of magma that is periodically tapped by precursory eruptions, or alternatively, super-eruptions are the result of independent episodes of magma production without connection to any smaller eruption within the area. To assess a potential connection, morphological, chemical, thermometric, isotopic, and age data of small volume rhyolitic lavas that erupted between the 2.1 and 1.3 million year old super-eruptions will be used to model processes by which magmas are generated, as well as to examine the timescales of magma production. Specifically, the minerals zircon and sanidine are extracted from the lavas and analyzed by various state-of-the-art methods to assess the contribution of small volume magma batches to the super-eruption. Dating the intermittent eruptions will provide a framework for the recurrence interval of Yellowstone volcanism and bear upon the question of lifespans of an eruptable magma.
