Yellowstone Caldera's Pushing Earth
Mitch Battros - Earth Changes Media
The gradual uplift of Yellowstone National Park's caldera is pushing the Earth's crust southwest along the Snake River Plain, affecting much of the Great Basin. "It adds energy to the whole system that we see," said Bob Smith, a University of Utah geophysicist who works with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. "It adds to the whole deformation and expands the Great Basin to the west."
The movement of the earth's crust, Smith said researchers have found a push west of 4 millimeters, or .16 inch, a year. Although he said that may not sound like much, the movement from Yellowstone across the entire Great Basin to Reno, Nev., is only 12 millimeters a year. So, one-third of the entire shift is occurring in a very small area of about 80 kilometers, he said.
Smith says "As the crust is pushed, geophysicists are seeing a clockwise rotation of the different tectonic plates across the interior of the West. Yellowstone affects a much bigger area, 10 times as big as Yellowstone Park, - so it plays a major role in the plate tectonics framework."
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