1/9/2024 0 Comments Yellow stone flood basalts![]() These have been interpreted as being associated with different subduction events, and are often used to argue against a single hot spot origin for Yellowstone's volcanism.Īnd to date, seismic studies haven't detected any mantle plume structure under Yellowstone. ![]() There are several large and apparently unconnected local flood basalt volcanic features that occur in different areas, directions and timescales. The Yellowstone supervolcano has a 72-kilometre-wide caldera created by the collapse of the volcano's magma chamber.īut the causes of this volcanism over the past 20 million years have been strongly debated by scientists. "It just doesn't fit the usual picture as in Hawaii where you have an active centre and a chain of islands of increasing age extending along the Pacific plate." "We chose Yellowstone because it's been cited by many other researchers as a place where the volcanism couldn't possibly be due to a mantle plume," says Griffiths. Subduction zones occur on the Earth's crustal plate boundaries where heavy basaltic oceanic crust is subducted under lighter granite-based continental crust. "But they can come up anywhere as far as we know, and so they'll often occur in the vicinity of subduction zones, such as the Ring of Fire around the Pacific." "Hot spot volcanism is commonly out in the centre of an oceanic plate like Hawaii or at the spreading ridges between two oceanic plates like Iceland," says Griffiths. Hotspots occur where plumes of hot mantle material from deep inside the Earth rise to the surface by convection. Reporting in the journal Nature Geoscience, they suggest a mantle plume originated to the northeast of Yellowstone, and is being sucked southwest into the subduction zone caused by the Pacific plate. The research conducted by scientists including Professor Ross Griffiths of the Australian National University, shows features associated with Yellowstone were caused by a volcanic hot spot affected by a subduction zone. Supervolcano A new study may have finally resolved debate on how America's famous Yellowstone supervolcano was formed. Super volcanoes have super short fuse, Science Online,.Study plugs holes in island creation theory, Science Online,.Missing crust feeds new theory on Earth's lumps, Science Online,.
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