Under Yellowstone. On August 29, 1870, a 30-year-old Army lieutenant named Gustavus Doane, part of an exploratory expedition in the Yellowstone region in the territory of Wyoming, scrambled his way to the summit of Mount Washburn above the Yellowstone River.
Looking to the south, he noticed that something was missing from a stretch of the Rocky Mountains: mountains. For miles and miles, the only elevations were in the distance, forming parentheses around a huge forested basin. Doane saw only one way to explain the void. "The great basin," he wrote, "has been formerly one vast crater of a now extinct volcano.
" The lieutenant was right: Yellowstone is a volcano, and not just any volcano. Yellowstone Has Bulged as Magma Pocket Swells. The simmering volcano has produced major eruptions—each a thousand times more powerful than Mount St.
Helens's 1980 eruption—three times in the past 2.1 million years. Yellowstone's caldera, which covers a 25- by 37-mile (40- by 60-kilometer) swath of Wyoming , is an ancient crater formed after the last big blast, some 640,000 years ago. (See "When Yellowstone Explodes" in magazine.) Since then, about 30 smaller eruptions—including one as recent as 70,000 years ago—have filled the caldera with lava and ash, producing the relatively flat landscape we see today. But beginning in 2004, scientists saw the ground above the caldera rise upward at rates as high as 2.8 inches (7 centimeters) a year. The rate slowed between 2007 and 2010 to a centimeter a year or less. "It's an extraordinary uplift, because it covers such a large area and the rates are so high," said the University of Utah's Bob Smith , a longtime expert in Yellowstone's volcanism.
Smith and colleagues at the U.S. /Yellowstone/archive/2011/03. New Ogasawara aka Bonin Islet forms 11-21-13. Undersea volcano creates new island 620 miles south of Tokyo. An undersea volcano has created a new Japanese island 620 miles south of Tokyo.
The eruption took place 500 meters from the uninhabited Nishinoshima Island, one of the subtropical Bonin Islands, forming new land in an archipelago that runs along the Pacific tectonic plate boundary commonly called the "ring of fire. " The Japanese coast guard issued a warning in the area on Wednesday after thick black smoke was ejected from the water alongside rapidly cooling lava. The coast guard and Japanese Meteorological Agency report the freshly formed land that molten rock created is currently about 660 feet in diameter. Japanese volcanologist Hiroshi Ito told FNN News that the new island may yet be eroded away, but that it "could also remain permanently. " The island has yet to earn a name, but has already received a governmental welcome: Japan's chief government spokesperson, Yoshihide Suga, told reporters "If it becomes a full-fledged island, we would be happy to have more territory.
" Volcanic Eruption Forms New Island South of Tokyo. Volcanic eruption raises new islet amid Ogasawara Islands. Undersea volcano forms islet south of Tokyo. An undersea volcanic eruption has formed an island in the Pacific Ocean about 1,000 kilometers south of Tokyo, the first new land in Japanese waters in 27 years.
A Japan Coast Guard aircraft spotted the isle at 4:20 p.m. on Nov. 20, about 300 meters south-southeast of the uninhabited Nishinoshima island in the Ogasawara chain. An observation from an Asahi Shimbun aircraft on Nov. 21 found that the oval-shaped island was about 200 meters long and about 50 meters wide. It appeared to be 20 meters above sea level. The Japan Coast Guard is issuing warnings to vessels that pass nearby. “We will continue observations for future activity,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference on Nov. 21.