Incredible footage shows the inside of Old Faithful Geyser in 1991

Yellowstone National Park covers some 3,500-square-miles of the US and is home to some of the world’s most iconic hydrothermal geysers and fumaroles. These include the iridescent colors of the Grand Prismatic Spring, the bubbling mud cauldrons that are the Artists Paint Pots and—of course—Old Faithful, the magnificent cone geyser that erupts a spray of water and steam roughly every 44–125 minutes. As millions of tourists marvel each year over the park’s many hydrothermal spectacles, so do earth scientists as they attempt to plumb the underground systems that formed and maintain them.

In their study, geophysicist Professor W. Steven Holbrook of Virginia Tech and his colleagues conducted special, airborne scientific surveys of Yellowstone using a special instrument called “SkyTEM”, which consists of a large loop of wire suspended from a helicopter.

The system — which emits repeated electromagnetic signals into the ground and measures the response of electrically conductive bodies — allowed them to identify areas underground with unusual electrical and magnetic properties.

Prof Holbrook said: “The combination of high electrical conductivity and low magnetization is like a fingerprint of hydrothermal activity that shows up very clearly in the data. The method is essentially a hydrothermal pathway detector.”

By making repeated passes over the path, the team were able to probe the subsurface along some 2,500 miles of so-called helicopter lines, from which they could create stunning maps of the subsurface “plumbing” under Yellowstone that supplies geysers such as Old Faithful.

Prof Holbrook added: “One of the unique aspects of this dataset is its extensive coverage of this huge system.

“We were not able just to look deep beneath the hydrothermal features, but also to see how adjacent features might be connected in the subsurface across great distances. That’s never been possible before.”

Old Faithful (pictured) is Yellowstone National Park’s most iconic geyser (Image: Getty Images)

Pictured: a survey line. Blue areas are conductive pathways while red are resistive lava flows (Image: Virginia Tech)

The researcher found that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the nature of Yellowstone’s hot springs are profoundly influenced by the geology of the vast national park.

Hot hydrothermal fluids — comprising both water and dissolved gases and minerals — were found to ascend vertically from depths of more than 0.6 miles into the park’s major hydrothermal fields, traveling along faults and fractures within the rock.

As they complete this journey, the fluids mix with the shallower groundwaters that flow both beneath and within the park’s lava flow deposits.

According to the team, the findings help to fill a longstanding gap in our understanding of the deep hydrothermal system that fuels Yellowstone’s iconic geysers and fumaroles.

READ MORE: Yellowstone volcano warning: ‘Huge rocks’ could ‘crush’ public

Pictured: the iridescent colors of the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park (Image: Getty Images)

Previous studies have examined the park’s surface hydrothermal features — such as, for example, the eruptive intervals of the geysers, the chemistry and temperature of the mud pots and springs and the unique bacteria that thrive in these extreme environments.

Others, meanwhile, have used seismic data to learn about the earthquakes and deeper heat sources far beneath Yellowstone — but little had been known about the exact nature of the connection between these deep fluid sources and the surface features.

As Prof Holbrook put it: “Our knowledge of Yellowstone has long had a subsurface gap.

“It’s like a ‘mystery sandwich’ — we know a lot about the surface features from direct observation and a fair amount about the magmatic and tectonic system several kilometers down from geophysical work, but we don’t really know what’s in the middle.

“This project has enabled us to fill in those gaps for the first time.”

One such mystery the study has addressed concerns whether or not different hydrothermal areas of the park — exhibiting different chemistries and temperatures — might be supplied by different deep fluid sources.

The team found that the deep structure beneath areas like the Norris Geyser Basin and the Lower Geyser Basin is remarkably similar, suggesting that the observed surface differences are actually the result of variable degrees for mixing with shallow groundwater.

Pictured: the Artists Paint Pots, Yellowstone National Park (Image: Getty Images)

Paper author and geophysicist Dr Carol Finn of the US Geological Survey said: “While the airborne data were still being collected, we saw the first images over Old Faithful and knew instantly that our experiment had worked

“We could, for the first time, image the fluid pathways that had long been speculated.

“Our work has sparked considerable interest across a range of disciplines, including biologists looking to link areas of groundwater and gas mixing to regions of extreme microbiological diversity, geologists wanting to estimate volumes of lava flows, and hydrologists interested in modeling flow paths of groundwater and thermal fluid.

“With the paper as a guide and the release of the data and models, we will enable research in these diverse scientific communities.”

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Pictured: study author and geophysicist Professor W. Steven Holbrook of Virginia Tech (Image: Virginia Tech)

The researchers’ study may be complete — but Yellowstone still holds plenty of mysteries.

In future studies, for example, Prof Holbrook said that they would like to look for further evidence for distance connections between isolated underground hydrothermal areas.

The SkyTEM data, he explained, has already revealed evidence for subsurface linkages between hydrothermal systems in Yellowstone that are up to six miles apart.

Prof Holbrook added: “That might have implications for the co-evolution of thermophilic bacteria and Archaea.”

“The notion that airborne geophysical data could illuminate something about the life of microscopic organisms living around hot springs is a fascinating idea.”

The team have also released their geophysical scans, allowing other researchers to conduct their own analyzes delving into the remarkable dataset.

Such, Prof Holbrook said, is “so big that we’ve only scratched the surface with this first paper. I look forward to continuing to work on this data and to seeing what others come up with, too.

“It’s going to be a data set that keeps on giving.”

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Nature.

The post Yellowstone scan exposes enormous underground ‘plumbing’ community: ‘Solely scratched floor!’ | Science | Information appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Heart Spring in Yellowstone National Park. Photo: Daniel SLIM / AFP (Getty Images)

A team of geophysicists recently strung a large wire loop from a helicopter and flew over Yellowstone National Park in order to see its hidden underground networks. They managed to collect a trove of data that highlighted electrical and magnetic properties of the water and earth under the park, as well as how the hot springs are more interconnected than previously thought.

Yellowstone is a 3,500-square-mile park that has numerous hot springs on its surface, most famously Old Faithful, one of the park’s 500-odd geysers. But these researchers wanted to know more about how the water underground was sourced and how interconnected the entire system was. Their findings were published this week in Nature.

We produced images of Yellowstone’s subsurface hydrothermal ‘plumbing‘ system—the pathways that hydrothermally heated waters take to reach the surface,” said Steve Holbrook, a geophysicist at Virginia Tech and a co-author of the paper, in an email to Gizmodo. “We see clear geological controls on the hydrothermal plumbing—in particular, the roles of deep faults, shallow fractures, and the boundaries at the base of the thick lava flows (tuff and rhyolite), all of which guide the movement of water.”

Yellowstone’s ‘Old Faithful’ geyser erupts around every 90 minutes. Photo from June 1, 2011.Photo: MARK RALSTON/AFP (Getty Images)

The researchers generated over 2,500 miles of helicopter line data by flying an 80-foot-wide hexagonal instrument called SkyTEM over the park. SkyTEM sent electromagnetic pulses to the ground roughly every 90 feet. The pulses travel up to around 2,300 feet beneath the surface before bouncing back to a detector on the instrument.

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“If we picture the helicopter flying over a football field, we could picture one sounding being taken at the back of the home end zone, the next one at the 20 yard line, the next one at midfield, then one at the other 20 yard line, and finally one at the back of the visitor’s end zone—five soundings total over the full length of the field,” Holbrook said. “Then we put those soundings next to each other over very long transects, and we get a picture of layers in the subsurface—how deep they are, which way they’re dipping, and so forth.”

The researchers also took magnetic field measurements, which gave them information on the magnetic properties of rocks as deep as 8,200 feet below Yellowstone. Taken together, the data allowed them to map out the electrically conductive and resistive elements beneath the surface: effectively, the plumbing of Yellowstone.

A significant finding from the work was how connected distant features are underground. Old Faithful and the park’s Upper Geyser basin share a hydrothermal source with the park’s Firehole Meadows at just 650 below the surface, though the sites are over 6 miles away from one another.

Holbrook added that the hydrothermal connection also implies connections in the various hot springs’ geochemistry and microbiology. Yellowstone’s hot springs are unique for their extremophile life; hardy critters like cyanobacteria that thrive in scalding temperatures make good subjects for scientists trying to figure out what alien life may be like. The newly discovered hydrothermal connections between different areas of the park may change biologists’ understanding of extremophile evolution.

“We plan to work with microbiologists looking to link areas of groundwater and gas mixing to regions of extreme microbial diversity, geologists using our models to map lava flows and estimate eruptive volumes, and hydrologists interested in incorporating flow paths and regions of hot and cold fluids to determine how the underground water flows,” said Carol Finn, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey and the paper’s lead author, in an email to Gizmodo.

“In the future, the integration of our models with new, deeper-sensing electromagnetic data offers the possibility of imaging the connections between Yellowstone’s shallow and deep hydrothermal systems and magma, providing a complete view of the system,” Finn added.

The immense amount of data the team collected is just waiting to be gleaned for more insights. The airborne research is just the first pass at a literally in-depth look at Yellowstone’s fundamental processes.

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