Super Volcano at Yellowstone - Assignment Example

The child is talking about a rock called pumice. When hot volcanoes erupt and come into contact with water, pumice comes up. Therefore, pumice emanates from explosive volcanoes.4. The geologist with the horse is replacing a seismometer, which measures ground motions including those that arise from volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.5. The magnitude of the first earthquake was 6.9 on the rector scale. The earthquake caused a Tsunami wave to Yellowstone lake. 6. The inactivity of Old Faithful may be an indication of the possibility of the eruption of Yellowstone.7. Every year, around 1,000 to 3,000 earthquakes take place within Yellowstone. 8. Harmonic tremors are relentless rhythmic earthquakes detectable by seismographs.

They signal volcanic eruptions or, at times, come after an eruption.9. Magma that is viscous and magma chambers accumulated in one place can trigger eruptions.10. Volcanic eruptions are hard to predict even with the best equipment; geologists cannot tell exactly when and how big the eruptions will be. They are also hard to predict because measures used could mean many things including earthquakes. 11. A super eruption is a volcanic activity that exceeds 1000 km3, and the last time one occurred at Yellowstone was 600,000 years ago.12. The caldera at Yellowstone is 125 cubic kilometers.13. Other eruptions such as the eruptions at Mt. St. Helens are evidence that super-eruptions are catastrophic and real. 14. The Yellowstone supereruption could be bigger than Pinatubo and Mt. Helens. The British Brother in Law uses red blocks, and the size of Yellowstone is exceedingly huge compared to prior eruptions. 15. Scientists are cautious because they do not want to cause unnecessary panic.16. The trees are dying because of overexposure to toxins and gases from the magma lying under Yellowstone. 17. Scientists are able to determine how large a magma chamber is by modeling the speed of waves.

Waves travel much slower when going through a magma chamber.18. The eruption could be bigger with the caldera getting to a V8I size. Compared to the eruption that occurred 2.1 million years ago, this could be bigger.19. The media pushes for the truth and conducts interviews with various experts who hold different views. Politicians do not want to cause panic to the people and thus influence USGC to give information that does not reflect the worst-case scenario.20. Various scientists underplayed the significance of the data being relayed by Virgil and thus led to insufficient information given to the public. 21. The eruption led to the death of many due to the initial blast and the ash blackened the skies causing economies and agricultural activities world over to collapse. 22. The ash and excessive change in climate made it hard to rescue people after the eruptions. 23. Three-quarters of the United States were under ash.24. The ash plume was westerly.

The west coast would feel more impact from the ash because of the direction of the wind. 1. There are other supervolcanoes besides Yellowstone, some of which went off years ago and could erupt again, e.g. Toba, Long Valley Caldera, Pinatubo, etc. 2. The caldera was identified by a geologist, Bob Christiansen, who delineated through walking over the area and using a hand lens and hammer to look for rock formation and rock distribution. 3. According to USGC, the movie does not depict the occurrence of a volcanic eruption clearly.