Yellowstone is hiding more than 80,000 earthquakes below its surface
"Now, we have a far more robust catalogue of seismic activity under the Yellowstone caldera."
Researchers at the University of Western Ontario have uncovered over 86,000 earthquakes moving in chaotic swarms through rough, young fault lines beneath Yellowstone.
The findings are significantly higher than the previously known number of earthquakes in the area. The study appears in the journal Science Advances.
“With these new insights, we’re getting closer to decoding Earth’s volcanic heartbeat and improving how we predict and manage volcanic and geothermal hazards,” the authors write in a statement.
Researchers used a machine learning algorithm to process and identify earthquake signals within 15 years of seismic data from the Yellowstone caldera, which was formed by a volcanic eruption more than 630,000 years ago.
Previously, researchers manually inspected earthquake data—a process that was both expensive and time-consuming. By automating the detection and classification of seismic events, machine learning allowed the Western team to uncover many more earthquakes in the dataset, revealing ten times more seismic activity than previously known.
That brings the historical catalogue for the Yellowstone caldera up to 86,276 earthquakes between 2008 and 2022 and paints a much clearer picture of what’s going on beneath the surface, researchers say.
"To a large extent, there is no systematic understanding of how one earthquake triggers another in a swarm. We can only indirectly measure space and time between events," Western engineering professor Bing Li, one of the study’s authors, says.
"But now, we have a far more robust catalogue of seismic activity under the Yellowstone caldera, and we can apply statistical methods that help us quantify and find new swarms that we haven't seen before, study them, and see what we can learn from them."
Header image: File photo of Yellowstone's Grand Prismatic Spring. (U.S. Geological Survey)