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YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — Satellites are an important monitoring tool for the scientists that keep tabs on Yellowstone National Park. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has five volcano observatories around the country, and recently a member of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO) joined the USGS on its podcast “Eyes on Earth.”
YVO’s remote sensing lead Greg Vaughan joined host Jane Lawson to discuss thermal features, Landsat satellites, thermal infrared sensors and more. According to Vuaghan, YVO’s main focus is to “provide monitoring and hazard assessment of the volcanic hydrothermal system in Yellowstone and earthquake activity, and we conduct research on volcano monitoring methods and techniques.”
Vaughan and Lawson started by talking about the context of YNP and its thermal features. According to Vaughan, the park has the highest concentration of thermal features in the world. There are around 1,000 geysers in the world and half of them are in YNP. Per Vaughan, most geysers erupt episodically; geysers like Old Faithful, that erupt regularly, are unique.
Vaughan then goes on to describe how he uses Landsat and other remote sensing data to track changes of thermal features. He tells a story about a time when he made an interesting discovery due to thermal changes in his typical monitoring routine.
“Sort of an intriguing thing about Yellowstone is how dynamic thermal areas are,” Vaughan said. “Thermal areas heat up, they can cool down, they migrate as fluids find more pathways to the surface, and sometimes new thermal features appear, sometimes quietly and sometimes with a bang.”
