Transcript
of the Video
Mammoth Terrace Walk
by Ranger Michael Leach
Ranger Michael: So again, my name is
Michael Leach. This is my third season as an interpretive ranger here
at Mammoth Hot Springs and in Yellowstone National Park and today
we’re going to be touring around one of the most incredible
thermal features, I believe, on earth …Mammoth Hot Springs.
This is our first stop, the angelic Angel Terrace, and I choose this
for my first stop for a number of reasons. One is because here you
are getting your first glimpse of some of the many different features
we are going to see here at Mammoth that are unique to this area.
Now can anyone here tell me any of the four types of thermal features
we have in Yellowstone? There’s four different kinds of features.
Can anyone tell me one of those?
Audience Member: Hot Springs
Ranger Michael: Hot Springs, yes that’s one
of them.
Child‘s Voice: Geysers
Ranger Michael: Geysers, yes that’s another
one. Two more. Anybody have any other idea? What about that stuff
that looks like paint?
Audience Member: Mudpots
Ranger Michael: Mudpots, that’s three and
the fourth one is a tricky one. This one’s called a fumarole.
But, here I want to point out some of the early features we are going
to get to see here; cause although we are not going to see mudpots,
geysers, or fumaroles, we are going to see some features that are
unique to this area.
Now, if you look up there, does everybody see those two trees that
look like a goal post? If you go straight up there you’ll see
those things hanging down. We call those things stalactites, just
like what you would see in a cave. And what those are hanging off
of, that lip, we call that a pulpit. So you have a pulpit and stalactites
there hanging off. If you move farther to the right where that sun
is beating off that white rock and where it is shinning very vibrantly
and you see that water there (it’s hard to tell) we’re
going to see some of this up close but that’s moving very rapidly.
It’s flowing very quickly and we call that a cascading feature
and it creates those small scalloping effects which are one of my
favorite types of features we have here in Mammoth and we are going
to get to see those up close as well. And if you move down from there,
you are going to see what makes Mammoth so famous. It’s really
those features, those stair step formations, which we call terraces,
combined with the brilliant colors here at Mammoth that make this
one of the most popular attractions all throughout Yellowstone National
Park.
Now one of my favorite quotes or sayings about Yellowstone is that
“it is not a place, but a process” and I feel no place
better exemplifies that than here in Mammoth. Maybe some people down
at Norris will argue with me, but I would say this is one of the most
dynamic constantly changing thermal areas here on earth and that’s
one of the things that makes Mammoth so exciting. I’ll be the
first one to admit that before I started working here at Mammoth,
geology was never a big passion of mine. It was a subject that never
excited me like that bison and the wolves and the grizzlies; some
of the wildlife we had here in the park. Even places like the Grand
Canyon of the Yellowstone although that was sculptured by geology,
a different type of geology than we see here at the Mammoth Hot Springs.
Because if you look at the brief definition of geology it says that
you are looking at the earths history by examining rock. Rock that
often hasn’t changed for thousands if not millions of years;
and that doesn’t sound very exciting to a lot of people.
But that’s where Mammoth comes into place in Yellowstone. Because
here in Yellowstone things are changing year by year. But here in
Mammoth things are changing, month by month, week by week, and even
day by day and I’m going to show you some examples of these
changes that have occurred in the last 24 hours and give you folks
some tools, to where you can look at a spring and tell where there
has be activity recently. So it’s a fascinating area. I would
say that this is really the dream job for a geologist and if you could
be anywhere it would be Yellowstone and I would argue that it would
be Mammoth because here we get to see things change on a human time
scale. You know, we are not talking about hundreds and thousands of
years we’re talking about one year, two years.
In the case of Angel Terrace, if you were here about 40 - 45 years
ago, you’d see a spring that was inactive. And forty years may
sound like a long time to us but when you are talking about the geological
time scale that’s just a small, small blimp there, just a small
period of time. Now if you look at this area and you were here last
year you’d see more activity than there is here today. If you
were here two years ago, you’d see a spring that was very similar
to the one we are seeing here today. Three weeks ago there was actually
quite a bit more water flowing right here in this area and even yesterday,
just yesterday, I told people if you come on my walk again tonight
the next day I’ll show you an example of how much things have
changed because I knew there would be a change here; there always
is at Angel. The water was flowing right up near this ridge yesterday.
Not a big change - a small change - but about three weeks ago the
water looked like it was going to overflow this small area. So things
are always changing. Change is a constant. It’s one of the things
that make this place so exciting.
Now I’d like everybody to think about something on our way
to the next stop. I’d like you to think about what’s creating
all this heat. What’s creating all this heat…all this
thermal activity. Not just here at Angel Terrace because at our next
stop we ‘re going to learn what’s creating all this thermal
activity, not just here at Mammoth, but also down at Mud Volcano,
at the Norris Geyser Basin and Old Faithful. So if you folks will
me we will head on down to our next stop.
Father’s Voice: Do you have a question about
Arnie?
Child Voice: No
Ranger Michael: You have the answer. Next I’ll
go to you. Are you excited about being here?
Child Voice: um huh
Child Voice: I’d want to become a ranger.
Ranger Michael: You’d like to become a ranger?
Child Voice: I don’t know; what if…
Ranger Michael: So why here in the middle of the
Rocky Mountains. do we have more thermal features than anyplace on
earth? Does anybody have any idea? I think Arnesh does here.
Child Voice: Because there is lava here in Yellowstone.
Ranger Michael: Because there is lava underneath
Yellowstone. We are going to talk more about what’s going on
here. That’s a very good answer here. Now all you folks said
you have seen this map. This is the map you get when you come into
the park. How many of you folks have actually looked closely at this
map and seen this purple outline? It’s not highlighted as darkly
on your map as it is here. You can see I’ve put a dark marker
to it but you’ve got the same mark on your map. Now, does anybody
now what that is?
Audience Member: Caldera
Ranger Michael: Yes, that’s right, that’s
the caldera. And this is where the origin of all this heat has been
created. We are going to talk about what this caldera is. It’s
what is sitting underneath this caldera, a hotspot that creates all
this thermal activity. This magma that creates all this heat that
we have here; not just at Angel Terrace but also down in places like
Old Faithful and the Mud Volcano. Now these are very different than
any other volcano that a lot of people like to think or picture. This
is a large volcano we are sitting on here. So large that some people
refer to it as a Super volcano and this volcano is nothing like the
ones you imagine or picture when you like of volcanoes like the Hawaiian
Islands or up the North Cascades, places like Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens,
Mt. Baker, or Mt. Rainier.
This is very different. These are much larger and when they go off
they are much more destructive. Now we have never seen one of these
go off because the last one that took place was approximately 74,000
years ago. And this took place in the Greek Islands and we weren’t
studying these large volcano yet at that time. But there is so much
intrigue and so much research going on here in Yellowstone; so many
people wondering will this thing go off again and if it does go off
again, when? That’s the question. Certainly some things we can
look for but since we have never seen one of these go off before we
don’t know exactly what the indicators are.
Now anytime you have a large volcano, you’re going to have
seismic activity and we have a lot of seismic activity here. We are
second only to California in that seismic activity. We average 2,000
quakes per year here. In the year 2000, we had 1934 small quakes.
So that is one thing we can look at. If you remember Mt. St. Helens,
how many people here remember Mt. St. Helens? I’m going to talk
a little more about that later but they were able to evacuate that
area and one of the reasons was looking at seismic activity.
But let’s talk a little bit more about the history of this
hotspot we are sitting on and exactly what this hotspot really is.
Now if you look at this graph here you can see that this is where
the hotspot originated about 16 1/2 million years ago; southern Idaho,
northern Nevada and you can see it’s worked it’s way here.
And the last three eruptions have taken place here in the Yellowstone
area. Now this leads people to believe that this hotspot is actually
moving. But we are the ones that are actually moving do to plate tectonics.
The pacific plate and the North American or continental plate are
moving. The North American plate is rubbing over the pacific plate;
so we are actually moving in a southwesterly direction which makes
this hotspot look like its moving but it’s actually staying
in one place.
Now you can see the last three eruptions have taken place here in
Yellowstone. So that’s why we have this caldera here today.
Now how many people have driven thru southern Idaho? What we call
the Snake River Basin or Snake River Plains. That basin, those plains
there are created from those large volcanic eruptions. Although Idaho
is one of the most mountainous states in the lower 48, there’s
no mountains in that snake river plain area is there? That’s
because when those volcanoes go off they are very destructive and
have blown out the rock in that area. So let’s talk about what’s
happened here in Yellowstone.
A lot of people want to know if this thing is still active. Well,
I’d say to that all you have to do is go back up to Angel Terrace
and see all that hot spring water coming out; or go down to Old Faithful
and see that Old Faithful erupts approximately every 92 minutes and
you can see, yes, things are still very active. This hotspot is creating
a lot of heat here in this area. Now how does this thing actually
work? This is a mystery to many people. One of the things that shows
us that there is activity here is that if you look at this map I can
point something out to you that has occurred here in the last couple
years. If you look here at the northern section of the lake you can
see that’s where this caldera is there and there’s actually
been a bulge and we’ve documented a growth of one inch per year
during certain years in the earth and that’s that magma bulging
up. If you held a plate of water and you tilted that plate of water
what would happen? What would happen if you tilted that water?
Audience Member: It would spill.
Ranger Michael: It would spill; it’s going
to run off. Well the same thing has happened with the lake. That one
inch per year of growth has taken place. It has tilted the lake to
a very small degree but enough to where some of these trees in the
southern section have been inundated with water. So that shows you
there is still activity in this area. What I’d like to do talk
to you guys more about is how this really works.
How this magma chamber or how this hotspot can become so violent
with the volcanic eruption. Now it starts something very different
from those large volcanoes as I mentioned. You’ve got those
cone shaped volcanoes, we don’t have that here. Here we have
a flat surface but that’s part of what makes it so destructive.
Because it starts flat like we see here with my hat and over time
we will have a bulge and as that magma continues to rise it’s
going to push up on the earth’s surface and it’s going
to create a dome, like you see here with my hat, until the eruptions
takes place and then we are going to have a feature that looks like
this. It’s going to be what we call a large caldera or a crater.
So let’s look at it with this graph.
If you look here, at these pictures you can see that this magma is
continuing to rise; it’s continuing to bulge and it’s
very close to the earths’ surface. That’s the definition
of a hotspot, this magma close to the earth’s surface; and as
that’s rising it’s creating pressure here on this rock.
This rock is very strong. It can withstand great pressure. It’s
called rhyolite. It’s what we have in most of the areas of Yellowstone.
That’s the ground surface; what’s overlaying this magma
chamber. And rhyolite rock is very similar to granite. It has the
same chemical composition. The same makeup as granite. And if any
of you folks have ever felt granite you can feel that it is very hard.
It’s very strong, dense rock.
So this rhyolite can withstand great pressure. But eventually over
approximately 640,000 years as that magma continues to rise even the
rhyolite cannot withstand that pressure anymore and then we are going
to have an eruption. You are going to get cracks in the earth; you
are going to get fissures and that magma is going to shoot out. It’s
going to eject out of the magma chamber we are going to have molten
rock and gases shot out. Until that magma chamber empties enough that
the earth’s surface will collapse on itself creating a crater;
or in our case something so large that we call a caldera. Then over
time that magma may continue to rise and we may have an eruption again.
Now a lot of people want to know if this thing is going to go off
again and really since it’s been about 640,000 years there is
no way we can really tell. One thing we do know is that about 70,000
years ago which is much more recently than the last eruption we have
had lava flows and those lava flows can release some pressure from
that magma chamber. It acts like a hiccup or burp to that magma chamber
to that hotspot. So if that if we continue to have lava flows that
can release some pressure. So whether it will go off again I can’t
tell you but I can tell you that when they do go off they are very
large. Now to get back to Mt. St. Helens, how many people remember
that? Have you guys learned anything about Mt. St. Helen in school?
Child Voice: Well, it was a huge volcano and it
had a very big eruption and it like, I think it blew up 1/3 of itself.
Ranger Michael: It was very large, it was an extremely
large eruption. Now if you look at this ash, this is ash here, that
I had at my home in Coeur D‘Alene, Idaho; almost 300 miles from
the site of the eruption and we had about six inches of this ash by
the afternoon of the eruption. So much ash that they had to turn on
the street lights in the middle of the day like it was midnight. And
you can see here that this ash is pretty neat stuff. I used to love
this as a kid. You can see that this is that ash from that Mt. St.
Helens eruption. Now if you look at this little block here, this represents
the ash output from Mt. St. Helens. How many of you folks were around
here for Krakatoa?
Ranger Michael: Anybody around for that?
Audience Members: Laughter
Ranger Michael: No one was around for Krakatoa,
that was back in around 1883. So that was something most of you folks
were not around for and if you were I’d like to talk to you
afterwards and hear your secret. This was a much larger eruption;
you can see here it was much larger than Mt. St. Helens. Let’s
get away from some of these much smaller volcanoes and let’s
get into these big ones here. These ones that some people like to
call super volcanoes. If you look at these two eruptions, these two
here, this one happened approximately 640,000 years ago. This was
the Lava Creek eruption. And this one
happened 2.1 million years ago, Huckleberry Ridge. These two eruptions
are considered to be the largest volcanic eruptions in the history
of our earth. And this one here, which was the single largest volcanic
eruption, it’s ash output was 2,400 times the size of Mt. St.
Helens’ ash output. So these are very large, these are something
that would have global implications, not just Yellowstone implications.
Audience Member: Where was Huckleberry Ridge?
Ranger Michael: What was that?
Audience Member: Where was Huckleberry Ridge?
Ranger Michael: Huckleberry Ridge occurred right
here in the Yellowstone area. Now the one that happened that has created
the caldera we have here today was that one, the second largest one,
about 640,000 years ago, the Lava Creek eruption. Now this isn’t
to scare anybody because I don’t imagine we are going to get
an opportunity to see this thing go off on your visit here in the
park and I don’t imagine were going to get an opportunity to
see this go off in our lifetime. It could be 10,000 years from now,
30,000 years from now; if it ever does go off again. But it’s
this hotspot, this magma so close to the earth’s surface here
that we have to thank for all this geothermal activity that we have
here in Yellowstone.
This is one of the most incredible places on earth. It was the world’s
first national park and it was established because of the geothermal
features and it’s this magma chamber that we have to thank for
that. So we should all be excited about what’s going on here
in Yellowstone. We’re going to see some pretty exciting stuff
here down the road, down the trail. Now I’d like everyone to
think on the way to our next stop, about what makes Mammoth so different
from your backyard.
If you look at this area right here for any of you gardeners, do
I have any gardeners here in the audience? Well for you gardeners
you may have some trouble with invasive species, or non-natives, well
that’s what we are seeing here, this Dalmation Toadflax. It
can be a problem even here in our national parks. So when you are
looking at this, and your looking at these trees here, this Limber
Pine and this Rocky Mountain Juniper this may not look that different
than your backyard; but I assure you what we are about to see, the
journey we are about to embark on, is going to be very different than
anything you are going to see back home. So if you’ll follow
me we will move on to our next stop.
Ranger Michael answers a question while walking: It
may not be what you think though. It may surprise you to hear why
they call this Yellowstone.
Child Voice talking while walking: I think it’s
because they have yellow stones here.
Ranger Michael talking while walking: Think that’s
what it is? Well we will talk more.
Ranger Michael: All right so I would like to pass
some of this around here and I am going to give everyone a chance
to feel this and you guys can just get it to me at the next stop.
But really take a look at this. I want you to feel how porous this
rock is. This is interesting because what you are seeing here - we’re
not allowed to touch the hot spring water, we are not allowed to touch
the thermal features - but all this material we’re seeing here
when we are walking around is called travertine. You are going to
get your hands on it right here; so I’d like to pass this around
to everybody. If you look around out here you can see that this area
is quite dry right up here. Um, you can see that it’s a landscape
that looks much like the moon.
So you can see that what you are looking at there is something very
different than what you are going to find in your backyard. Now if
you look up at that mountain there, you can see that flat top mountain
with the forest. That mountain is called Terrace Mountain and it’s
called that for a reason because about 400,000 years ago that had
active hot spring deposition taking place. And if anybody ever goes
for a walk up there or a hike, I’ve done some hiking in that
area, and when you are walking along the trails, the trails have eroded
down into the surface, into the ground - you can see that you are
actually walking on travertine. So there was active deposition taking
place there at one point. So you can see how with a forest of that
size, and that old, there hasn’t been water flowing for a very
long time. Because even though we know there was water flowing here
at one point, to have a tree of this size, this stature, you know
there hasn’t been water flowing for well over 400 years.
So, that’s one of the things that is so interesting about this
place – again is how rapidly it’s changing. You can see
that when the water stops to flow this stuff becomes very fragile.
You can see that right here. If you look at this material this right
here is all travertine but you can see up top it looks like soil.
It actually is a soil because when the water stops flowing, this travertine
weathers, it breaks down a becomes a soil. But it’s a very poor
soil because it’s very poor in nutrients; it’s very poor
in nitrogen which is important for plant growth. And also as you can
feel, with those pieces of travertine it’s very porous, so it
doesn’t absorb the water very well. We have a member of our
maintenance crew who says he can go down to the Mammoth Hot Springs
Campground and he can water that tree all day and that water is just
going to continue to flow.
And it’s incredible to think that there’s active, not
active a this point, but at one point there was active hot spring
deposition taking place up at Terrace Mountain and we have travertine
there and you can go all the way down to the campground and you see
there is travertine there and continue down to a place we call the
Boiling River and see there is active deposition there. So this is
a very large area as you can see here. Now on the way to the next
stop I’d like everybody to think a little about what we are
seeing here and how different from any local or state park you have
back home. Because we have seen this is very different from your backyard
but unless you live in Thermopolis, Wyoming, or the nation of Turkey
what we are about to see these active travertine terrace formations
are different than anything you’ll ever see anywhere else on
earth. So if you’ll follow me we are going to really get up
close and personal and find out what’s really happening here
in Mammoth.
Audience and Ranger Michael: (Murmured conversation
while walking to the next stop).
Ranger Michael: You can look around here and you
can see that this area is very different than you see back home. Again,
unless you live in the nation of Turkey or Thermopolis, Wyoming, this
is one of the most unique places on earth. If you look around here
you’ll see that this is very fragile; this landscape is very
fragile where the water is not flowing and disappointedly we see a
lot of footsteps out there.
Certainly it upsets me for two reasons; one is the fact that we want
to keep you folks safe and you don’t know how thin some of this
can be. People have fallen through before and this water can be so
hot it can scald you. So we want to keep you safe. The other thing
is we want to protect we want to preserve these features. People come
here and esthetically it takes away from the magic, I believe that
is Yellowstone to see these footprints out on the thermal features.
So we want to try and stay on the boardwalks and protect these areas
because they are so fragile.
You can look behind you right now and see that there has been no
water flowing here in this area for quite a long time and does everybody
see this little ridge here? You can see what’s happening with
the freezing and thawing with the weathering process it’s breaking;
it’s crumbling; it’s falling apart there and eventually
that may turn into a soil like we talked about or maybe some grasses
growing out here; there’s some of that invasive Dalmation Toadflax
growing and eventually there may even be a tree growing in this area.
Wherever the water is flowing it’s actively depositing this
material, travertine, but you can see right here where there is no
water flowing we don’t have any active deposition. So I’d
like now to talk now about what is creating all this here. We have
talked about the hotspot. We have talked about that magma but what’s
going on here specific to Mammoth.
Now if you were standing in this area you’d actually have been
flooded. So if you could have been up in the air about 165 million
years ago looking down here you’d be looking at a small inland
ocean. And when that ocean receded it left the shells, the fossils,
and those crustacean and they cemented together and formed the layer
of limestone over a thousand feet thick and that’s what we have
beneath us here.
Now if you look around here, especially down there in the Gardiner
area if you look around the mountains there those are the Absaroka
Mountains. You see it’s a very dry area, this northern area
of Yellowstone. We have cactus growing down there, little prickly
pear Cactus growing in the Gardiner area. So it’s very dry;
we don’t get a lot of rain but we do get quite a bit of snow
here in the northern part of Yellowstone.
If you look up at mountains like Sepulcher Mountain or if you see
that Gallatin Mountains, they get a lot of snow. And what happens
in the spring? That snow melts; we get what this gentleman just said,
“spring runoff,” and a lot of that water works it’s
way to the rivers, the streams, and the creeks. And some of it will
work it’s way underground to this aquifer we have underneath
us. Now I’ve had people who have told me that they like to think
of it as a lake, a large lake. But considering where we were up at
Angel Terrace and considering down at Palette Spring and all the way
down by the Boiling River there’s active deposition taking place;
we don’t think although we have never been down, there it’s
not going to be a large lake like some people like to think. What
we think it is, are several small streams or channels working there
way thru the limestone. Now remember we talked about the hotspot and
the definition of the hotspot is a plume of magma very close to the
earth’s surface. Now where are you from, New York?
Audience Member: Yes
Ranger Michael: New York, and you are from Connecticut?
What about you folks?
Audience Member: Houston,
Audience Member: Montana
Ranger Michael: All right and how about you sir?
Where are you from?
Audience Member: New Jersey
Ranger Michael: So where most of you folks are from,
the magma is 21 to 50 miles beneath the earth’s surface, but
here in Yellowstone that magma is 3 to 7 miles beneath the earth’s
surface. So it’s much closer. Now that magma heats up the limestone,
which in turn heats up that water, and what happens when the water
is heated? It wants to rise. But not only does the magma send up heat
but it also sends up gases. And the most important of those gases
is carbon dioxide. Because when that carbon dioxide mixes with that
water it forms a mild acidic solution, a mild carbonic acid. So as
it’s rising up thru the cracks and fissures in the limestone,
it’s eating away at that limestone carrying it in solution form
until it reaches the earth’s surface.
What we are seeing right there then the most important process happens.
That’s called the degassing process because then once it reaches
the atmosphere the earths surface that bond is broken and that limestone
can no longer be held in solution form so it’s deposited . And
now once it’s deposited its taken on the form we call travertine.
The mineral content for the limestone and the travertine is called
calcium carbonate. So for any of you folks that have had a stomach
ache on this trip and have had Tums, well this is the same material
you are seeing here, this is calcium carbonate like what you would
find in your Tums. Now if you look around here, what was that?
Audience Member: The smell is more like a sulfuric
acid.
Ranger Michael: The smell is sulfuric acid; that’s
s right, Hydrogen Sulfide. We don’t actually smell the sulfuric
acid I don’t believe but we smell the Hydrogen Sulfide and there
are concentrations of sulfuric acid in this area. But if you look
around here you see a lot more dry areas than you see active areas.
That brings up the most asked question here at Mammoth and that question
is why are the hot springs drying up? We get that numerous times a
day here in Mammoth and if you look around you can see that it’s
very dry in this area and a lot people will come and say, “
I remember when this entire area had water flowing on it,” but
never at one time did all this have water flowing. But the thing is,
remember I said this thing is changing day by day?
This is such a dynamic place, things change so constantly that one
spring may go dry and another one may come up. And if a spring like
Minerva goes dry that was active for decades, a lot of people remember
the beauty and grandeur of Minerva and see that it’s dry and
think that the springs have dried up. Because wherever water is actively
flowing, remember it’s carrying that limestone; it’s depositing
travertine and two things can happen; it can either plug, clog it’s
own plumbing system, or it can plug itself off. As it’s continuing
to rise, it can cover its own vent. Because we have documented a growth
of up to 22 inches in an 11th month time period in height were the
water is actively flowing. So eventually it can cover its own vent
and since this water is looking for the path of least resistance and
all coming from one source, if can’t come out like a spring
like Minerva or Jupiter Terrace it’s going to come out somewhere
else like Canary or New Blue.
So what I’d like everybody to do right now, this is difficult
I know, but if you have to close your eyes then close your eyes. I’d
like everybody to think back about 130 years. We’re going to
try and put ourselves in the shoes of the Washburn expedition which
happened back in 1870. These were some of the first white men one
of the first expeditions to ever see this Mammoth area. And can you
imagine the beauty, the awe, the inspiration and the grandeur you
would have seen and felt seeing this for the first time, without the
boardwalks, without the cars and the trail guides, just seeing this
incredible area that is Mammoth.
Well, they were very inspired. So much so they charted out this area
and they took back their information to the East and they showed this
to a lot of people and these people became excited. So much so that
the next year the Hayden Expedition came out in 1871. And when they
came here and looked at the charts that the Washburn Expedition created
they saw that some things had changed and this lead them to believe
that things might be drying up and they went back East and said “
uh that place is all past its prime; it’s drying up.”
Well here we are 130 years later and we still have, we believe, as
much activity as there has ever been here at Mammoth Hot Springs.
So remember, Yellowstone is not a place but a process and it is always
changing. And there is no place that better exemplifies that better
than here in Mammoth. And at a few of the next stops I’m going
to show you some of these changes that have taken place over the last
few years and even over the last few days. Now if you’ll look
out here you’ll see some features that are really neat; some
features that I love that are unique to this area and if you look
there the first thing I want everyone to see is that water coming
out. Does everybody see that? It looks like boiling water. Well the
hottest temperature we have here in Mammoth is about 168 degrees.
You’re not seeing boiling water there; for this temperature
(he meant altitude) you need about 200 degrees to reach the boiling
temperature which is one of the reasons they have geysers down in
the Old Faithful area and we don’t. What you are seeing there
are those gases being released; that bond is being broken. You’re
seeing carbon dioxide being released and smelling some hydrogen sulfide
there and that’s what creating that bubbling. So that’s
approximately 168 degrees which is our hottest temperature. Now I’m
going to give you folks some tools right now to where you can look
at that water and you can tell roughly what the temperature of that
water is just by looking at the color. Now if you look at an area
that is white or gray what material is that?
Audience Member: Travertine
Ranger Michael: Travertine or calcium carbonate.
That’s what we are looking at there. If you look at the blue
area, that’s just like what you’d see in an ocean or river
or lake. Sunlight has all the different colors in the light spectrum
one of them being that blue which has a very short wave length which
isn’t absorbed by the water it’s refracted back out. When
you have a bright white area like that, like a coral reef in the Hawaiian
Islands, it makes that blue that much more vibrant. So those aren’t
organisms you are seeing. But all these other colors you are seeing;
the browns, oranges, the dark greens, the light greens, the yellows,
those are all what we call thermophiles.
They’re thermophilic, heat loving, microorganisms. They need
the heat and they need the water to survive. Now, I don’t want
you folks to be feeling sorry for these little organisms because they
thrive in these conditions. So much so that we also call them extremophiles
because they can live in these extreme temperatures. So if you look
in an area where the water is coming out, that’s the vent; and
if you look in an area that’s blue, those are going to be your
hottest temperatures. Those can be anywhere from 150 to 168 degrees.
Now as you get away from that and start getting into some of those
light colors you’re still looking at hot temperatures. You’re
still looking at temperatures anywhere from 130 to 150- 155 degrees.
Those are some organisms that still like those hot temperatures.
And then you are going to get further away and you’re going
to get into those darker colors - you’re get into some algae,
some dark green. You are going to get into the real cool temperatures
which are the dark oranges and the dark browns. And if you look here
where you can see some dark oranges and dark browns you can see just
how far from the vent it is. There is not a lot of water flowing from
that area; so it is much cooler.
And wherever it is cooler, you are going to get one of the formations
that is really incredible here at Mammoth that you are seeing right
there. Does everybody see that layer that of looks like ice? We call
that calcite ice. There’s two different crystal forms with travertine;
aragonite which forms in the hotter temperatures near the back and
calcite; that’s what we are seeing here. And that calcite can
only form in the cooler temperatures and where the water is not moving.
So you see there is a lot of turbulence to the water there; you can
see it flowing. Where ever you can see this calcite ice developing
and you can see it is very stagnant and it’s much cooler. And
what’s happening there is those ripples are carrying some of
that travertine and those crystals just interlock in those cooler
temperature with the stagnant water and form a layer of what looks
like ice.
It’s not actually floating and what happen is that is will
eventually break up and then look like glass. If you get up close
and see that it looks like fragments of glass that are broken up and
it will fall down and it will just add to the accumulation of the
travertine we have here. And if you were here three weeks ago you
would have seen something that looked very different than this. About
a month ago it was when it look very similar here as it does today
and I saw what look like a film developing and I said if you come
back here in a week you are going to see and incredible layer of calcite
ice. And this entire pool right up here, this upper section and some
of this down here in this lower area where it is not very turbulent
had a great layer of calcite ice. And when I was up here a week ago
I saw some of the most incredible calcite ice I’d ever seen.
It looked like ice on a lake. It had those large cracks in it; those
large fissures. It looked like maybe something that you could walk
on. It was very incredible; it looked so thick. And you can see it
doesn’t look like that today.
So things are rapidly changing. It only takes a few days for that
to break up and just add to the accumulation. There’s another
pretty neat thing that goes on here at Mammoth and it’s called
filamentous bacteria and that filamentous bacteria - we may get to
see some of that - now that filamentous bacteria looks like an elk
hide tinged white because anything that get dropped in this thermal
water here at Mammoth is going to get that travertine bonding to it
and turn white. What that filamentous bacteria is are just small hair-like
fibers that connect together end to end and the only reason we can
see them is because their shell has been hardened by that travertine
allowing us to see them develop and they usually form near the vents
in the hotter temperatures. And they are important because if you
look out here at those lighter colors, you’re seeing the light
oranges you might be seeing cyanobacteria,
And cyanobacteria is believed by microbiologist and many scientists
to be the start of life on earth as we know it. This earth was considered
at one time to be anoxic, meaning without oxygen, until we had the
first photosynthesizing or oxygen-producing organism which is believed
by many to be cyanobacteria. And cyanobacteria cannot live in the
presence of hydrogen sulfide. And you can smell some of that hydrogen
sulfide there. Well the filamentous bacteria lives near the vent and
they live off that hydrogen sulfide that’s removing it before
it can effect the cyanobacteria. So you can see that relationship
that’s going on there.
And there’s a lot of other exciting things that are going on
here in Yellowstone other than the just beauty and the grandeur that
you get to see with the features like Old Faithful. It was back in
the sixties that at group of scientist found - how many of you people
have been down to the Artist Paint Pots up there the lower geyser
basin? It was down by in the lower geyser basin in the spring called
Mushroom Pool that the scientists back in the sixties, they were studying
the area - we have some of what we call bioprospecting going on in
this area where people do study and do research; they research these
hot springs and they find organisms.
They found an organism in the sixties called thermus aquaticus and
thermus aquaticus was found to have a heat resistant enzyme called
taq polymerase and they replicated that enzyme and it’s now
what we use for the DNA analysis processing. So what we have to thank
for some of the advancements in the medical fields, and some of the
solving of crimes, and how we tell one grizzly bear from another here
in the park, is thanks to a heat resistant enzyme that they found
down in one of the thermal features here in Yellowstone. So who knows,
the next cure to one of the major diseases; the next cure to something
that may save your life may be found by protecting these thermal features
and studying these thermal features here in Yellowstone.
Right now we are going to move on to one of the most incredible features
here in the park, Canary Spring. And I’d like to point out before
we move, a great change that has occurred here. If everybody will
look down here at this piece of boardwalk it used to go just about
10 days ago all the way down to that tree. Does everyone see this
first tree here? That’s how far the boardwalk went and as we
walk by you will see a lot of boards here because they had to remove
a section of that boardwalk because the spring had shifted and so
much more water is coming out or that it just shifted direction and
it just overtook the boardwalk.
Now, I was here three summers ago, and I was giving this talk and
I took everybody down to one of these next pullouts that we are going
to stop at and everything was as normal as things could be at Canary,
which isn’t very normal, but 24 hours later I came back and
the water had completely shifted and overtaken the boardwalk. In our
next stop we are going to see this and we had to take out that boardwalk
within a week to two weeks; we had to remove that boardwalk section.
Well that was two summers ago and that happened in about a 24 hour
time period.
Well here I came down about six weeks ago, and that piece of boardwalk
is now missing. Well the water had shifted again and overtaken the
remaining section of boardwalk. And we looked at it and thought we
may have to pull that piece out. Well, when I was gone over my weekend
that’s exactly what they did. Because where we are going to
go now it’s really getting tight, because they had to take out
another section. So again it just shows that things are always changing
here. Things are changing sometimes by the minute but certainly things
are changing day by day here. So if you’ll all follow me, I’m
going to point some of the great changes that have occurred at Canary
Spring.
Child Voice as they begin walking to the next stop: I
saw this….
Ranger Michael talking as he walks to the next stop:
Look at this valley right here. See this valley? It carved out that
valley right there.
Ranger Michael: So we are talking about the changes
that occur here at Mammoth. How constantly they are occurring, how
rapidly they occur. This was the spot I was talking about two summers
three years ago it was back in back in 2002, three summers ago. I’m
not doing real good at math am I?
But it was that time, this boardwalk extended much farther. You can
see that where this boardwalk ends it use to connect right here. We
have pulled out that whole section of boardwalk. Now if you look at
this area you can see where there is no water flowing, this section
of boardwalk, if you were here a week ago, extended all the way out
to that tree sticking out right there.
So things are changing here all the time. Not with just the hot springs
but even with our boardwalks. Certainly with our perceptions and our
beliefs about places like Mammoth and these wild places; places that
we have here in Yellowstone.. So we have learned a little bit about
how we can tell what the temperature of the water is but what about
these organisms I talked about.
Remember, I said they need heat and they need water to survive? Well
then what are we seeing here? We’re seeing some colors but you
see no water in that area. What you are looking at are dead or dying
thermophiles. Since they need that heat and they need the water to
survive they are no longer living. But they have a pigment to them
and that pigment will stain the rock. And that pigment can last anywhere
from 7 to 21 days.
So if you look at an area like that, that is extremely bright you
can see those colors are still very vibrant but there is no water
flowing, we know that there has been water flowing I can consume sometime
in the last 7 days. Now if you get into some of these areas where
the color is a little lighter like down here, it’s not quite
as vibrant, it’s probably been anywhere from 10 to 21 days.
Because after 21 days, after about three weeks, it can last longer
that, but roughly three weeks, that pigment, that color, is going
to disappear and then we are going to get a stark white.
So if you see and area like we see here that is stark white, with
no water flowing, no colors, we can know that there has been water
flowing there sometime within the last approximately three weeks to
one year. Because after one year, it’s going to start to weather
and it’s going to start to turn a light gray like you see in
that area. And then as it gets longer, into two years or more, it’s
going to start to even turn a dark gray; sometimes you’ll see
a black. And then again it’s going to erode, it’s going
to weather, and we are going to eventually have a soil and we may
have trees and grasses growing.
But what about these trees right here? You can see these trees are
living; these trees are dead. Well these trees are being threatened
right now certainly by these hot springs. By the time you come back
next year, Canary may overtake this little section of forest that
we have. But what happens is that these trees were here first, before
the water started to flow. There had to be soil here for these trees
to grow. Once the waters starts flowing it’s going to change
the life of this tree. Because what happens is - it’s not the
heat and it’s not the water that actually kills these trees
but it’s the travertine.
Because when the water flows over the trees that water enters the
veins of these trees much like our arteries and it clogs those veins
as the travertine hardens. Thus it’s fatally blocking the trees
from absorbing any nutrients or water. And these lifeless skeletons
can then stand here for decades. They will probably be here much longer
than I’m going to be here in Yellowstone; probably much longer
than any of us are going to be here on this planet because these get
cemented in here and they can be here for a very long time. It’s
going to take something a large, large storm or a great deal of destruction
to come thru here to move one of these trees.
Child Voice: Like Lava?
Ranger Michael: Lava could possibly do it; a big
mud flow. But you can see we have had to leave some pieces of boardwalk
in because we can’t get them out because they are cemented in
there once that water starts to flow.
Adult Audience Member: Will this tree become petrified?
Ranger Michael: Basically what you are looking at
is like a petrified tree. But they are not going to become petrified
all the way to the top. It’s not an actual petrified tree but
it’s very similar. Because with that petrified tree you’ve
got that high silica content entering that tree, hardening the veins
thus turning it into rock, turning it to stone. Well, that’s
what you see down in that lower section.
Now what about that formation? Remember at the introduction, we talked
about those cascading features and we talked about terraces, well
those are two of the most incredible features here at Mammoth. And
we get to see both of them right here. If we were here a week ago,
we would have got to reach out and almost touch that little cascading
feature.
I’d really like to point out up close what you’re able
to see there but I think you folks can look and see those rippling
effects. That’s that cascading feature or what we like to call
scalloping effects. But it really depends on the topography of what
kind of feature we are going to have. Because a steep hillside, the
water is going to flow much faster and we are going to get a more
hard, a more dense, less porous feature. It’s going to be a
cascading feature like that.
If it can pool out in a flat area then we are going to get a terrace
formation. It’s going to be softer and more porous. So if everyone
remembers, we were right up there and that’s where that water
is coming out. It needs to originate from a source, from a vent. And
that water is going to flow and much like your bathtub if you continue
to let that water flow it’s eventually going to overflow onto
the floors. Well, what’s going to happen is eventually that
pool can’t hold that water anymore and it’s going to fall,
and we may get some of these stalactites forming if the water is not
dropping really rapidly.
If it’s dropping more quickly we may get pulpits and then if
it flows into a steep area we are going to get these cascading features,
these little scalloping effects. If it flows into a flatter area like
we see in that area, that water can pool up, and that travertine will
be deposited to the edge, and we will get a nice lip. You can see
some of these lips in this area, it can be anywhere from an inch to
several inches and eventually that water will overflow and drop and
cascade down and we we’ll either get more terraces or get cascading
features depending on the topography.
You see here it looks like things just drop out from this itself
you can see we’ve got a steep hillside and this feature really
turns into what looks like a waterfall, a cascading waterfall just
over this bridge here. Now wherever the is water is flowing, remember
travertine is actively being deposited. So if something is dropped
in that thermal water it’s going to turn white pretty quickly.
And we had some people in the early days of this park who wanted to
take advantage of places like Yellowstone because they thought they
could make a quick buck.
They were some of the early people coming to this area, and as you
can imagine this would have been an incredible place to have been
an entrepreneur, here in Yellowstone. We are very lucky, very lucky,
that those first explorers that came to this area in 1869, 1870, and
1871, decided that this land needed to be set aside for many people.
They went back East and it was artists like Thomas Moran who brought
his paintings back to Yellowstone. The photographs of men like Henry
Jackson that brought back the awe and inspiration of places like Yellowstone
and brought up the idea of setting aside a piece of land not for the
benefit of a few but for the benefit everybody, for all Americans
and now all of the world. This is not just an American Park but this
is a global park now at this point.
But there were men in those early days, men like Ole Anderson who
wanted to take advantage of this area. He knew he had a great opportunity
with these Mammoth Hot Springs so he started what he called the specimen
chart. This was down by our present day visitor center. And what he
did was that he told people and word got out that if you brought out
something special; a special charm, you could even use your binoculars
here, you may not want to use those, but you could bring out a good
luck horseshoe, pick up a cup, a pinecone anything that is special
to you and give it to Ole and Ole would set up what he called his
specimen rack and he’d set it up in an active area like this
and he would put your feature there and by the time you got back from
your trip here in the park you’d have a great specimen.
And you had to have a lot of money in the early days to visit Yellowstone.
You had to take the Northern Pacific Railroad all the way to Livingston;
take another train down to Cinnabar Basin and into Gardiner. This
is where all the early journeys to Yellowstone started here in Mammoth.
They’d run into Ole Anderson and they give them their lucky
horseshoe and they would tour the park for a couple days and by the
time they got back he had this great specimen waiting for them.
So they’d wrapped it up in their blanket or a towel or shirt
and take that bumpy ride all the way back East to Chicago, or Philadelphia,
or somewhere. They would get everyone together to share their great
stories about Yellowstone, to share their journal entries. And maybe
the last hurrah of the night would be showing them this incredible
feature they got from Mammoth. And they would open it up, hopefully
they would open it up before they made a big deal of this. Because
for those people who were just opening it for the first time, they
would see it was the same old horseshoe they came out with and a bunch
of white dust. Because whenever this water stops flowing, remember
it is very fragile and that’s what happened in the case of some
these specimens that Ole Anderson made.
So things have greatly changed here in Yellowstone. Things are changing
here day by day with our hot springs. Things are changing all throughout
this ecosystem. Right now I’d like to give everybody about two
minutes because we don’t have a lot of time and I’d like
to give everybody time just to sit and for just a few minutes to listen
to the sounds of Canary because they are very inspiring, a very special
place. And after that we are going to be moving on to our last stop
at New Blue where we are going to see a spring that has changed day
by day, and it certainly is a spring that has changed more than any
other over the last year here at Mammoth.
Ranger Michael makes a comment to the videographer while
walking to the next stop: You’ve got a competitor Tom.
Audience Member with a video camera: I’m getting
them on the Internet unless you hurry up.
Female Voice: (commenting to the videographer about
the program) Phenomenal.
Male Voice while walking by: I was here one time
before it was about 11 years ago….
Ranger Michael: This is something that I just wanted
to point out to everybody before we move onto New Blue because this
is extremely exciting. One of the things I love to do is point out
some of my observations. And it was about six weeks ago that I was
walking up here and all of a sudden I saw a spring that I had never
seen before. I’d never seen any activity up in this area and
it originated right where you see that steam coming out and it was
a very small spring. I was really excited and I went down and brought
up another ranger and we looked at it and we wrote about how large
we thought it was going to be and we both made our guesses as to how
long it would be here. I guessed seven days and it would be dry.
Well it was about three weeks later that the water had continued
to shift and there was more deposition taking place, more water flowing
and it came all the way down near this tree right here. So I was thinking
maybe we’ve got a new spring on our hands and I was telling
people that were on our tour here that maybe you’ll have the
opportunity to name this new spring. We had a girl, I loved the name,
she called it snake spring because if you see it from up above it
looks like a snake. Well about three weeks ago the thing looked like
it was going to go completely dry. All there was left was that original
spring. And then it was last week that I came up here, about five
days ago, and I saw there was as much water as there has ever been
in the last six weeks, four or five or six weeks in this spring and
then last night when I came up here there was actually more water
then there has ever been. There was more water than there was four
or five days ago. There was just one channel wrapping around this
tree before and now there is two and there is actually water flowing
here where it’s very stagnant and it’s almost reached
the boardwalk. So this is as large as I’ve seen this spring,
even larger than last night.
So again right before your eyes, something may pop up; something
may resume its activity and another thing could go dry. You know one
spring may go dry and that may lead to the life of another spring
here in Mammoth. So we’re going to move on to a spring that
has greatly changed and who knows maybe the activity that’s
kind of calmed down and ceased a little bit in the New Blue area maybe
some of that water is coming out at this spring right here because
when one spring goes dry another one can come up. So let’s move
on and see one of the springs that changed more than any other, here
in the Park, over the last few years, New Blue.
Audience and Ranger Michael: (Murmured conversation
while walking to the next stop).
Ranger Michael: If you folks want to squeeze in
here there’s quite a bit of room right up here. You can see
why I choose this to be my final stop; I think the grandeur of this
sight, seeing these mountains, the Absarokas, seeing the overlook
of all the hot springs here, historic Fort Yellowstone, it’s
a very special place. I could spend many, many hours just standing
up here observing this area. This is New Blue and I assure you that
if you were here a couple of years ago and certainly then this was
named decades ago it had a lot more blue than it does today. Just
two years ago there was a lot more blue water than there is today.
If you look at these two holes here, these are sink holes there was
water coming out of both of these two summers ago. Last summer this
hole right here went dry but there was still a lot of water coming
out of this hole. You can see that it is stark white and in some of
those areas and it is starting to turn gray here. But down there were
those terraces are, that was incredible. This was one of the most
brilliant formations we had here in Mammoth over the last few years.
And we had a lot of colors, a lot of water flowing there. It was a
lot like Canary the way it flowed over that ridge. And if you would
have been here last summer, this would have been one of the springs
we would have sent you to for sure.
And it was when I came back this spring that I came up here and saw
things had greatly changed. Things had gone quite dry up here at New
Blue. But if you look over the ridge there, does everyone see that
terrace formation? You can see that white area - that’s Minerva.
That’s where Minerva’s spring originates and then it flows
over the ridge that we can’t see right now. And I haven’t
seen any water in that area over the last three summers. And when
I came back here early this spring, although there was not much water
flowing here at New Blue there were five or six active springs there
on top of Minerva. And later there became about eight or nine active
springs but as you can see now there is no water flowing in that area
right now.
So again, things are always changing. This is such a dynamic place.
You may come here and see that your favorite spring has gone dry.
You may see a spring that wasn’t here before that has just sprung
up. So it is very unpredictable. It’s one of the things that
makes this so special and a lot of changes have occurred here in the
Mammoth area and here in Yellowstone - not just with our thermal features,
but as I said before, in the way we view the natural world.
It was back in 1886 that the military came here, the U.S. Army. They
came here to protect Yellowstone because this area, that was set aside
for its beauty and grandeur, was on the verge to being poached to
death. Now, there were some men a lot like Ole Anderson in the early
days of the park James McCartney, and Harry Hore that established
squatters rights on the hot springs and built the first hotel here,
down by Palette Spring. And they channeled hot spring water into bathtubs
and they built little wood structures over those bath houses and they
claimed those waters had therapeutic healing powers. So it you had
arthritis maybe this spring would take care of that. Now a lot of
people tell me they must have walked out feeling very good. I’ll
leave that this up to you to decide but they were breathing in all
those gases in an enclosed building so I can’t imagine they
walked out feeling very good. It was in 1886 that the U.S. Army came
here to protect this park and if it wasn’t for the army’s
presence in places like Mammoth, down at Old Faithful, and all throughout
this park, this place wouldn’t be as wild as it is today.
Female Voice: Did they make them take that down?
Ranger Michael: Yes, they made them take that down.
They protected these thermal features. So there are a lot of changes
going on here. Again your favorite spring may go dry by the time you
are here next. But that’s just part of the natural balance there.
That’s part of the natural ebb and flow of Yellowstone. Now
that upsets a lot of people because change can be hard for a lot of
us to deal with and certainly there are a lot of things here, a lot
of changes that have occurred here in Yellowstone that have been hard
for many people to deal with. The springs, like Minerva Terrace, going
dry are certainly some that rate right up there. But there are things
we can do to protect these thermal features.
We can protect the area surrounding Yellowstone from drilling. Because
it’s drilling within the boundaries of our thermal features
that have destroyed more than ½ of the thermal features throughout
the world. And drilling around Yellowstone certainly can affect the
heat and the water source here and could affect our thermal features.
It is arguably one of the greatest threats to the thermal activity
here in Yellowstone. So that’s one thing we can do.
But another thing we can do, I believe, is to cultivate some more
humility and a little more courage when we are here in places like
Yellowstone because I think it takes both courage and humility to
try and do the best we can to understand a place that we may never
fully understand. And certainly in 1988 something happened here that
was a great change, even a greater change than Minerva Terrace going
dry. That was when the forest fire happened here. One of the largest
fires in documented history that burned 36% of this park and if you
were standing right here and looking up at Bunsen Peak you can see
that burned area that was a blazing inferno. And that was hard for
a lot of people to accept back in the next few years, 89, 1990 and
still today people are upset about that fire. Just as still today
people are upset that Minerva is not here. But that fire is part of
the natural balance here in Yellowstone and it’s proved very
beneficial here to this ecosystem.
In 1995 another big change happened here. This wasn’t a hot
spring going dry or resuming its activity, but this showed that not
only do hot springs change, but our views change. Because we brought
an animal back here that we once eradicated, the wolf in 1995. And
although a lot of people still don’t like having the wolf here
in this area it’s an animal that has proved very beneficial
to this area and this ecosystem.
So I can’t necessarily tell you that Minerva going dry is beneficial
to this ecosystem to this landscape. But it is part of the natural
balance, the ebb and flow that occurs here in Yellowstone. And I hope
that we can continue to cultivate enough humility to just try and
understand this often misunderstood landscape and just do our best
to appreciate what I feel is one of the most sacred places one earth.
Because I truly believe that Yellowstone is a Holy Place for those
of us whose temples are the mountains and the wilderness. And that
this is really a place that I feel every day spent here in Yellowstone
has the opportunity to be a soul enriching and spiritual experience.
If we just take the time and pay enough attention to the incredible
landscape, the beauty, and the wildness that is Yellowstone. I hope
you all go on to have a very special journey, a very safe journey
here, and I thank you all for joining me here tonight.
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