YVO’s 2021 field season is underway!
https://www.usgs.gov/center-news/yvo-s- ... e_productsMay 17, 2021
For half the year, Yellowstone is largely inaccessible to geologists, buried under snow and ice and subject to fierce storms. By May, however, improved weather and melting snow opens the park to field work. The 2021 field season promises to be a productive one for the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week's contribution is from Michael Poland, geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey and Scientist-in-Charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
This past week saw the some of the first field work of the year by Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO) scientists in Yellowstone National Park. The opening of the 2021 field season provides an opportunity to preview YVO’s plans for the next few months, before the snow starts accumulating once again and the field season ends in November.
Over the past several days, geophysicists installed about 15 semipermanent GPS stations around the park. These are low-profile sites that run on battery power with a small solar panel but that are not telemetered, so the data cannot be downloaded via radio. For the past 14 years the stations have been set up every May and picked up every October before they are snowed in, and the data downloaded and processed upon return to the office . The data aren’t useful for real-time monitoring, but they densify the existing continuous GPS network and can help scientists better understand processes like past episodes of uplift at Norris Geyser Basin.