Geysers and Volcanoes: Scaling by Analogy
Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
Geysers are hydrothermal features that episodically erupt liquid and vapor. The eruptions that we see at the surface are the culmination of a complex series of processes below the ground hidden from direct observation. But that doesn’t mean they are hidden entirely; we can monitor them with various sensors to record different aspects of the system. For example, a tilt meter can measure the inflation of the ground due to pressure build up before an eruption, and a seismometer can measure hydrothermal ‘tremor’, which tells us about the bubbling of the hot liquid.
Geysers are relatively rare but where they do occur, it is often in clusters, such as at Yellowstone National Park. The following video explores monitoring data from Lone Star Geyser in Yellowstone National Park, which was collected in 2010 and 2014.
#(LONE STAR GEYSER VID)
Geysers are often thought of as smaller scale analogs to volcanoes. Their ‘plumbing systems’ are much shallower than those of volcanoes, and they erupt far more regularly. While there are some key differences between eruptions at geysers and volcanoes — e.g. water versus magma — both are driven by localized input of mass and energy at depth, and this gives rise to some similarities in behavior. In the following video we’ll be looking at ground deformation and gas emissions at Kilauea Volcano. Look out for comparisons with Lone Star’s behavior in the previous video.
#(10 YR KILAUEA VID)
Did you notice the long term inflation of Kilauea’s summit preceding the eruption? Like at Lone Star Geyser, this inflation is due to pressure build up deep underground, which then gets released during the eruption. In the Kilauea video, ten years of data (sped up into a minute-long movie) only covers one eruption cycle, while at Lone Star Geyser, each eruption cycle lasts roughly 3 hours!
When we zoom in on Kilauea’s activity during the eruption in 2018, there is another kind of episodic behaviour that is revealed. The following video explores earthquakes at Kilauea’s summit crater during the summer of 2018. What kinds of cycles can you see in this video?
#(2018 KILAUEA VID)
