Yellowstone Supervolcano: Where Lava Is Likely To Flow

Their findings may improve eruption forecasting in this vast area of volcanic unrest, the researchers said.

Supervolcanoes are capable of eruptions dwarfing anything ever recorded by humanity, spewing out thousands of times more magma and ash than even the catastrophic Krakatoa eruption of 1883.The supervolcano that lies beneath Yellowstone National Parkwas responsible for the fourth-largest eruption known to scienceabout 2 million years ago, and its activity continues to fuel the park’s famous geysers. The most recent giant eruption in the area, which happened about 640,000 years ago, created the oval-shaped, 40- by 25-mile (64- by 40-kilometer) Yellowstone caldera. [Infographic: The Geology of Yellowstone]

There is evidence that Yellowstone might one dayexplode with another colossal eruptioncapable of covering half the United States in 3 feet (1 meter) of ash, although there are no signs of any imminent outbursts, and experts agree the odds the supervolcano will erupt in our lifetimes are vanishingly small.

Still, weaker but nevertheless dramatic eruptions could happen every several hundreds of thousands of years, potentially spewing large volumes of lava, the researchers noted.

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