TechnoTourist’s Engineering Expeditions

What do the thermal features at Yellowstone National Park look like? While most geysers spout upward in the air, fumaroles are a bit a smaller. Simply put, these steam vents lack the "punch" to push the water up very far. Want to see for yourself? Let's take a trip to Roaring Mountain, which is located in the northwestern part of the park, halfway between Norris Basin and Mammoth Hot Springs.

Roaring Mountain is about 7,400 feet in elevation. This cluster of fumaroles is created by ground water heated by the magma in the Yellowstone Caldera. (The Yellowstone Caldera, another topic altogether, is a super volcano estimated to blow within the next 60,000 years.) The steam from Roaring Mountain rises up like a mist (see photo). According to lore, the hissing and burning that issued from the vents could be heard from four miles away. Today, however, it's reasonably quiet.

Hot and Helpful

Yellowstone National Park's hot springs display beautiful combinations of colors, typically copper and aqua together. This is a welcome site against a landscape that, by comparison, is so barren in the thermal areas.

What causes these brilliant colors? It's bacterial! The bacteria, aptly called thermophiles, thrive on the super-hot temperatures of the thermal features in the park. Talk about reaching your boiling point. And because their enzymes work very quickly in the high temperatures, thermophiles have been found to be useful to humans. Applications include DNA replication and forensics.

At Yellowstone, the National Park Service strives to maintain a balance between the preservation of thermal features and the use of bacteria from them. For those who may confuse a thermal feature with a wishing well, there are hefty fines for any visitor who throws coins or other objects into the pools and geysers. And don't expect the thermal activity to be the same when you next visit the park. One thermal pool has moved 200 feet in the course of its lifetime. Others have shut down or changed their activity patterns. They're just another example of how things are always changing at Yellowstone National Park!

Editor's Note: Part 3 of this four-part series will run next week, right here in TechnoTourist's Engineering Expeditions. Click here for Part 1.

Resources:

http://www.usgs.gov/science/science.php?term=1149&type=feature

http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/volc/geysers.html

http://www.yellowstoneparknet.com/roads_routes/mammoth_to_norris_geyser_basin.php

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/supervolcano/under/under.html

http://www.yellowstoneparknet.com/geothermal_features/hot_springs.php

http://whyfiles.org/022critters/hot_bact.html