Anatomy of Old Faithful from subsurface seismic imaging of the Yellowstone Upper Geyser Basin
Type
ArticleKAUST Grant Number
OCRF-2014-CRG3-2300Date
2017-10-21Online Publication Date
2017-10-21Print Publication Date
2017-10-28Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/626072
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The Upper Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park contains one of the highest concentrations of hydrothermal features on Earth including the iconic Old Faithful geyser. Although this system has been the focus of many geological, geochemical, and geophysical studies for decades, the shallow (<200 m) subsurface structure remains poorly characterized. To investigate the detailed subsurface geologic structure including the hydrothermal plumbing of the Upper Geyser Basin, we deployed an array of densely spaced three-component nodal seismographs in November of 2015. In this study, we extract Rayleigh-wave seismic signals between 1-10 Hz utilizing non-diffusive seismic waves excited by nearby active hydrothermal features with the following results. 1) imaging the shallow subsurface structure by utilizing stationary hydrothermal activity as a seismic source, 2) characterizing how local geologic conditions control the formation and location of the Old Faithful hydrothermal system, and 3) resolving a relatively shallow (10-60 m) and large reservoir located ~100 m southwest of Old Faithful geyser.Citation
Wu S-M, Ward KM, Farrell J, Lin F-C, Karplus M, et al. (2017) Anatomy of Old Faithful From Subsurface Seismic Imaging of the Yellowstone Upper Geyser Basin. Geophysical Research Letters. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2017gl075255.Sponsors
We would like to thank Jacob Lowenstern and Shaul Hurwitz for the thorough reviews, the valuable comments and suggestions have greatly benefited this manuscript. This research is supported by NSF grant CyberSEES-1442665 and the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under award OCRF-2014-CRG3-2300. We especially thank the National Park Service, Yellowstone National Park, for permission to conduct this field experiment, YNP permit # YELL-2015-SCI-0114, and for providing collaborative support and field personnel. We also thank FairfieldNodal for sending two engineers to assist us with the deployment. Fieldwork for this project was partially supported by the Brinson Foundation and the Carrico Fund. The noise cross-correlations used in this study can be downloaded from http://noise.earth.utah.edu/UGB_CCF_GRL_2017.tarPublisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)Journal
Geophysical Research Lettersae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1002/2017gl075255