The Yellowstone volcano mantle rock has spread sideways for more than 500 miles (804km) from Wyoming in Northwest US, moving deep below the Earth’s crust. The mantle rock is a source of scorching, low-density rock that has fuelled the supervolcano’s past major eruptions. For a long time, geologists have suspected Yellowstone sits on top of a mantle plume – long columns of hot rock that channel heat from deep inside of the planet. Victor Camp, a geologist at San Diego State University (SDSU) in the US, has now found how the mantle rock has moved towards the Pacific over long periods of time.
The geologist, who self-funded the Yellowstone volcano study, published his findings in the journal Geology.
He said: “Since the plume is not controlled by plate tectonics, it can rise and emerge anywhere on Earth, depending on where it manages to break through the Earth’s surface.
“So, knowing this will help us understand super-eruptions that have occurred before and those that will occur in the future.”
According to the geologist, the mantle rock moved along narrow flow lines channels deep below the Earth’s crust.
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The mantle rock then branched out at two points, once at Yellowstone and a second time at the California-Oregon border.
One set of flow lines have since ended at the Medicine Lake volcano in California, northeast of Mount Shasta.
The others ended about 20 miles (32.2km) to the south of Bend, Oregon, at the active Newberry Volcano.
During this journey, the moving mantle rock would have contributed to a number of volcanic eruptions over the past two million years.
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These eruptions would have occurred in a volcanic area in the state of Idaho known as the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve.
According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), Yellowstone volcano is a hotspot of activity where some melting in the mantle occurs.
The mantle is the layer of rock between the Earth’s crust and its hot core.
The USGS said: “The intense heat generated by the hotspot causes melting of the crust, forming basaltic and rhyolitic magma.
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“Rhyolite is extremely high in silica content, which makes it very viscous and prevents gas from escaping the magma.
“This means that when large amounts of rhyolite accumulate within the crust, large explosive eruptions can result.”
Dr Camp said these findings are important because they can help geologists better understand how mantles all over the world help feed active volcanoes.
The mantle rock that has reached California, spread over many millions of years of the westward movement.
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According to Dr Camp, the movement was triggered when the Yellowstone mantle plume hit the North American tectonic plate.
The plate’s cold temperature acted as a barrier of sorts at a depth of around 62 miles (100km) and forced the plume to melt and spread westwards.
In his study of the Yellowstone mantle, the geologist wrote: “Geothermometry studies and geochemical considerations suggest that the low-velocity feature may be composed of moderately hot, low-density mantle derived from the Yellowstone plume but diluted by thermomechanical erosion and entrainment of colder mantle lithosphere.
“Finger-like conduits of plume-modified mantle beneath Quaternary eruption sites delineate flow-line channels that have developed across the broader mantle structure since two million years ago (2 Ma).”