Informative Speech On Yellowstone

Exploring the Yellowstone Volcano – Atalanda Cameron

Intro

Hi, my name is Atalanda, and I am a Ranger here in Yellowstone. Today I’d like to talk to you about the Yellowstone super volcano, and the geological processes that shaped this area. The program will last about 20 minutes, and I am happy to stay longer to answer any questions after. If there are any junior rangers, I will sign your books and I encourage anyone else who would like to participate in our junior ranger program to pick up a book at our visitor’s desk.

How many of you are visiting Yellowstone for the first time?

Now, how many of you know that we are standing on an active volcano?

Norris Geyser Basin

Norris Geyser Basin is the hottest, oldest, and most dynamic of Yellowstone’s

Maybe you’ve read up about Mount Vesuvius or read the news articles about Mount St. Helens. Maybe some of you also think of Crater Lake, Lassen Peak or Trident in Katmai. Volcanoes are incredibly diverse, but most people picture composite volcanoes as the default shape. The Yellowstone Volcano is considered a super volcano, because it can produce more than 240 cubic miles of magma in an eruption, but because it is so large, the most visibly distinguishable feature is the Yellowstone Caldera.

Yellowstone was shaped by three major eruptions over the last 3 million years. The first major eruption created the First Caldera 2.1 million years ago, at Huckleberry Ridge Tuff. The second eruption created the Henry’s Fork Caldera at Mesa Falls Tuff 1.3 million years ago. Finally, about 631,000 years ago, the Yellowstone Caldera was formed after an eruption at Lava Creek Tuff. These caldera formations build the Yellowstone hotspot responsible for the thermal activity in park!

Since the earliest humans in Yellowstone weren’t recorded until about 11,000 years ago, they wouldn’t have been in the path of either of these eruptions. But its not that hard to imagine the destruction and reshaping of the landscape that must’ve occurred when we look at Yellowstone

Thomas Brock, a bacteriologist who first visited the park in 1964 happened to stop by the park during a long road trip across the country. He decided to join a ranger talk near a thermal pool that supported blue green algae and was very interested in what other thermophiles (microbes that have adapted to very hot or cold environments) could be thriving in the pools. The next year, he returned to sample many of the pools in the Firehole River watershed where he and his colleague Hudson Freeze discovered Thermus aquaticus (which led to the discovery of the enzyme Taq polymerase, used in polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing). This changed previously held views about the conditions in which life can