Yellowstone News and Information

Beyond the Bathroom: Top Visitor Questions in Thermal Areas By  Yellowstone Volcano Observatory   May 25, 2026 With the arrival of Memorial Day and the unofficial start of the summer travel season, we take a look at the most common questions that visitors to Yellowstone’s thermal basins ask the park’s interpretive rangers. Yellowstone  Caldera  Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week's contribution is from Michael Poland, geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey and Scientist-in-Charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, and Mindy Dottellis, interpretive ranger with Yellowstone National Park in 2025. When in a place as otherworldly as Yellowstone, it’s only natural to find yourself brimming with questions at each turn of the trail.  What is this scat I’m seeing?  How does a geyser erupt, anyway?  What makes Yellowstone so special? Where’s the bathroom? Fear not, for...

Mushroom Pool: The subtle spring with the spectacular story By  Yellowstone Volcano Observatory   March 9, 2026 Mushroom Pool is nondescript in appearance, but its impacts on microbiology and on how research is done in Yellowstone National Park have been profound. Yellowstone  Caldera  Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week's contribution is from Michael Poland, geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey and Scientist-in-Charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. Mushroom Pool is a small hot spring in Yellowstone’s Lower Geyser Basin that looms large in science. The spring’s fun(gi) name might have been given in the 1890s due to its appearance or the presence of algae and bacteria. Media Sources/Usage: Public Domain.  View Media Details Mushroom Pool, Lower Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park. Old roads were routed very near this feature as early as 1895, when the poo...

Was there ever a Yellowstone on Mars?  By  Yellowstone Volcano Observatory   November 24, 2025 Yellowstone is not just a fantastic natural laboratory for Earth-based studies.  A better understanding of hydrothermal activity in the first National Park can also provide clues about what Mars might have looked like long ago. Yellowstone  Caldera  Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.  This week's contribution is from R. Greg Vaughan, research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and Steve Ruff,   associate research professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. Today, Mars is a cold and dry planet with a very thin, low-pressure atmosphere.  It has water, but it's all frozen, locked up in underground ice (like permafrost) and in polar ice caps.  But billions of years ago Mars had a thicker atmosphere and a warmer and wetter clima...

A mission to repair one of the most interesting GPS monitoring stations in Yellowstone   By  Yellowstone Volcano Observatory   November 17, 2025 Many of the monitoring sites in Yellowstone National Park are located in remote areas.  When they go offline, a lot of preparation and effort is necessary to bring them back to functionality. Yellowstone  Caldera  Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week's contribution is from Michael Poland, geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey and Scientist-in-Charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. The continuous GPS station at White Like, designated WLWY (GPS stations are always given 4-character codes), is one of the most interesting in all of Yellowstone National Park.  The station was installed in 1999 on the Sour Creek  resurgent  dome —one of two uplifted areas of Yellowstone caldera that formed due to  magma ...