Virtual Field Trip #`:  Yellowstone, the Premiere Park


Image 1:  Photo of Monument Geyser.  Yellowstone: the Premier Park. Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, may be the most famous and the best--it is an incredible wonderland of geology and biology. The pictures in this show are all by R. Alley. This one shows Monument Geyser, in the Upper Geyser Basin, not far from Old Faithful.

Image 2:  Photo of Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River.  Yellowstone was the world’s first national park. The Washburn Expedition of 1870, which included government officials and important citizens of the Montana Territory, envisioned holding land for the common good. The 1871 Hayden Expedition, led by the director of the United States Geological Survey and including the incomparable artist Thomas Moran and the great photographer W.H. Jackson, provided information that convinced Congress to establish the park in 1872. The Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River, shown here, is one of the icons of the national parks.

Image 3:  Photo of Old Faithful.Yellowstone has more than half of the world’s geysers, including Old Faithful, shown above. In proper rocks, with volcanic heat and lots of water, deep water is heated but held down by the cold water above. Finally, a little deep boiling pushes the cold water aside , the pressure on the deep water is reduced and it flashes to steam, causing an eruption.

Image 4:  Photo of Mats of Microbes in the hot runoff from a spring near Old Faithful.  Many interesting and important things can be found in Yellowstone. These are mats of microbes living in the hot runoff from a spring near Old Faithful. Hot-water creatures have special enzymes, cell-wall chemicals, etc. to allow life in water that would burn you, and humans are learning how the bugs do it so we can copy them. Biological industries worth billions of dollars per year are based on the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which is based on a Yellowstone microbe.

Image 5:  Photo of Terraces in Midway Geyser Basin.  Runoff from hot springs often forms terraces. Where water flows a little faster over a steeper spot, cooling and loss of dissolved gases cause precipitation of minerals dissolved in the hot, sulfurous (stinky) water, making a little ledge. Hot-water-loving microbes colonize the surfaces, with bugs of different colors preferring water of different temperatures. These terraces in Midway Geyser Basin, below the Grand Prismatic Spring, are classic.

Image 6:  Photo of Grand Prismatic Spring.  Here is the Grand Prismatic Spring. Rainwater and snowmelt moving down through cracks in the rocks are warmed by the volcanic heat of the Yellowstone Hot Spot, and then rise to the surface in springs as well as geysers. The next three pictures show animal tracks in the microbial mats on the terraces in the lower part of this picture. 

Image 7:  Photo of mountain lion tracks.  Yellowstone is known for its wildlife. Animals have died when they broke through thin crusts over hot pools, but such events are rare. Elk often use the vegetation-free upper surface of Mammoth Hot Springs as a retreat from mosquitoes and other bugs, and many creatures enjoy the warm waters of the park during the winter. Here, the tracks of a mountain lion show white where the animal broke the bacterial mat. Lions are four-toed, but often put their hind feet where their front feet were, complicating the appearance of the tracks, as seen here.

Image 8:  Photo of Coyote Tracks in spring deposit.  Yellowstone now has a healthy population of wolves, and many coyotes, including the one that made the track shown here. The national parks were usually established for geological reasons, when the park boundaries separated wilderness containing amazing geological features from wilderness containing slightly-less-amazing geological features. Now that humans are using so much of the country and the world, the parks are becoming islands of nature in a human-dominated world, and so the parks are critical for maintaining biodiversity.

Image 9:  Photo of Bison tracks in spring deposit.  Bison (or, informally, buffalo) once thundered across the Great Plains of the U.S. in uncounted numbers. Uncontrolled shooting nearly exterminated the bison, but those protected in Yellowstone persisted and helped preserve the species. Here are bison tracks, in the same spring deposit.

Image 10:  Photo of grazing bison.  And, here are the bison, just down the road along the Firehole River. Hot springs in the river bed may have been behind the tall tale attributed to Jim Bridger, that the Firehole River ran so fast that friction made it hot on the bottom. 

Image 11:  Photo of Bison on the road creating a traffic jam.  And here is a bison jam. The national parks must conserve for future generations, but also provide enjoyment for the current generation of people. Sometimes, doing both isn’t easy. This picture was taken in September, after the crowds had returned home; in midsummer, this really would have been a traffic jam.