A classroom of green colored walls and wooden desks begins to fill with people, as their words resonate off the walls, a well-known American image is projected on the screen; Old Faithful. Students and faculty gather to learn not just about the image of these geysers, but the complicated systems that run beneath the ground that visitors have walked on for years, and will continue to trample over in the years to come.
On Monday in the SH Knight Geology Building, Brad Carr was the guest speaker for UW Department of Geology and Geophysics Distinguished Lecturer Series. “Understanding Yellowstone Hydrothermal Phase Separation and Geyser Dynamics with Shallow Geophysical Imaging” was the title of this lecture, presented by Carr who is a research scientist in the department.
Carr graduated from the University of Wisconsin- Madison in 1987, and later graduated with his PhD in 1995 from the University of Wyoming. From there, he worked throughout the nation studying geophysics and natural structures around the country. More recently, Carr came back to the University of Wyoming where he began research at Yellowstone National Park.
“The goal was to test the hypothesis about source depths, circulation patterns and phase separation of hydrothermal systems at multiple scales,” said Carr when discussing his studies of the largest concentration of hot springs in the world.
Since 2015 Carr has been researching these ideas, and most recently, in November 2017, Carr produced the information that he shared in this lecture.
The main purpose for doing this research is to find out more information about the systems and the earth that is directly beneath these geysers in Yellowstone. Usually, research is spent trying to look at the bigger, deeper picture, whereas Carr is trying to find out more about the systems’ set up right below the geyser structures millions come to see.
“With the help of UW Undergraduates collecting data, we have been able to generate 3D prints of these objects and structures below the surface,” said Carr. Through these experiments, Carr and other geophysicists are attempting to prove or disprove the idea that the surface distance is equal to the depth.
Though this is still a working hypothesis, Carr has been able to find that,
“CO2 is driving the system, so a statistically significant amount of water is not lost by the systems”, Carr went further and said, “we are watching the water move up and down in the system and erupting”. He did mention that the hypothesis is still being worked on. With both of these findings, Carr and other researchers are attempting to look at phase separation and depths of what is underneath these geysers.
For Carr this is only the beginning of his research in Yellowstone National Park. In the coming weeks, Carr hopes to publish a paper and as soon as next week he will be heading back to Yellowstone to research one of its most well-known attractions, Old Faithful. These geysers are filled with, “dynamic systems that we can obtain information from, if we’re fast enough”, said Carr. This next step of research should prove to be both challenging, yet rewarding in ways that researchers have yet to find out.
