Yellowstone Caldera

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The Yellowstone Caldera, also known as the Yellowstone Plateau Volcanic Field, is a Quaternary caldera complex and volcanic plateau spanning parts of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. It is driven by the Yellowstone hotspot and is largely within Yellowstone National Park. The field comprises four overlapping calderas, multiple lava domes, resurgent domes, crater lakes, and numerous bimodal lavas and tuffs of basaltic and rhyolitic composition, originally covering about 17,000 km2 (6, 600 mi2). Volcanism began 2.15 million years ago and proceeded through three major volcanic cycles. Each cycle involved a large ignimbrite eruption, pyroclastic flow, continental-scale ash-fall, and caldera collapse, preceded and followed by smaller lava flows and tuffs. The first and also the largest cycle was the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff eruption about 2.08 million years ago, which formed the Island Park Caldera. The most recent supereruption, about 640,000 years ago, produced the Lava Creek Tuff and created the present Yellowstone Caldera. Post-caldera eruptions included basalt flows, rhyolite domes and flows, and minor explosive deposits, with the last magmatic eruption about 70,000 years ago. Large hydrothermal explosions also occurred during the Holocene. From 2004 to 2009, the region experienced notable uplift attributed to new magma injection. The 2005 disaster film Supervolcano, produced by the BB

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