Yellowstone Caldera

Yellowstone Caldera is located in a popular tourist attraction in the US yellowstone national park near many cities and if it where to errupt it is a explosive erruption due to its rhyoletic properties (about 70% sillica) which means it is very viscous and a threat to the people around it. It is in the shape of a cauldron due to a previus eruption that empted the magma chamber and then the mountain collapsed and formed a caldera. But even after i collapsed it is still 9203ft tall. The Reason it is so active is due to the fact that it is a hot spot.

Supervolcano. Dir. Tony Mitchell. Perf. Michael Riley and Gary Lewis. DVD. 2005.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0419372/

Yellowstones Caldera has the potential to cover a huge portion of the US in ash. As a worst case scenario and based on previous erruptions scientest estimate that the ash covering would look like this. This would be devistateing because 100km diamerter around the caldera would be overpowered by pyroclastic flows (Watch Video To Left), then 100's of kilometers past that would have over a foot of ash. then places 1000's of kilometers away could have many centimeters of ash.

The caldera dosent need to go off with all its force at once, it can realese it in intervals. The last "small eruption" was 70,000 years ago and was slightly larger than the mt. saint helens eruption.

A reported 51 Earthquakes happened in Febuary of 2009 and the caldera is offically on watch and scientists at the Yellowstone Caldera Observatory will be realesing the information they fell is important to the public. Any major concernes will be realeased immediatly.