Earlier this month, a panel of leading experts gathered to review the science behind what drives the park’s hydrothermal habitats and examine how to better manage the Old Faithful area, where historic buildings sit on warm and sometimes changing ground.
Earlier this month at a science review conference on Old Faithful, Deputy Superintendent Steve Iobst said that social scientists were changing they way park visitation is calculated, and that park managers are looking for better data on how many people move through busy ares like the Old Faithful Visitor Center.
“How many people who come to Old Faithful today will go through the door of the visitor center five times?” he said. “Because that’s counted as five visits to the visitor center.”
Summer has arrived in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, and sightseers and photographers are out in force to take in the great sights all across both parks.
Finding wildlife during the hot, sunny days of summer can be trickier than in fall or spring, especially as crowds grow and the parks get busier.
A two-year project to reconstruct a historic bridge in Yellowstone National Park will move forward after a planning review concluded last month that the work would have no significant environmental impact.
Reconstruction of the Isa Lake bridge, which spans a section of the road connecting West Thumb and Old Faithful, will proceed when funding becomes available through the Federal Lands Highway Program, according to a statement released by the park’s public affairs office.
On Wednesday, a group of dedicated geyser enthusiasts headed to the Lower Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park to await a possible eruption of Morning Geyser near the Fountain Paint Pots. The hours of waiting paid off not only in an eruption of Morning Geyser, but also a rare simultaneous eruption from Fountain Geyser. This became the 9th known dual eruption of these two closely connected geysers in the history of Yellowstone.
Morning erupted for a full 33 minutes before quieting down and allowing Fountain Geyser to finish another hour of the eruption. The total eruption of Fountain Geyser lasted 93 minutes. The early evening light and blue skies dotted with summer clouds made for fantastic viewing conditions. A couple of the bursts from Morning reached 150-200 feet as estimated by knowledgeable geyser gazers.
Yellowstone National Park’s geyser basins see constant shifts and changes. New features heat up while others cool down. This is a normal process in the geyser basins and is monitored using a range of advanced technologies, allowing the National Park Service to take action to mitigate the situation.
In the Upper Geyser Basin, a hot spring across the boardwalk from Scallop Spring (just across the bridge by Castle Geyser) has gradually expanded to the point where the heat from it now weakens the wood of the boardwalk above it. Other areas of hot ground have been detected nearby as well, and the decision was made to move the boardwalk away from this increasingly unstable ground.
Researchers and Yellowstone National Park staff members are meeting at Old Faithful this week to review the current scientific understanding of the park’s hydrothermal systems. The group will eventually develop suggestions for new research projects and design standards that could help inform and guide management of and development near Yellowstone’s thermal features.
Frequent visitors to Yellowstone National Park know that early spring is a great time to spot wildlife and avoid crowds. A series of photos of a white wolf prowling the banks of the Yellowstone River in Hayden Valley also shows that being in the right place at the right time can yield great shots, even without a large lens or expensive camera gear.
After weeks of planning and a large, high-profile push to focus on a planned live broadcast from Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park, breaking news meant that ‘Today’ show staff would focus on a devastating tornadoes in Oklahoma rather than a live remote segment in the park Tuesday.
When NBC’s “Today” broadcasts a live, 3-hour morning show from Yellowstone National Park on Tuesday, millions of viewers around the country will get a chance to learn about grizzly bears and geysers, gray wolves and wilderness survival. But like many “Today” viewers, some of the show’s anchors have either never visited Yellowstone, or done so only briefly, and years ago.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
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