Yellowstone, the sleeping giantYellowstone National Park is not exactly a volcano, nor does it have a specific mountain from which lava erupts or ash, but it is a highly volcanic area. Only a few eruptions have occurred at Yellowstone over the past few millennia, but they have been powerful and destructive. No large eruption has occurred that humans can remember, but that doesn't mean another one won't occur in the near future. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the Original Essay Yellowstone Park currently sits within a giant caldera from a previous eruption that occurred approximately 640,000 years ago. The park is a hotspot or area of ​​high volcanic activity. Yellowstone, like most of the continent, sits on a plate of Earth that, along with other adjacent plates, rests on the fluid core of the planet's mantle. The section of the fluid mantle is called the asthenosphere and the collection of plates is called the lithosphere. In the asthenosphere, a thermal plume pushes the magma against the lithospheric plate. How the thermal plume is created is a long process that is difficult to explain, but basically the asthenosphere (mantle core) is stationary, while the plate is not (Hendrix, 8). There were more volcanic eruption areas before Yellowstone, like the Picabo and Twin Falls volcanic fields, and they all follow a path. At first glance, this trajectory would look like a contrail formed by the thermal plume, but since the plume is not moving, the contrail actually reflects the opposite trajectory of the moving North American plate (Breining, 27; Hendrix, 6, 7 , 130). This can be compared to stitches on clothing made by a sewing machine: the stitches are made by the needle (thermal plume) but the needle does not move; the garment does it (lithospheric plate). Yellowstone happens to be the next section of the plate that the thermal plume could easily pass through and cause large eruptions three times (Hendrix, 130). The Yellowstone region is still active today. If it weren't active, there would be no Old Faithful, no geysers and sulfur-smelling springs, and no pools of hot mud. (Breining, 17 years old; Hendrix, 1 year old). The thermal plume constitutes the current volcano beneath Yellowstone: a volcano so immense that it is known as a supervolcano. A common misconception about a volcano is that of a tall, looming mountain that spews both clouds of ash and lava, but in reality, a volcano can spew either a lot of lava or a lot of ashes. The type of volcano depends on the viscosity or thickness of the lava and magma. If the mountain's magma has a high viscosity, it will easily harden on the outside, raising the mountain to a great height, and harden on the inside, where it will plug the volcanic tubes and increase the pressure until Pyroclastic clouds explode, creating it's composite volcano. If the magma has low viscosity, it will not harden easily and will flow and spread, forming a shield volcano. The lava will not build the mountain to a great height, nor will it block the pressure channels, but it will cover a great distance on the ground (Cain, 1). Yellowstone is no longer part of it. It was originally a composite volcano that had already erupted and had most of the mountain destroyed. The viscosity of lava depends on the amount of silica it contains; if there is a lot of silica, it is felsic, otherwise the lava is mafic. Throughout Yellowstone, the.