Observing Yellowstone National Park - Scientist-in-Charge Yellowstone Volcano Observatory Dr. Mike Poland
Dr. Jesse Reimink: [00:00:00] Okay, Chris, A mouthful of Food Bull Heiss. What's going on?
Chris Bolhuis: And I don't, I'm good. I'm
Dr. Jesse Reimink: got some lettuce in your teeth? No, I'm
Chris Bolhuis: I, I do not, I don't think I do. Uh, actually, I did hold my, I did,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: did. you really?
Chris Bolhuis: Hey, I did, I have not eaten, and it is [00:00:30] eight o'clock at night and I'm hungry. You know what I had today? I had? two apples.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: two apples,
Chris Bolhuis: That's my lunch. I ate two apples for lunch.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well, Chris, I must say you did a great job of not being hangry, uh, for the last. Hour and a
Chris Bolhuis: I've been happy all day. I've been happy all day.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: we got to interview Dr. Mike Poland, who is, well, let me just read through these. This list here, Chris, he's currently the scientist in charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. [00:01:00] We've talked to other scientists in charge of different volcano observatories, but the Yellowstone one is near and dear to our hearts, you and I for many reasons, and Mike is just an. Exceptional science communicator. We've talked to a lot of science communicators. He is one of the top, top top. He got his PhD from Arizona State University, a bachelor's in geoscience in Geology from University of California Davis, member of the American Geophysical Union. He's, uh, also a fellow of the Geological Society of America, which is, you know, a, a big deal to be a fellow of the, of the [00:01:30] Geological Society of America. So, highly decorated, excellent science communicator. Totally fun, convers.
Chris Bolhuis: it was, he spoke to us from Vancouver, Washington, and that was interesting. you know, because I didn't, really realize he said that There's no physical building for the Yellowstone. Volcano Observatory. So he does a lot of work. He does a lot of field work, obviously, but he's also able to work remotely. And so
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Totally cool. I mean, we, we covered everything, Chris, like we covered, uh, geodyssey, how we watched the earth inflate and [00:02:00] deflate. , we covered the techniques involved there. We covered Yellowstone earthquakes. We covered Yellowstone volcano. We covered these new hotspot areas or these new, , hydrothermal features that are coming up, which I hadn't heard about. We talked. steam explosions in Yellowstone and sort of the, the history of these things. Some misconceptions. I mean, we covered the gambit here in, uh, in this episode.
Chris Bolhuis: we did. It was, uh, fun. Interview to prep for, and it was a fun interview to do because he's such, like you said, a good [00:02:30] communicator, but just very down to earth. I don't know, this was, Uh, the highlight of my day. Easily.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Uh, yeah, highlighted my week. Totally fun. Totally fun stuff. And I learned a lot. And, you know, we didn't get to talk about, the magma plumbing system really, of Yellowstone or the magma chamber, what it looks like. but, you know, maybe we'll have to save that for round two if we're, if he's generous enough with his time, so, This was a great interview, Dr. Mike Poland coming at you. But before we get to that, if you wanna learn the basics of geoscience really on the [00:03:00] go, uh, with audio and images that we have made, custom gifts, new images, graphics integrated within the audio content, go to our Camp Geo conversational textbook. That is the first link in the show notes here. it's free And you can learn all about Geology. Basically the class, Chris, you teach to high schoolers, AP geoscience, and the class I teach at Penn State, the introductory physical Geology class that the first class you take in a college setting, on your way to a Geology degree. So check that out. You can follow us on all the social medias at [00:03:30] Planet Geo Cast. we'll put some links in the show notes to where you can find more information about Dr. Michael Poland, um, and some of the content that he and his team have been producing over at the U S G S for a while.
Chris Bolhuis: That's right. Enjoy. Mike Poland.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well, Dr. Mike Poland, thank you for joining us on Planet Geo and welcome. We're very excited to be here to
Dr. Mike Poland: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Chris Bolhuis: Having,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, this is, uh, so just as a little bit of a backstory, we have a, a sort of a running [00:04:00] thing where I tend to get in the weeds of topics. Uh, and Chris always has to keep me outta the weeds. He's much better at sort of explaining the basics, and I get lost in the, in the weeds, in the deep weeds sometimes. But I think this episode, Chris, is pretty dialed up, so I might be the one having to keep him
Chris Bolhuis: Uh,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: of the weeds a little bit. He's very excited to talk to you and very
Chris Bolhuis: I, I am Mike. I absolutely am. And I want you to know, too, that if you want to get into the detail, feel free. [00:04:30] Okay. We can do that today. All right.
Dr. Mike Poland: Yeah, that sounds great. I'm, I'm, I love all views of Yellowstone from the, from the 50,000 foot to the weeds level, so,
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. All right. Well, that's awesome. So, Mike, we always begin with this question. Whenever we interview somebody, , Jesse and I each have our own little moment or like kind of life thing that happened that got us into Geology. It was this kind of like aha thing that for me it was definitive. I'm like, this [00:05:00] is the direction that I want to go. Did you have anything like that? tell us a little bit about how and why you got into the field of geoscience.
Dr. Mike Poland: I, I think it was, um, Mount St. Helens 1980. So I was a kid when that happened. Um, living in California and I just remember reading about it in the news, seeing it on tv, this amazing event. Obviously very tragic as well, claimed over 50 people's lives, but that there could be such a massive change instantly was shocking to me. [00:05:30] And right about the same time in school, I was starting to learn about volcanoes. I remember we did a, a cascade range unit, you know, and I was a kid, right? So it had like a. Connect the dots thing, you know, where you're like connecting the dots and making Mount Mazama look like, uh, or making Crater Lake look like Mount Mazama and you had to do a maze and find your way outta the magma chamber, that sort of thing. Um, but I, I didn't live that far from Mount Lassen, you know, and Shasta was a few hours away, and so I was sort of aware that there were volcanoes around us. So I, I think that really, , that really got me [00:06:00] interested in volcanoes especially. , but I think I always thought like, ah, Geology, you know, throughout my time going through school and stuff, I thought geologists, they're really just sitting around in a desert with a paintbrush, dusting off rocks, right? I mean, that's, I don't think that's for me. , but I was driving around around Sacramento where I grew up, , between my end of high school and started college and thinking about what classes I wanted to take in college. And Jurassic Park had just come out, the original Jurassic Park. And, , they [00:06:30] interviewed a professor at uc Davis. That's where I was gonna go to school. Um, about dinosaurs and was this possible and so forth, and the guy's voice was just incredible. I mean, I thought, man, I, I would sit in a room and listen to this guy talk forever and guess what he was teaching intro to Geology general ed class. I thought, Hey, great. I could get my general ed out of the way. And, but man, once I was in that class with, and the professors that I, I took from it at Davis were just amazing. And, um, that was it. I was hooked. It, it was, I was like, shoot, I'll, I'll [00:07:00] sit in a desert and brush it off rocks with a paint person. No problem. If, you know, this is the kind of cool stuff you get to learn. so
Dr. Jesse Reimink: cool. I mean, that, that's a really interesting story. I mean, so many people have, I mean, two sides of that story, I guess first of all, the, the intro level class. I teach that at Penn State, a couple hundred undergraduates, excuse me. And like, there are so many people who are, pre-med majors, engineering majors or something who are like, wait, this class is awesome. I gotta do more of this. , we were in a faculty meeting recently and somebody, one of our senior faculty members just said, you know what, we [00:07:30] have the best subjects, like of all of the disciplines, we have the best subjects like, Rocks and mountains and volcanoes and earthquakes, like they're just the best subjects. So I really, I'd never heard it phrased that way, but it's very true. And then I also, I would love to see you and Chris, I don't know how old you are and I'm not gonna ask Mike, but you and Chris kind of seem roughly the same age. I wanna see like a plot of the number of volcanologists who kind of went into it because of Mount St. Helen's. Cuz Chris, you have a very similar story, maybe not the aha moment, but Mount St. Helen's was like instrumental in your [00:08:00] childhood as well, in the same way.
Chris Bolhuis: Absolutely. I went out there the summer after it, it erupted. And so a year later, a year, a little over a year later, and, I collected Ash. From the, the surrounding ears. I, I collected ash from Spokane and then we collected Ash as we got closer because, we went out to out west with our family and, my dad was teaching a field course. He's a biologist and, and so I begged my mom, mom, I have to go see Mount Saint Helen. [00:08:30] So we left the, the trip, um, and went to Washington State so I still have that ash. And I wrote a lab, a volcanic ash lab, and I used two of the samples that I collected when I was eight years old.
Dr. Mike Poland: That's awesome. Yeah. It's, I i, that, that's, that kind of experience is so critical, right. To actually, you know, be there and see it and I never actually got to see Mount St. Helen's for years. I didn't see it till 20 years after that eruption. That was my first visit there. But I remember shortly after, you know, going on a [00:09:00] camping trip with my dad to Mount Lassen and, you know, seeing lava rock, right? I was like, my, this, this was, this was lava. You know, that seeing that having that kind of in the field experience is, is so critical to, to really kind of getting you into it.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, that, that's totally cool. So if we, uh, we fast forward to today, you, as we said before, you're the scientists in charge at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, and that's a, we'll probably touch on this quite a bit, but that's like a, a dream job for, I would say, many people who are [00:09:30] interested in volcanoes, probably like to be the one of the leaders of like, understanding Yellowstone as a volcano. That's totally cool job. But I guess I want to ask, start out by asking sort of what do you, what does your day-to-day look like? Is there a typical day? And if not, like, what does a typical week entail? I'm not, yeah, just, just can you lay that out for us?
Dr. Mike Poland: Well, uh, it varies wildly, but I'd say the number one responsibility I have is really communication. and I, I mean that in the broadest sense. [00:10:00] I spend a tremendous amount of my time. Trying to find ways to communicate information about Yellowstone to various people. Uh, that includes the public, mostly the public, and that's what I find the, I enjoy the most. So, for example, doing, these weekly articles that we put online, that we post in social media, I'm pretty active on social media. I mean, I'm not a social media guy. I don't have my own Twitter and Facebook accounts, but I engage with folks through the official U S G S volcanoes accounts, and I really enjoy that, answering [00:10:30] people's questions. We do these video updates every month, and we write annual reports and summaries of activity. And then part of the, the Y V O job, the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory job is communicating with partner. So we work with Seismologists from the University of Utah and geologists from Montana State University, and geologists from the Wyoming State Geologic Survey and a number of other organizations. Yvo is a, a consortium of nine different institutions. And so maintaining that [00:11:00] dialogue between the institutions, between all the scientists is, is critical and fun. So I, I think my, the, the, the dominant part of my job is communication. But then there's those days, you know, where, okay, it's time to go to Yellowstone and, you know, collect some data, work on some, some sort of uh, monitoring device or equipment. But even in the park, some of the most rewarding experiences are talking to people, I'm wearing an orange vest that says U s Gs on it. I might have some, you know, weird looking [00:11:30] box that I'm making a measurement using. And obviously I'm doing it usually at like Geiser Basin. And so there's just hoards of people, Hey, what you doing? And that sort of back and forth is fun. You were talking about, teaching the best subjects, right? You don't have to convince people that Yellowstone is an interesting place. You know, it just, you don't have to try very hard. It's like it's, you're shooting fish in a barrel. There people are, yeah. People are already interested in this and so you're talking to people about something that they're already super [00:12:00] engaged in. Anyway, I mean, that's great. So that's the fun part of the job, and that's what I spend most of my time doing.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, that sounds like a, a great job. So I just one quick follow up on that, so there's a consortium of scientists and um, , people who are broadly interested in, in Yellowstone. are you kind of managing the relationships? Are you driving the big initiatives? Are you saying like, no, no, that's not important to do we need to do this thing over the next couple years? And how many people, how many like seismologists are there? How many. [00:12:30] how, how many different categories of, of Geoscientists would you say are involved?
Dr. Mike Poland: it's, it's difficult to count numbers of people, because it's, you know, a few people here, a few people there, within the US GS alone, there are, a couple dozen maybe scientists that have strong interest in Yellowstone. And my job is to facilitate their work. I wouldn't say that I'm necessarily, starting or stopping things. I mean, I, I certainly can, and, that's part of what I, I really enjoy [00:13:00] doing is, is trying to, facilitate science, initiate projects, you know, get us thinking about things.
If someone comes to me with an idea, I don't often feel that it's my place to say, no, no, no, this is a terrible idea because, you know, oftentimes it'll be a seismologist that comes to me with an idea or a gas geochemist or somebody with real expertise in, uh, the explosive history of Yellowstone or the lava flow history of Yellowstone or whatever, hydrothermal systems. And these are things that I am not an expert in, so I don't really feel like it's my place to say, you know, that's a [00:13:30] terrible idea. You should, you know, some things maybe, right. You know, but, but I, I feel like a big part of my job is helping people do good science. And that's, that's an, the neat aspect of that is I, I live at the nexus of all of these different fields, and so I get to learn about, shoot, whether it's earthquakes or the geologic history or hydrothermal systems. I'm learning stuff that I never thought I would have any business knowing, um, about the way, you know, bacteria lives in hot springs. You know, I, [00:14:00] I never thought I would have any, reason to understand that, and, and I, and I get to, to play in that world now. It's great.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: You're making
Chris Bolhuis: that's right. Hey, Mike. Um,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: man, this was a terrible job. I can't imagine. No, this sounds so fun. Totally. Dream job.
Chris Bolhuis: Mike, before we started this interview, we were just chatting and you, you talked about communication and how important that is in your job. So two parts of this that I would like you to touch on, one is where can people go to get information that you're trying to communicate? And the other part of that [00:14:30] is just an observation on my, standpoint is that I love your monthly, updates because you, I, I love the, your approach to it because you tend to address issues like common misconceptions or where you happen to be standing at the time. You give the update and you talk about things and then you're like, okay, well here's what's been happening in Yellowstone for the last month. You know, you give like this three minute synopsis of what's going on. It's really, really cool. I, I, I just enjoy that. So,[00:15:00] let's talk about the communication aspect.
Dr. Mike Poland: Sure. Yes,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: distill that question down for you, Mike, I, I can try.
Chris Bolhuis: Sorry, sorry.
Dr. Mike Poland: sure. What, um, okay, so, so the, the, the places we can go for more information about Kelsey. Yeah. I, this is something I'm, I am really passionate about. I think this really started for me when I was at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. I was there for 10 years. And there we dealt with eruptive crises, people lost their homes and I'd never felt [00:15:30] more, powerless, but also that the stuff I did was actually important it was relevant than when you're talking to a room full of hundreds of people who are concerned that lava flow activity may impact their lives in a pretty negative way. So I think I, I kind of brought that sense of, you know, we need to talk clearly and concisely and, accurately about, volcanoes, but also to convey the amazing parts of it, the science. it's not all doom and gloom, and that was another [00:16:00] lesson from Hawaii. Even though those lava flows destroyed people's homes, roads, lots of, lots of things, uh, they also created a lot as well. And I think that was a neat aspect of the Hawaiian culture was this. , the contrasting of the destruction that LFO cause also with the creation. , so, , what we tried to do at Yvo is sort of, , flood the field with different kinds of products. Cuz I, one thing I've also learned is that, you know, different people like getting information in different ways. Some people love reading things. [00:16:30] And so we put out a weekly article called Caldera Chronicles. Every week, every Monday morning we put it out on online and on social media, and even in a lot of newspapers, local newspapers pick it up and it's about some aspect of Yellowstone geologic history, current activity, research, you know, whatever. It's always written by a different, , Yellowstone scientist. , we do these, , monthly video updates. We do the formal updates too, but I think the formal updates are kind of dry, you know, it's just some text. Okay. So yeah, we wanted to do the video updates to try to make things a bit [00:17:00] more visual and interesting. , and sometimes we can do those in the park.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: can you tell me about the, those are really great and, and I think that the Yellowstone Park page, we could probably put a link in the show notes that, that links to this cuz they're really cool videos. and you're featured a lot in many of them. Can you sort of give us the, the origin story of that initiative? Like when it started, why it started? Just like a brief little, like the
Dr. Mike Poland: sure. Oh, it started in, uh, we did our first one in March or April of 2019. And, the reason that I wanted to do [00:17:30] these, , monthly video updates was because you go onto YouTube and you can find a lot of Yellowstone videos and they're mostly terrible. Um, you know, like, I mean, it, it, it really ranges. There's, there's people that show seismic data and they claim that it's telling you gas emissions. There are people that claim they're seeing uplift at Old Faithful, and they show two images side by side, like from a webcam. One of them is clearly photoshopped, right? You know, the tree suddenly gets like [00:18:00] super thin and super tall, right? I mean, it's, it's laughable. And , these videos had tens of thousands, so hundreds of thousands of views. And so clearly there was a, there was a hunger for this kind of information, and a lot of it was driven by clickbait, right? You know, the titles of these videos were like, alert, Yellowstone, uplift, you know, some garbage like that. And so I thought, well, if we are not on this platform, if we're not using this form of communication, then we're sort of forfeiting the game, [00:18:30] right? We're not even on the playing field. So, , we started trying to do these videos and they've evolved over time. I think they've gotten hopefully a little better than, you know, the first one, I think I was just sitting in my office, right, you know, filming with my webcam, being, you know, Hey, let's have a look at Yellowstone. Um and now we've tried to go into the park and, and talk in front of some of the features and, and show people, you know, what Steamboat Geyser looks like or, or what You know, some of these lava flow looks like, and we'll do that sort of thing. So hopefully they're interesting and informative and they feed this, , interest [00:19:00] that is obviously out there and provide a counter to some of the just absolute garbage. I mean, I, I get emails about that sort of thing all the time. People saying, is this true that, and invariably, you know the answer if you have to ask, is it true? The answer's probably no.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. Well that's
a perfect,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: let me interrupt real quick cuz I just wanna, I, I want to sort of double click on the science communication thing cuz it's obviously something Chris and I are quite passionate about and we've actually just interviewed, , in the past. Several months. We've interviewed a couple of, of the sort of young hotshot, [00:19:30] geoscience influencers, I would say, like on social media. and they're, they're really, you know, Kate Larson and Ethan Penner. They're really dynamic and they're, they're leaning into the new stuff like TikTok and Instagram. So I'm, I'm curious how it's going from the YouTube side and like how you feel it's going and, and how, you know, what the next year of this might look like. I, is it gonna kind of keep on the same vein? Uh, and then Chris I think wants to follow up with a really interesting question as well about this. So,
Dr. Mike Poland: So well, okay, so this is one thing that is, um, a constraint. I work [00:20:00] for the federal government and so there are certain rules I gotta follow. We are not allowed to use TikTok. Doesn't matter that there's a billion people or whatever on it. We, we can't do that, you know, Chinese company or whatnot, so, okay, fine. Fair enough. I am glad to see that there are some folks that do marvelous TikTok videos about Yellowstone and volcanoes and, and things like that. That's fantastic. And, and I think we need more of that, you know? , so the YouTube side, I think, I guess the, the thing that confuses me is, , it's not clear to me why some videos do well and some don't. , [00:20:30] I mean, up to, to an extent it's gotta be driven by, you know, somebody who's really popular or some account that's really popular, shared it. and obviously visuals play a role. So the most popular of the monthly updates we've done was the one that covered the June floods, the June, 2022 floods in Yellowstone. Um, that was our most popular by far. But there was also this really random one where I was, it was like November of 2021, I think. I was standing in front of, , pork Chop Geyser and Norris Geyser based, and it was snowing. And I'm just like [00:21:00] standing there saying, Hey, this is Pork Chop geyser behind me. He wasn't doing anything. And that one was a, a really popular video. It's like, why? What was the, so I don't, I don't really, I think I need to, you know, learn some things about this. I need to audit that kind of thing. But, we're learning as we go and, you know, some videos get more play than others. I guess. I, I, I'd like to understand more about that. But, you know, I think on, on balance, it's nice to be out there and content is there for people who, who want it.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Gotcha. Well, Chris has a [00:21:30] face for radio, so that ruled out YouTube for, for us when we were doing
Chris Bolhuis: Thanks. Thanks for that, Jesse. Yeah, appreciate that. All right, Mike, that's a perfect segue into the question I want to ask. , and I know that you get asked this a lot, and I hope you're not tired of talking about it, but what are the most common misconceptions that you come across regarding Yellowstone
Dr. Mike Poland: oh, there's a bunch. and I actually have done some, I've, I've given some public lectures and I've done, , polls where I've actually asked people, have you heard this misconception? [00:22:00] Um, I think the most popular, probably by far is that Yellowstone is overdue for an eruption. I hear this one all the time, and it's usually that we know Yellowstone last erupted 631,000 years ago, and we know it erupts every 600,000 years, therefore it's 31,000 years overdue. I can't figure out where that 600,000 year recurrence thing comes from. I have no clue. no. no. You know, like, and of course the math we're talking about is like the last [00:22:30] three huge explosions. Not just eruptions, but last three huge. And you know, so you've got three things which only have two intervals between them. You're basing your whole, I mean, two points make a line, I guess, but holy macro, that's not a lot of data to
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, hey, in our lab, that's great data. Two points. There's one
Dr. Mike Poland: Yeah. Yeah. Geologists love order of magnitude. Right? So we're all,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: great.
Dr. Mike Poland: I, I really have no clue where this 600,000 year thing that I hear so often repeated comes from. I, I have no idea where [00:23:00] that comes from. , somebody said it once and it ended up going viral or whatever. And that's the reality for a lot of people. So when you tell people, yeah, the last big explosive eruption was 631,000 years ago. Oh, well then it's overdue. , that's the most common one. But there are others. , it's gonna be, , the next time Yellowstone erupts, it's going to be a, uh, a. E l e, an extinction level event. and then I have to tell people, well, number one, most Yellowstone eruptions are lava flows. And those are even not that common. Last one was
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. Mike, can we explain that a [00:23:30] second please? To our audience that might not be familiar with this, like
Dr. Mike Poland: Yes.
Chris Bolhuis: everyone knows about the three, you know, huge eruptions, but let's talk about the other aspect of this. What's more common and why?
Dr. Mike Poland: Yeah, sure. So lava flows are more common. since the last big explosion, 631,000 years ago, there have been, 20 or 30 lava flows. and they come out in these pulses. So the last pulse of lava flows was about 170,000 years ago to 70,000 years ago. For the last 70,000 years, [00:24:00] there's been nothing in terms of volcanic activity, lava coming out of the ground, magma reaching the surface. In Yellowstone, there have been many hydrothermal explosions. These are not volcanic eruptions. This is steam or water that flashes to steam underground. And when you turn water to steam, you have this huge volume expansion in Kalu. , so there are a number of craters, , spread around the park. , the biggest concentration of them is on the north side of Yellowstone Lake. [00:24:30] Those are, pretty good size explosions. And if you were nearby one of those, you know, you probably wouldn't care whether or not we was classifying it as a volcanic eruption, right? You know, it would be
just as devastating.
Chris Bolhuis: just so people know, you're talking about Indian Pond and Mary Bay
Dr. Mike Poland: Indian Pond, Mary Bay Turban Lake Duck Pond.
Chris Bolhuis: Yep. Turbid lit.
Dr. Mike Poland: Um, there's, uh, there's a couple in the Lower Geyser Basin, pocket Basin and, uh, twin Buttes. and they could be quite small. Pork Chop Geyser in 1989 blew up. It threw rocks, you know, [00:25:00] many meters. If you had been standing right there, that would've been lame.
Chris Bolhuis: that
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Do, do we, um, do we know if those steam explosions are just pure or mostly groundwater that is getting heated out by the magma system, or is some of this like you know, magma. Outgassing or magma? Dewatering.
Dr. Mike Poland: Magna's not involved. And we know we're very confident this, there are, there are a number of mechanisms for these sorts of things, and there's a lot of research coming out right now that, explains why [00:25:30] some of these have happened. So, for example, there's, uh, the couple in the lower geyser basin are associated with these glacial deposits that seem to have collapsed. So you've got a glacial deposit sitting on a hydrothermal area, and then the glacial deposit kind of collapses in a landslide, you're unloading the surface instantaneously. When you do that, you are creating pressure conditions that allow water to turn into steam instantly, and bang. So a landslide of material that sort of [00:26:00] unloads a hydrothermal area will do it. Another mechanism. , and this one is kind of a, a terrifying one to think of actually. , earthquakes, especially ones that occur on the floor of Yellowstone Lake. There are faults that run all throughout the region. They have nothing to do with the volcano, the areas very tectonically active. You look down to the south, you get the Grand Tetons, and there's a huge fault there. And they come right into Yellowstone. , if those faults rupture and they're on the bottom of the lake, then you can get some [00:26:30] motion of the bottom of the lake, and that will create a tsunami on the lake. You're moving huge amounts of water around. And Mary Bay, which is the largest hydrothermal explosion crater on the planet, sits right on the north side of the lake. There's a hydrothermal area there. Well, if you suddenly pull a lot of water away from the lake away from Mary Bay, you're unloading it. Depressurizing it. Water flashes the steam and bang, get a big hydrothermal explosion. So, so there's actually a, a [00:27:00] cascade scenario, , where we think about 13,000 years ago there was an earthquake that must have been a magnitude six or seven that ruptured the bottom of the lake. So the earthquake alone is gonna be a pretty significant event, creates a tsunami that also erodes the outlet channel of the lake, allows a lot of the lake water to drain unloads Mary Bay, which then explodes in a hydrothermal explosion, you know, so, okay, now we've got earthquake tsunami explosion and a flood rushing down the Yellowstone River, which may have helped carve the Grand Canyon, the [00:27:30] Yellowstone. So, that would've been a pretty epic event. And that's not volcanic, none of that is volcanic, but no less impactful.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. So Mike, you're saying that the most likely scenario for what happens next is either a lava flow or some sort of hydrothermal explosion that could have various triggers, right?
Dr. Mike Poland: Yeah, I, I, wouldn't even put the lava flow on something that's most likely, um, hydrothermal. Yeah. The last lava flow was 70,000 years ago, and they happen in these, [00:28:00] episodes. We're not in an episode now and we know the magnet chambers mostly solid, you know, seismic imaging techniques, kind like MRI of the earth. They suggest the magma chambers mostly solid. So we're not particularly worried about a volcanic eruption magnet getting to the surface. But you get these hydrothermal explosions with water flashing the steam, , earthquakes. Those are the things that will happen on human time scales. And they have, , even if we don't go to the big hydrothermal explosions, which the last big one was maybe 3000 years ago, the last big earthquake was a magnitude 7.3 in 1959, [00:28:30] and it caused the landslide that killed over two dozen people. So in terms of the hazard that will affect people in Yellowstone area, in our lifetimes, the thing that I, uh, has been most impactful is gonna be a large magnitude six seven earthquake.
Chris Bolhuis: Just for our listeners, what Mike is referring to is the Hebgen Lake earthquake in
Dr. Mike Poland: Yes.
caused the landslide, the damned of the Madison River, and it created a new lake. You can go visit it today. Quake Lake on, on the madison river.
Okay.
Chris Bolhuis: Question for you, Mike.
You work in a [00:29:00] lot of remote areas in Yellowstone, probably
Dr. Mike Poland: yeah,
Chris Bolhuis: with not a lot of people. any scary, uh, situations?
Dr. Mike Poland: You know, nothing, nothing springs to mind in Yellowstone. , I, well, safety first, right? I mean, whenever we go into some of these remote back country areas, there's usually four or five of us. , And so, yeah, I mean, it's very common to see bears, for example, but when there's five of you, they're not gonna bother you. So, and what's nice about that is there's a very strong [00:29:30] culture of safety in the park, and I work very closely with, you know, park employees. And so, you know, if I were ever to be like, yeah, I'm just gonna go hike out 10 miles into the, I would be restrained, you know, by my colleagues and told, no, you're not gonna do this until there's some people that can go with you. Um, if, if I suddenly lost my mind and decided I wanted to do that, but, I don't recall ever having had any kind of near misses or anything in Yellowstone because we're really conscious about that.[00:30:00]
Dr. Jesse Reimink: What's the coolest thing you've seen in Yellowstone?
Dr. Mike Poland: Oh man. I would have to say the new thermal area near turn Lake. , so in 2018 there was a scientist who looks at satellite data, , thermal satellite data, and he noticed a hotspot on the east side of the Caldera. And when he compared it to the parks database of hydrothermal areas, it wasn't there, there was no record of any hotspot in this area. [00:30:30] So he started sort of digging into it and, you know, thinking water is often warmer than the background. So could it be water? No, it's not water. Could it be, some little patch of sediment that heated up? No, it's not that. So he looked back at some old air photos and found that it was a brand new thermal area, that 1999, it wasn't there. And over the ensuing two decades, it gradually formed. Killed off the trees. the ground turned a chalky white cuz it started to [00:31:00] break down the acid, uh, gases started to break the, the rock down into clay. , trees fell over, , gases started coming out of it. And
Chris Bolhuis: so where is this, Mike?
Dr. Mike Poland: this is near a turn lake, which is on the east side of the Caldera. Um, sort of between turn Lake and Fern Lake, but it's quite close to turn Lake. , and we've, we've written this up a couple of places written in Caldera Chronicles for example, when it's in our annual reports and stuff. , so in 2019 there were, uh, a few of us that decided we were gonna go out and look at this place cuz no one had been [00:31:30] out there to our knowledge. And so we went out there and explored it and it was special to realize that you're probably the first person to see this, , to walk around on it there were logs or trees that had fallen over and they were charred. On the side that was against the ground. You put a thermal couple into the ground and find just, you know, a, a couple of centimeters deep. You were at boiling temperatures. , there was sulfur crystals growing on some of the, the trees that had fallen over that they, they [00:32:00] fell over on, on top of sort of the gas vent and the, the sulfur gases came out and condensed on the, on the tree and you get these sulfur crystals.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh wow.
Dr. Mike Poland: It was, um, it was special. That was really special.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: What is the life cycle or lifetime of these hydrothermal regions?
Dr. Mike Poland: We don't know. And so this is why this, seeing this thing being born is so special. We don't know how long these things last. , one of the challenges working in Yellowstone on these young-ish landforms is that, , [00:32:30] the landscape was swept clean down to like 14,000 years ago because that area was a, there was a massive ice cap. On Yellowstone, it was the highest area in the Rockies, right? And so there was a, a kilometer thick ice cap on top of Yellowstone during the last ice age. And so that obliterated, you know, all these geyser cones that we know today, they're all less than 14,000 years old. They would've been obliterated by activity from the glaciers. So we know that some of these areas were hot then, because we can see glacial debris that got [00:33:00] dumped there. So clearly it was melting ice, you know, way back when. But we don't really know much about the history because the, the glacial activity really wiped out a lot of the, the evidence. , so seeing something born like this is, is special. We do know there are some areas that are cold as well. And an example there is a place called Brimstone Basin, and that's a well-known thermal area that's. The shores of Yellowstone Lake on sort of the southeast side of the lake. It's uh, something you have to take a boat to get to or a long hike. yeah. And, uh, brimstone [00:33:30] has all of those looks of the classic thermal area. It's got that white chalky ground you walk around on, you kind of sink in a little bit cause it's muddy and clay rich, but it's cold. If you look at it from a, a, a thermal perspective, it's actually colder inside the basin than it is outside the basin. , there are some gases that are coming out. In fact, it's emitting a lot of carbon dioxide gas, but it is not an active thermal area anymore. So we've got the turn lake on the new one, brand new young born, we've got Brimstone Basin, [00:34:00] which is kind of dead. , so they come and they go and to catch the turn Lake one sort of in the act of forming is, that's a unique event. And I think it's like we talked about, you know, being able to see millimeters of deformation, the fact that we could detect this sort of thing. You know, there, there was a. Scientists looking at thermal satellite data and he detected this sitting at his desk looking at thermal data from space and he saw this thing. That's, That's, amazing.
Chris Bolhuis: So Mike, that brings us back to GI Odyssey. [00:34:30] I would've thought you would use INSA satellite, you know, more than walking the ground and using GPS that way.
Dr. Mike Poland: Oh, we do.
Chris Bolhuis: do. You
Dr. Mike Poland: definitely do. Yeah. Insa is another powerful tool, but, we don't really wanna put all of the monitoring eggs in one basket. So the problem with ins a R is that it doesn't work when there's snow on the ground. , it can't see through snow, it can't see through heavy vegetation. But fortunately the Lodge Pole pines in Yellowstone, like 80% of the vegetation Yellowstone Lodge [00:35:00] poles, you can get through that without too much trouble. , so in sarve, summer to summer is awesome, but if something happens in February, You better hope you have some GPS nearby because
Chris Bolhuis: All right,
Dr. Mike Poland: Sorry,
Chris Bolhuis: got you. Okay, that makes sense. I want to ask you this then, really curious about, we were talking about St. Helen's earlier. How would GI Odyssey have, how would that have changed St. Helen's?
Dr. Mike Poland: I've wondered about this a lot actually. The, the famous, , [00:35:30] case at St. Helen's for Geodyssey, , was the bulge on the north flank. So that bulge was growing outward at many feet a day at one point in April of 1980. , I have talked to some of the people that monitored the volcano in 1980. , it was unclear that the bulge was there until there were some measurements made, , using air photos, basically comparing air photos from time one to time two, and then the bulge shows up. And then there were some scientists that knew the mountain well, that [00:36:00] they went out after a few weeks of being not in the field. They went, holy mackerel. That's different, right? But if you didn't know the volcano, you might not have been aware that it looks a little bit funny. Or if you were sort of there every day, you might not have noticed a change. So I've often wondered if we had InSAR right, satellite ability to see deformation, what would we have seen at Mount Saint Helens? What would we have seen in the years prior to that eruption? Would we have seen a gradual inflation of the volcano? We're never gonna be able to answer that [00:36:30] question. , and that's, , that's gonna be one of those unknowns that, um, it, it's a, it's a shame because if, if we could have seen that inflation of Mount Saint Helens in years prior, we might have known more about the idea, oh, well this, this one is, is clearly charging itself up. And that might have been resulted in a, a bigger investment in monitoring the volcano before 1980. , for example, , south Sister Volcano, , in Oregon in the early two thousands using [00:37:00] InSAR. A inflation was detected near South Sister something on the order of, you know, it's just going up by matter of centimeters to millimeters a year. But it was detected from space that motivated the installation of new seismic equipment, new GPS equipment. Even talking to the local community about volcanic hazards and volcanic activity. It allows us that sort of lead time to, , get monitoring equipment and awareness, covered well before you actually really, really need it. , the, the saying we have is you [00:37:30] don't wanna play catch up with the volcano. You wanna be in on the ground floor. And so, , InSAR being able to detect this sort of broad precursory kind of activity gives us that, extra time that we might need. I mean, south Sister may never erupt, and I hope it doesn't, you know, and, and this activity is really, really minor, but we wouldn't have known about it otherwise if we didn't have this
Chris Bolhuis: Mike, where was the def in regard to South Sister? I love the sister. I climbed the south sister with my family twice. , I, it's just, it's [00:38:00] a gorgeous area where, this wasn't on the
Dr. Mike Poland: No, no,
Chris Bolhuis: correctly. This was, yeah. Where was it?
Dr. Mike Poland: it's, it's several kilometers off to the west.
there's a separation meadow. people that hike that area might be familiar with that area. That's more or less where it's centered. , we'll occasionally, uh, when we work out in that back country, they'll stay at the James Creek shelter, which is not too far off the Pacific Crest Trail. That's an area that's not too far from the, the center of defamation. , and, and that was a lesson, it isn't centered on the volcano. [00:38:30] After Mount St. Helens, the thought was, well, you wanna look right at the summits of these volcanoes and, and radially away from them. And so that's where all the monitoring networks went. Well then guess what we look at South Sister and it's off to the West. And the monitoring networks that were on South Sister didn't really have the ability to see that. So that's why this satellite technology really comes into play. You can see broad areas. it's a defamation camera in space. and it allows you to kind of fine tune your networks. You know, now we know at South Sister where to put the [00:39:00] gps. We're not guessing. We know where to
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. So who orders where the satellite looks?
Dr. Mike Poland: huh?
Chris Bolhuis: that work?
Dr. Mike Poland: Well, mostly the satellites hopefully are just kind of on anyway and, uh, you're kind of , getting data sort of streaming in. There are some satellites where we can, , request acquisitions. So I can go on, some of them even have like a web, system, and I just sort of go in and say, I really want an acquisition of Mount Lassen and it's gotta cover this area at this particular date. [00:39:30] And they'll pick up the data for us. , but it's a, it's a challenge.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: is, does that require changing the trajectory of the satellite
Dr. Mike Poland: No, no, the, the, the satellites are sort of in their orbits, and so you're just sort of saying, the next time you're over whatever volcano or whatever fault or whatever, you know you're interested in, please give an image. , but it's worth noting that the US does not have one of these radar satellites. Not yet. There's one planned, hopefully it'll get launched in 2024, but for 30 odd years we've been relying on data collected by [00:40:00] various European countries. Japan, you know, Argentina has one of these satellites.
Chris Bolhuis: So Mike, switching gears back to Yellowstone. it's so big. The Caldera is so big. Okay. You know, and I'm talking about the most recent 631,000 years ago. I'm not even talking about the Huckleberry Ridge. You know, It's so hard to recognize. I question myself and, and my, uh, my Geology prowess. If I would be able to, if I was a a hundred years ago, knowing what [00:40:30] we knew. Do you think you'd be able to stand on, let's say Lake Butte overlook, you're standing on the edge of the Caldera, would you recognize it
Dr. Mike Poland: Me?
Chris Bolhuis: Do you think you would've be, would you have been able to?
Dr. Mike Poland: I don't think so. I, I mean, i, I, you know, I, I don't think I, I don't think anyone, everyone knew it was, in fact, there are stories. There are really cool stories about, um, what indigenous people thought was going on. There. There, there was like [00:41:00] a, a drawing of a bison. Uh, or on a bison pelt, you know, from like 1805 showing that there was a volcano at the head of the Yellowstone River, you know, but, but the, the recognition of Caldera didn't come until maybe the fifties, really? The sixties. And it wasn't that someone stood on the rim of this thing and went, I get it. it, it only came about by this very detailed mapping. So first of all, you recognize these huge, [00:41:30] thick deposits of ash. Now, initially, those were thought to be lava flows by geologists from long time ago, and then recognized to be, no, this is an ash layer. It's just been welded together. And so it, it's as dense as a lava flow, but it's actually ash. so we have these massive eruptions that have deposited huge amounts of ash. And then you start looking at, all right, there's ash. Reimink, this sort of thing. And on the inside we have these lava flows and you can start to put this story [00:42:00] together. , I think some of that work initially got done at Via Calera in New Mexico. That's where these ash flow tufts were really defined. Uh, well that's kind of the type locality for them. And then, you know, also in places like Campy for the Gray and Italy, , it was all the sixties that a lot of this came together. And the huge nature of these calera was, was really nailed down. , but Yin was one of the places where that happened. Via Calera was really important in that as well. And, and there it's easy there. You can stand on the rim of vias and yeah, you [00:42:30] can tell what you're standing on the rim off cuz it's, it morphologically, it's, it, it looks like, uh,, and you look at it from space, it's really obvious too, or, you know, from, from the air. , Yellowstone not that way because it's mostly been filled in by, by lava.
Chris Bolhuis: That's right. Okay. I just don't even know if I would've been able to recognize it as being volcanic, you know, like, I don't know. You know, it's, it's, it just, it, you know, if you stand on the rim of Mount St. Helen's and you look at it, it, it smacks you in the face. You know, Hey, I'm a volcano. I don't care. This could have been [00:43:00] 200 years ago, I think I would've been able to recognize that, but Yellowstone is just a different animal.
Dr. Mike Poland: it, it is. But I'm, I am struck by how good even early geologists were. I, I just did some, uh, so a couple of months ago, a few months ago, um, one of the real pioneers in Yellowstone, , vulcanology died. , his name was Bob Christensen, and he was the one that really defined the Caldera there and did all the mapping. He, he knew everything about Yellowstone, um, and was the first scientist [00:43:30] in charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. Incredible geologist. And so I, I went to his office and was looking through the materials he had. And one of the things that, he had on his wall was a map of Yellowstone done by a geologic expedition that visited the park in 1878. they were there in 1878 and the map is incredibly accurate. They have it worked out like this is Rhyolite. They have the old. AErica [00:44:00] volcanic, which are on the eastern side of the park, worked out. They know the rough ages, like there's Cretaceous sediment on the north part of the park. I figured this out, you know, in a few months of field work. And the, the map is, it's largely right. They didn't, you know, quite get the distinction between ash flows and lava flows and things like that. But, but good Lord, I, I can't imagine if I were dropped off in Yellowstone and given like two months to figure it out. I think I, I'd still be, two months later, I'd still be standing on Lake Butte scratching my head.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, I, I mean, i, I,[00:44:30] I, agree completely with this. I agree completely with this. and I think this is a really interesting thought exercise because, you know, Mike, we were talking about InSAR and how much data we get, and like, it, it's pretty clear when things are inflating or deflating, like we are just swamped in data. I run a endocrinology lab here at Penn State, like we get an age and. You can't argue with the age, really. Like, you know, this is, we're, we just have so much information, but the scale of Yellowstone, and if you just walk there with no data, like this is just pure [00:45:00] imagination, really. the people who did this stuff are just, it's such a creative and um, uh, like scientific intuition. It would be just, you'd, you'd have to be a sort of a genius to figure this out and actually visualize this in your head,
Dr. Mike Poland: Yeah. And, and you,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: over billions of years. I mean, these early geologists are unbelievably impressive.
Dr. Mike Poland: a lot of this you wouldn't have seen in another place either. I mean, how many people had seen a geyser in 18? I mean, unless you went to Iceland, say, or, [00:45:30] you know, something like that, you might not have ever come across a, a geyser. and like, what tools did you have right? To say nothing of, you know, like Brenton's and, you know, really good quality hammers, this, these people were going around on horses, there's a, a depth of accomplishment there. That's, um, that's pretty
stunning.
Chris Bolhuis: Mike, I don't think young Geology students even know what a brunon is anymore. I think they use their, they use their phones now. It's, it's shameful.[00:46:00]
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay, Chris? Okay, Chris. Uh, but no, but, but it's true. I mean, we are, we have it easy these days. We're swimming in data, like, you know, a lot of the conclusions are kind of, they jump up and smacking the face a little bit. I, I just think the, the imagination required to do that early Geology is really, uh, sort of unbelievable. Um, on this note of. Volcanologists and your, your sort of, you know, job, uh, your job exercise. We have a couple questions about sort of how you got to where you are, but I think we wanna frame it [00:46:30] from, we, we get a lot of interest from, you know, Chris teaches, high school level Geology, basically AP Geology for a long time. Um, I'm teaching a big class at Penn State and a lot of people are really attracted to this discipline and attracted to geoscience because of volcanoes and, earthquakes and, and all the, all the good topics, right. So how what do you say to young people interested in Vulcanology? can you give advice to people, uh, even maybe not even young people, but people who are, you know, thinking about going back and getting a geoscience [00:47:00] degree or are, are starting out on a career.
Dr. Mike Poland: Yeah. It's funny guys, I I, I actually get this question an awful lot and there's been a string of emails that have come in recently from folks that say, I'm really, you know, I'm about finishing up my undergraduate degree. I'm really interested in volcanoes. How can I get more involved? One thing that I've been trying to stress to people is that, everyone loves being in the most, people. Most, not everyone, most people love being in the field, right? I love it. Um, but there's. Not much of a market for like, oh, I'm a field geologist, you know, I, [00:47:30] I can map rocks You gotta have another skill set. And maybe that's expertise in gis, you know, geographic information systems and the ability to not just put dots on a map, but use these GIS systems to, to perform unique calculations. You know, maybe even use them to estimate hazards from flooding or, you know, lahars or any, any number of things like that. Or maybe you have an expertise and an interest in flying UAVs and [00:48:00] you want to use those to, to map areas or sample gases, or measure topography or, or whatnot. So one thing I've said, it's obviously, it's important. You gotta love field work, you've gotta enjoy being there, but you also need some other expertise. Um, you can't just, you know, if you go to some employer and say, yeah, I love being in a field. Like, well, you know, shoot, that's.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay, great.
Dr. Mike Poland: That's, Yeah, that's not, that's not carefully to say, but if you say, I, not only do I love being in the field, but I happen to [00:48:30] have expertise in GIS and UAVs, or I know how to model, you know, certain types of processes using finite element techniques or, you come with a toolkit that's critical. you can't walk up to a construction site with a screwdriver and expect to get very far, right? You need a toolkit. So develop your toolkit, right? and they should be things that drive you, that really engage you. don't go into learning a bunch of things that you hate.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah.
Dr. Mike Poland: Um, [00:49:00]
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Definitely.
Dr. Mike Poland: but fortunately there's a lot of tools, right? There's a lot of, so if, if you don't like tool one, there's always tool 2, 3, 4, , and then explore it too, right? You know, , there are internships at National Parks. They're rare with volcano observatories, but I've had colleagues that have volunteered at Volcano observatories around the world, you know, Indonesia, the Philippines, Iceland. And there are opportunities for students too to go explore volcanoes. There are classes, there are, , field [00:49:30] courses that will take you to Iceland or via Calera or, or wherever. So there are opportunities out there, and I, I'd say take advantage of them and really understand whether or not this is what you want to do. , volcanoes sound cool, but it, it isn't for everyone, although it is for a lot of us.
Chris Bolhuis: Um, Mike, that's a perfect segue to a question that's kind of personal to me.
Dr. Mike Poland: Mm-hmm.
Chris Bolhuis: So, one of our listeners, um, her name is Steph. She's from the uk. She's a younger student, and she wrote us a [00:50:00] question, and I thought, well, I'm just, I'm not gonna answer it. I'm gonna pass it on to you. Um, and here's, here's the gist of it, is that she has a lifelong disability that, , has confined her to a wheelchair and sh but she has a lifelong dream also of being a ologist. And she is having difficulty with this. can she become a ologist and do vulcanology with this in mind?
Dr. Mike Poland: Man, that's a, it's a tough question cuz I just don't have that kind of perspective. I mean, I don't know [00:50:30] many people that do that said, , I have seen online, especially a growing number of folks with various kinds of, say disabilities, including several that are confined to wheelchairs that are practicing Vulcan, or at least geologists. , there's a few people on social media you can. , along these lines, their handles aren't occurring to me, um, offhand, but, uh, I've, I've come across their, accounts and frankly it's, it's pretty inspiring to see, you know, that it's, it's not just, oh, you can only be in the lab.[00:51:00] , certainly people are getting out in the field and then I've, I've seen a couple of photos of, of folks in some ruggedized wheelchairs that going up to outcrops, taking samples, you know, doing stuff better than I can do. , so I absolutely believe, especially in this day and age, when we have so many, , tools available to us for accessibility, that the barriers are coming down., there will always be, I imagine some barriers, but those, those sort of exist with all of us. I mean, my [00:51:30] quantitative abilities stink and, uh, and, and so there are just certain things that I'll never really be able to do that I wish I could. , I think some of the physical barriers are starting to come down though as well, so, um, I'd be optimistic.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's a really good perspective. And I think, but you know, just to, to kind of come full circle, um, to the, you know, this, the sort of field slash other skill sets in the toolbox. I think the field work type stuff is, is not necessary. But I think what is important is probably, at least [00:52:00] what the employers that I've talked to, what they value is something that really only Geology education can give you, which is this sort of four dimensional imaginative thinking that we kind of touched on before. Like, you know, when you're thinking about Yellowstone inflating time scales in the physical scales involved in that are just, I don't think there's many fields that train you to think about problems in that way. And I think employers kind of value that and you need not be a field geologist to, to develop those skill sets. and so like you said, data, [00:52:30] there's tons of data coming offline. Like it seems to me that the amount of InSAR data or seismic data that is produced in the world, less than a percent is actually ever looked at. It must be. Or, you know, there's like so much data being produced that there's huge careers that can be built on, on understanding complicated data sets with a geologist or geoscientist mindset.
Dr. Mike Poland: I, I think right now one of the growth, the major growth areas is, uh, in artificial intelligence. Um, you, you're, you're right, we have too much [00:53:00] data. This has never was a problem for us. Like, you know, before, you know, it's like you, you go out and collect a little bit of data, you have a couple of seismometers or something, and now we've got, you know, many InSAR satellites collect. , terabytes of data every day, every hour perhaps. , how do you look through all of it? Well, you can't, you can't anymore. It used to be we could. Now we can't. And so we need to get smarter about the way we comb through these data sets. And so I think there's a, a real opportunity for kind of a [00:53:30] nexus between computer science and Geology, uh, or geophysics or what, what have you. And that is happening. There's a, a couple of, um, projects actually happening mostly in the, in the uk, um, but also, uh, elsewhere, , that look at InSAR with, , artificial intelligence approaches and trying to automatically find volcanoes that are deforming. Instead of having to look at a hundred thousand images, maybe you only have to look at a hundred and they find things that, you know, otherwise we wouldn't have seen. So,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: totally [00:54:00] cool. I mean, that, that's a, that's a really, uh, a good, good view of it. Sorry, Chris.
Chris Bolhuis: No. No. All right, Mike, I wanna respect your time, but I have some questions I want to ask. So lightning, lightning round. Okay. Are, are you ready?
Dr. Mike Poland: Sure. Bring it.
Chris Bolhuis: Have you ever been in a dangerous situation on a volcano?
Dr. Mike Poland: Sure. helicopters are dangerous. and there have been a couple of times where I've been like, ah, that was a little bit uncomfortable. I think the, the one that I often appeal to happened early in my career when I was working [00:54:30] at Mount St. Helen's when it started to erupt in 2004. And, uh,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, have we got a story about St. Helen's in 2004 for you? Chris Bullis? No. Finish your story and then
Dr. Mike Poland: okay, I'll
Dr. Jesse Reimink: was being a little, little bit of a indecisive guy when he was teaching high
Chris Bolhuis: Mm-hmm. Okay. All right, Jesse.
Dr. Mike Poland: Okay, I'll, alright, then, then, then you're gonna follow this. Um, alright, so I, I was a relatively new hire, been only working at the Cascades Volcano Observatory at the time for a few years. And Mount [00:55:00] Helens started to reawaken and, , I was heading out there and landing on the flanks and usually with an experienced person, , setting up these GPS stations. And we didn't really have any, any deformation monitoring of the volcano, and it was reawakening. So we were trying to install that. And after about a week of doing that work, it finally started to have these ash emissions. And we sort of had an idea of what the most likely activity was. But of course, you never knew whether there may be, be a bigger explosion. and so [00:55:30] we, landed at this one site and unfortunately I had, at that site I had to work alone. And it was my first time really being alone. And, and this helicopter dropped me off and it went away. And so I'm sort of standing on the flank of this volcano that earlier in the day it had an ash explosion. I can't see into the crater, cause I'm on the outside of it and I'm thinking, I might just be standing here and look up and see an ash cloud boiling over the edge. And, but what reassured me was on the same ridge I was on about, I don't know, [00:56:00] half a mile down there was a mountain goat. And so I thought, like, you always hear the stories, right? Like, oh, the animals know. And I, and by the way, that's garbage. The animals don't know. I think that's no. And they may feel little bits of things that we could feel as well. I, I, I don't, this whole idea that animals are gonna run away a week before a volcano explodes. I don't buy into, I'm sorry, the people that are listening that really believe that, but I'm not, I'm not a believer anyway, but I, but I found it reassuring that, that mountain goat was on that. [00:56:30] So I thought, well, you know, okay. So anyway, it was, it was fine. I did the work, you know, I'm still obviously here, but, but yeah, that was the, that time I felt uneasy. But I guess the only dangerous times have been sort of helicopter,
Chris Bolhuis: good. I
was there too, Mike.
Dr. Mike Poland: in in oh four.
Chris Bolhuis: I was. Yep.
Yep. Yeah.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: go there, Chris? Just curious.
Chris Bolhuis: Um,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: curious.
Dr. Mike Poland: It.
Chris Bolhuis: you know, I, it is a loaded question. He's, he's a piece of work, but no, it's a, it goes back to my love for [00:57:00] Vulcanology and Mount St. Helen's, you know, ever since I was a little kid, right. And I've, I always said that, you know, if Mount St. Helen's does anything, I'm going, and it started cranking up
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So, hold on. Let me tell Chris you.
Chris Bolhuis: What,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: telling this story right, because I, was actually a Chris Ball he class in earth science grade nine, ninth grade, um, in nine 11. And so I was a freshman in 2001. And then by the time I was a senior in 2004 or five, I've had Chris for three classes by that point for Earth Science, this Yellowstone, like field Geology class. And, uh, Geology, the AP Geology [00:57:30] class taught. So, and I was doing a, independent study, which I didn't really do much for. But anyway, Chris had been talking for three years or four years. He'd been talking a big game. I'm gonna go to Yellowstone. If it starts, I'm gonna go to Mount St. Helen's. I love volcanoes, like, you know, tough guy act and then Mount St. Helen starts doing stuff and he's still in Hudsonville, Michigan, in flat, southwest Michigan. And so, you know,
Chris Bolhuis: It's cuz I have a job. Okay. It's cuz I, I'm a, I'm a professional. So anyway, Jesse is, uh, [00:58:00] he's, he's a giant and so I'm up there teaching and he walks right behind me as I'm teaching and interrupts me and bends Hulks down over top of me and says, are you going to Mount St. Helen's? And I look up, I look back and up at him, I'm like, no, and leave me alone. I'm teaching right now. Can't you see? And he's like, Knew you were all talk and then he just walks away. So yeah, that bothered me. And so [00:58:30] I, I was taking a night class at the time and it was a horrible class. It was a six to nine lecture and I went to this class and before I knew what happened, I bought a plane ticket to, um, to Portland. And I didn't ask anybody. I didn't ask my boss if I could leave. I didn't ask my wife. , so on my way home from the class, my boss calls me and says, Hey, do you know what's going on with with St. Helen's? I'm like, yeah, I gotta talk to you about that. [00:59:00] And so I, I told him I bought a ticket and by the time I got home he was on the same flight as me. He bought a ticket too. So we went out together and that was great cuz I'm like, all right, well, my boss is going, I have permission, I'm good to go. So I missed like four days of school and over the weekend. And, uh, yeah, it was, it was great.
Dr. Mike Poland: Did you get to see any of the ash eruptions?
Chris Bolhuis: Absolutely. I have, um, a couple really good pictures, um, that I have. I blew up into poster size and they're in my
Dr. Mike Poland: man. so you saw more [00:59:30] than I did then because I missed every ash eruption. I was the very first one. , we were at a pizza parlor in Vancouver having our first day not being in the field, all the gi Odyssy people saying, okay, we need to come up with a strategy for, what we're gonna do here for the rest of the, cuz winners beginning to arrive and we need to. And so we were at this pizza parlor talking about it, and then I realized that there were a bunch of people huddled around the tv. And I sort of looked over and then I thought, I heard the words [01:00:00] ash and gas, and I looked over and I creamed my head around and there's a live shot of Mount Helen's on this TV erupting. And so I like, uh, guys, I think we need to, , and so we, we've sort Ash on the tv and then suddenly someone said, you know, we can look out the window and see the thing. And sure enough, you could see Monte and there's this ash bloom coming off of it. And that's when the senior guy in the room, he was like, we probably better get back to the office.
Chris Bolhuis: yeah.
Dr. Mike Poland: But every, every one of those eruptions, I was either on my way up there or had a [01:00:30] day off. And so I never saw one in, in person. And then I, I left, uh, and I moved to Hawaii in february of 2005, and it was like a couple days later, the largest ash eruption happened. So I just missed them all.
Chris Bolhuis: All right. Well, that's not a very lightning
Dr. Mike Poland: The lightning is not going very quickly. But,
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. All right. Okay.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: ever.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. Onto the next question, Mike. Is there a to being a volcano? Because everybody thinks it's a dream job. Downside,
Dr. Mike Poland: yeah, I [01:01:00] think there is, uh, and I have not experienced this personally, but I was just, uh, a few weeks ago in New Zealand, , there was a big vulcanology meeting down there. And so every few years there are meetings of international vulcanology meetings where we sort all get together and compare notes, talk about research and so forth. This was the first meeting we'd had since the, um, Fuka disaster White Island, , that, , killed over 20 people. And I got to basically see a number of my. New Zealand [01:01:30] colleagues who I, I know up close and observed the impact of that event on them. it was deeply personal. , and some of them knew very well the people that were killed, some of the guides that, that were killed there. , and I know things like, uh, you know, David Johnston in 1980 a s Gs scientist who, who was killed, uh, at the Mount Saint Homes eruption, then many of the people that I work with now knew him. Right. , I've not had that experience and I think [01:02:00] on balance were better about forecasting activity and so forth. But, I've been conscious of the, the way in which, uh, those sorts of events can affect you I am lucky to have not experienced anything like that. But, I was really struck by how my, my New Zealand colleagues especially were sort of really quite emotional about that. Volcanoes are amazing, but, you know, even when I was, working in [01:02:30] Hawaii and you're talking to people that are possibly gonna lose their homes, I, I was standing on the property of this one, , family as lava crossed onto their property line, and it sort of became clear that, you know, maybe they were gonna lose parts of their home. Uh, right. that's hard to, , you know, it's amazing. Lava is liquid rock. I mean, that's incredible. But there's a, there's a real human side to it that's, uh, sometimes tough to
Chris Bolhuis: This inner struggle of the beauty of it and the, the power of it, and then the
Dr. Mike Poland: Yeah. [01:03:00] Yeah. And losing, losing property, at least property can be kind of replaced or, you know, things can be replaced. But then people that have lost lives, and, and seeing how that affected, the folks that were associated with those events. Um, I just can't imagine what it would be like to, to be in that kind of situation. I hope I never experienced it.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. Yeah. yeah. Wow.
Dr. Mike Poland: It's, uh,
Chris Bolhuis: It is. Now I gotta switch to the other lightning question. Which, what is your favorite volcano?
Dr. Mike Poland: [01:03:30] Um, well, if, if,
yeah. So,
okay. So,
Chris Bolhuis: I, might, I might judge you here, Mike. I'm just gonna say like
Dr. Mike Poland: uh, since this is the lightning round, I'm not gonna take a lot of time to think about this cause I could go on for a while, but I'm just gonna say Medicine Lake. Medicine Lake is a volcano in northeastern California. It is, a shield volcano. So it's sort of this broad thing. It has really spectacular obsidian flows, really spectacular basaltic lava flows like you'd see in Hawaii. The fact that it [01:04:00] coexist is cool. It has a calera at the summit with a nice lake in it. , not too many people know about it. Not too many people visit on the north. Splunk is lava bed's national Monument. You can go climb through lava tubes. there are countless lava tubes there. There's a lot of history there. There's a lot of indigenous culture there that I find really interesting cuz I've always had a passing interest in archeology. , and that's where I sort of got my start. , when I was an undergraduate at Davis, I did some work with a professor there on trying to measure the [01:04:30] deformation at Medicine Lake. Medicine Lake is sinking slowly at about a centimeter a year. And so we were trying to map that out. And it's one of those places whenever I go back there, I'm just feel really right at home. I really like that place. And, and the, the fact that, you know, it's not super popular, doesn't hurt cuz it's pretty easy to be alone. Yeah.
Chris Bolhuis: does this have the brown and black obsidian,
Dr. Mike Poland: Um, no, it's, it's really pretty fresh obsidian. There's a, there's a couple of places where it's amazingly fresh. Um, really black cuz the, the, the youngest [01:05:00] obsidian floor there is only 900 years old. it's a pretty active volcano actually. It's, um, one of the younger ones in the Cascades in terms of, uh, recent eruptions. But that's, but I mean, man, that's, it's also that question. It's a bit like trying to ask you to, you know, pick your favorite child or something. Right.
Chris Bolhuis: yeah,
Yeah.
Dr. Mike Poland: I'm.
Chris Bolhuis: I could answer that question. I dunno, like, keep my kids guessing, but, um, okay. Yeah. Well, Mike, my answer would've been Shasta. Um, I just think the beauty of it with, with shat [01:05:30] coming off the
Dr. Mike Poland: yeah.
Chris Bolhuis: just beautiful, I don't know. I've always been in love with that one, so.
Dr. Mike Poland: You there. There is an amazing place on Medicine Lake, uh, called Little Mount Hoffman. There's a lookout there, an old fire lookout there you can even rent, or at least you used to be able to rent it and stay there. The view of Shasta from Little Mount Hoffman is the best view of that volcano you'll ever see. It's incredible. And then right in the foreground, right below Little Mount Hoffman is one of these obsidian flows. So you've got this vista of this 14,000 foot strata volcano with an obsidian flow in the foreground.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's [01:06:00] very cool. Well, Mike, we've taken up far too much of your time here, but we have one final question. Our closing question, and this is our, our sort of regular closing question for people is what has been your best day as a geoscientist?
Dr. Mike Poland: Oh man. Best day. I'm, I'm really struggling to come up with a single day. Um, I, i, the best I my people,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I think, actually is what we get is is
Chris Bolhuis: a good answer. Yeah.
Dr. Mike Poland: [01:06:30] you know, I, what, I guess the only way I can answer that is to tell you the sort of the right combination of things that make for a great day, and that's often the people I'm with. And so I have had some really wonderful experiences taking groups out to see lava flows in Hawaii. we, we would meet at like 4:00 AM , and walk out to the lava flows and be out there at sunrise. And so you'd see the lava at night when it was glowing, and then you'd see it in sort of the, the twilight, which is just perfect because you can still see the orange glow and then you can, [01:07:00] you can start to see the, the features as well, and then the sun comes up over the ocean. Every time I did that, I was, I was thrilled because it, it, it's a bit like, you know, talking to people in Yellowstone, right? A bunch of students looking at lava flows. , they're over the moon, right? so, I loved those days. So I think it's a combination of the people you're with, and I have some colleagues that I work with that I just enjoy being with them. We have stimulating conversations about range of subjects. There's that sense of discovering things when you're [01:07:30] out there. And even on those days where you feel like you, I mean, I've, I've had a couple of days where, it didn't occur to me to mention this when we dangerous things, but yeah, I want to, one colleague and I hiked along the face of this cliff on Mount Lassen, and it was sketchy. Right. I mean, we looked back on it and thought like, yeah, you know, one of us really easily could have died right there. , but it was an awesome day, despite the fact that we were just absolutely exhausted by the end of it, because we saw interesting things. We collected a lot of interesting data. We had really stimulating [01:08:00] conversations and saw a lot of things that made us think. So it's that combination, I think, of the people you're with when you're with people and the things that you experience. So, I really don't think I could pick a day, but, but those mornings at, on the flow field in Hawaii, at oaa, those have always been special. Those were my favorite days when I was based in, in the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. Those were the days I loved the most when I was out with, uh, student groups.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's so cool. I mean, that's totally cool. Totally cool.
Chris Bolhuis: Mike. I [01:08:30] like it.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's a very, that's
a very good answer. Very good answer. Well, Mike, we really appreciate the time. Uh, you've been super generous with your time. We really super appreciate it. Um, and keep up, keep up with the monthly updates. Those are totally fun to watch. we'll put a link, I think it's to the Yellowstone, uh, national Park, , link that contains all of those videos cuz they're totally fun to watch And, and, uh, yeah, well done on those and, and,
Dr. Mike Poland: Thank you. Yeah. It, it's, it is, they are fun to do. I mean, this is just, uh, it, it is. You talked about it at the beginning. Right. It is a great job. I get to talk about the world's [01:09:00] first national park volcanic activity. I mean, I couldn't really hope for much better.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's totally awesome. Well, thank you for sharing your passion with us for an hour and a half here on Planet Geo. We super appreciate it and, uh, and, and yeah, really appreciate the time.
Dr. Mike Poland: My pleasure. Thanks very much for all the interesting questions. This was really fun.
Chris Bolhuis: All right,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Great. Well, we'll, we'll, uh, we'll do another round at some point in the future then. Hey, thanks for listening, Chris. Totally fun. Totally, totally, totally [01:09:30] fun interview. Loved it.
Chris Bolhuis: You bet. It was great
Dr. Jesse Reimink: absolutely. enough said.
That's right. You can follow us on all the social medias. We're at Planet Geo Cast. You can go to our website, support us in the links in the show notes. That's planet geo cast.com and uh, you can check out the Camp Geo Audio textbook that we have put together, audio and images all integrated together, single platform. Go to geo.camp courses.com or click on the first link in your show notes. As always, leave us a rating in review. We really, really [01:10:00] appreciate that. That helps the algorithm, and really sort of helps get geoscience content to the forefront of the podcast space. So if you do that for us, that would be great.
Peace.
