Jumping from pillows, cushions and other pieces of furniture while pretending the floor is hot, boiling lava has been a popular pastime for children’s amusement and imagination for many summers. A team of geoscientists took a more serious approach in its most recent work published in Nature.

ACCESS allocations for simulations on Stampede3 at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) helped researchers map the extensive volcanic system lying beneath Yellowstone National Park, including a volatile-rich cap of magma located less than 2.5 miles below the surface. Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences Brandon Schmandt at Rice University and Postdoctoral Research Associate Chenglong Duan led scientists from the University of New Mexico, the University of Utah and the University of Texas at Dallas in discovering new insights – and predictions – into this underground environment. For example, if researchers record any changes in this newly identified magma cap, that may indicate potential shifts in the system’s stability and signal possible eruptions.

“Being able to image what’s happening underground is important for everything from geothermal energy to storing carbon dioxide,” Schmandt said. “This work shows that with creativity and perseverance, we can see through complicated data and reveal what’s happening beneath our feet.”

Provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation-funded program ACCESS, computing time on TACC’s supercomputer proved to be the perfect resource for 3-D simulation mapping of magma reservoirs.

The use of Stampede3 helped us avoid the need to make less accurate assumptions, like ray theory, for evaluating seismic reflection properties. ACCESS made it easy to get an allocation and identify that Stampede3 was a good fit for the project’s computing needs.

Brandon Schmandt, Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Rice University

You can read more about this story here: Inside Yellowstone’s Fiery Heart

Resource Provider Institution(s): Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)
Resources Used: Stampede3
Affiliations: Rice University, University of New Mexico, University of Utah and University of Texas at Dallas
Funding Agency: NSF
Grant or Allocation Number(s): EES240056

The science story featured here was enabled by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s ACCESS program, which is supported by National Science Foundation grants #2138259, #2138286, #2138307, #2137603, and #2138296.