Yellowstone’s Thermal Ecosystems Is Facing an Unusual Threat — Hats and Pizza Boxes

In the fall cleaning campaign, Yellowstone's geology team discovered a trove of unusual items tossed by visitors.

PUBLISHED 2 HOURS AGO

(L) Thermal pool at Yellowstone, (R) Visitors snapping selfies near a geyser (Representative Cover Image Source: Getty Images | (L) Igacious Palacios, (R) Moonstone Images)

Dressed in the distinctive red jacket vest, Mara Reed uses a long grabber pole to remove a park map from a thermal pool in Upper Mammoth Terrace. Another volunteer, Tara Cross, smiles at the camera while showing off a pizza box she retrieved from the Geyser Hill, tucked between her hands, wrapped in thick yellow gloves. It is not unusual for the workers of Yellowstone’s Geology Program to find items like these littered around Yellowstone National Park’s premises, likely tossed away by reckless visitors or blown by the fierce winds, according to a report by the US Geological Survey (USGS).

Thermal pool in Yellowstone National Park (Representative Image Source: Getty Images | Siraphob Tatiyarat)

The dilemma arises when these trashed items are found inside features like hot springs, thermal pools, or hydrothermal vents, where the scalding waters make it impossible for humans to reach inside the pull out the trash. The agency warned visitors that this flotsam of scraps and rubbish articles is putting the park’s geysers a risk of losing their pristine beauty.

Sign reading Yellowstone National Park (Representative Image Source: Getty Images | Ceri Breeze)

According to a documentary shared by Fascinating Horror, Yellowstone sits atop a hotbed of scorching molten magma and is punctuated by an array of volcanic geysers that erupt every few hours, spurred by the agitation in the magma down below. Billowing plumes of steam explode from the steam vents, escaping the holes in the ground such as fumaroles and launching towards the skies. Other patches are blanketed by bubbling patches of boiling white mud that spit spumes of water so sizzling that they can swallow up a human in seconds.

A representative image of the Morning Glory Pool. (Image Source: Getty Images | Photo By Rachid Dahnoun) — Morning Glory Pool in Yellowstone National Park (Representative Image Source: Getty Images | Photo By Rachid Dahnoun)

The populations of heat-loving microorganisms and bacteria residing in these hot pools slurp the mineral-rich water and bestow the pools a dazzling rainbow-themed color palette. Another cause behind the shifting landscape of Yellowstone geysers is its notorious volcanoes that seem to erupt out of the blue. One eruption, for instance, changed the pristine color of Morning Glory pool, turning its once-blue waters into a mishmash of greens, oranges, and yellows, the New York Post shared.

We can’t forget the wild explosion at Biscuit Basin, which sent volleys of steam, rocky fragments, and mud splatters swishing several hundred feet into the air, causing a flashing of steam, gradually changing the color of Black Diamond Pool waters, per USGS. But above and beyond these factors, the factor that has been the main culprit behind the geysers' declining beauty is human activities. Documenting in a column called Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles, officials shared how careless park visitors blight the park with useless and discarded items.

Visitors taking photographs of geyser in Yellowstone National Park (Representative Image Source: Getty Images | W Perry Conway)

Writing in National Parks Traveller, a photographer revealed that they found Ziploc bags, paper wrappers, and hats littering the park’s locations like Midway Geyser Basin and Mammoth Hot Springs Terraces. For the park’s workers who have to deal with this problem, it’s a blunder. They can’t possibly dip their hands in this boiling abyss of steaming waters, or else they would lose their limbs to this untamed monster. Volcanologist and park geologist Jeff Hungerford shared with the photographer that the solution to this is intensive training and grabber poles that they use to pick out the trash from the springs and pools. The training, he said, also includes understanding water chemistry, how newly precipitated rock hardens over time, and what lithologies are prone to destabilization.

Steam vents in Yellowstone supervolcano (Representative Image Source: Getty Images | JimFeng)

The largest piece of trash that Hungerford and his team pulled from the thermal springs was a submerged vehicle, followed by several tree trunks swimming inside an acidic thermal feature near Roaring Mountain this past July. Apart from these, workers have pulled out items like a Birkenstock sandal, a pizza box with slices still inside, a fake Louis Vuitton bucket hat, a stuffed koala toy, a ball cap with the phrase “I PEE IN THE LAKE,” and a Polaroid picture from the scorching hot pools, per USGS.

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