A Conversation With Geophysicist Mike Poland
Wendy Corr
Well, hey there, folks, and welcome to The Roundup. We are a Cowboy State Daily podcast featuring voices, opinions and perspectives from interesting people in the Cowboy State. I'm your host, Wendy Corr. And we've got a fascinating subject today that we're going to talk about with Mike Poland, who is a geophysicist with USGS, the United States Geological Survey. Mike is our go-to person at Cowboy State Daily, when we want to talk about Yellowstone National Park and volcanoes. And Mike, I'm so glad you're with us today. Thank you so much for joining us.
Mike Poland
Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Wendy Corr
Mike, tell us, I mentioned that you are a geophysicist. What is your position there at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory?
Mike Poland
Well, so my geophysical specialty is in ground deformation. That's how the ground moves on a volcano, which we use to relate that back to where a magma or fluids may be beneath the surface. But I'm also serving as the scientist in charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, which means I oversee the consortium that monitors Yellowstone and does research there in terms of volcanic hazards, and also issues hazards and warnings if that should be needed and other information about what's happening geologically in Yellowstone.
Wendy Corr
I want to know, how does a person get a job and make a career studying volcanoes? Where were you when you said, you know what? I think I want to go see how the Earth moves. And I want to see how Yellowstone works. Tell us about that. Where did that come from?
Mike Poland
Probably when I was about four or five years old, actually. I was a kid when Mount St. Helens erupted and I was living in Northern California at the time. And I just remember that being really big news. You know, just being sort of glued to the news. And that a mountain could just completely blow itself apart.
And as a kid, you know, I started trying to read up on this and I realized, wow, there's some volcanoes right here in Northern California, Lassen and Shasta. And so my dad would take me on camping trips up to Lassen, up to Shasta, other places, and I felt like every place I was going, I was sort of looking around for interesting things about volcanoes. And it just stuck with me.
You know, I went to college, got into geology, got to go to graduate school and was lucky enough to land a position with the Geological Survey, and then, you know, 20 years into my career to get to work at Yellowstone, kind of as a full time job. So a lot of luck, but I think Mount St. Helens 1980 is really what put me on this path.
Wendy Corr
And what did you do before that? What was your experience before coming to Yellowstone?
Mike Poland
Well, I spent a few years working at the Cascades Volcano Observatory, and I was lucky enough to be able to respond to the 2004-08 eruption of Mount St. Helens. So that was not a big eruption, and so a lot of people don't even know about it, barely a lava dome came out. So sort of a small mountain grew in the 1980 crater of Mount St. Helens, and I got to respond to that. But it was really a kind of a treat, frankly, to be right on the front lines of an eruption.
And then I was transferred to a Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. And I was there for 10 years. And I really got a lot of experience responding to changing conditions and eruptions and some that were really quite destructive. And when I came back in 2015, I had a couple more years working in the Cascades before I got this new position at Yellowstone.
Wendy Corr
Yellowstone National Park has to be a geophysicist's dream when it comes to the ever changing landscape and all the little things that make Yellowstone fascinating to those of us - it's not just the wildlife, it is that geothermal activity there. Tell us about starting work at Yellowstone. What was it, what IS it about Yellowstone that fascinates somebody with your expertise?
Mke Poland
You know, it's not just Wonderland for people that like to go and enjoy the landscape and the animals and the plants. It's Wonderland for geologists, too, it's incredible. The thing that I find really compelling about Yellowstone is that it's just constantly changing, its dynamic. You go from visit to visit, and you'll see differences in maybe the way a geyser or hot spring looks or the way it behaves.
That was something I really was excited about when I was working in Hawaii, because you would wake up and on any given day, the volcano's behavior might have changed. And you'd go from having, you know, Kīlauea, having no earthquakes, to having lots of earthquakes - from subsiding to uplifting, you know. There were lava lakes that were forming and lava flows going in different directions. It was always changing, we sort of always had to be really aware of what was happening.
Yellowstone captures some of that. There are always things going on, the ground is always going up or down. There are always earthquakes there, geyser activity changes on a daily basis. And it's that dynamic, exciting nature of the place that I find really compelling. You know that on any given day, I don't know whether there'll be some geyser that hasn't erupted in a couple of decades that suddenly comes back to life and is putting on a show.
Wendy Corr
We see that! There was one that just happened just, was it last week? That geyser that had previously not even been a blip on anybody's memory just started spewing like 48, different 48 eruptions in a two hour period. Tell us about that.
13:33
Yeah, that was Economic Geyser in the Upper Geyser Basin, not too far from Old Faithful. It had been dormant, basically since 1999, came back to life in January of 2024. It had over 24 years of dormancy, and that's defining for Yellowstone. It is always changing.
Another great example is Steamboat Geyser. Steamboat’s the tallest geyser in the world. It's spectacular. Typically it erupts once every year or two or three or five. I mean, at one point in its history, it went decades without erupting. Since 2018, it's erupted over 200 times. I've lost track of how many eruptions, it's just gone bananas. And it's quite funny, because my predecessor in this position, he held the position for 15 years. And I think Steamboat erupted, you know, just a handful of times that he was in that position, for 15 years. And you know, in a single year of my tenure, it more than doubled the number of eruptions he ever experienced. So, we joke about that from time to time. It's just such a dynamic place. It's so exciting to be a part of all of those kinds of changes.
Wendy Corr
What makes the geysers - what makes Old Faithful, faithful? I mean, how is it that you can say definitively it's going to happen every 90 minutes? Obviously, you observe that it does, but what makes it happen on such a regular basis, when these others are so random?
Mike Poland
That's a really good question. And we don't have a great answer for that. In some ways geysers are like people, and they all have different personalities.
Old Faithful is sort of independent from a lot of other geyser areas in the Upper Geyser Basin. That seems to be part of what makes it a little bit more regular. There are a few others like that, Lonestar geyser, for example, sort of off on its own. So the ones that are isolated, seem to have their own systems and are a bit more predictable.
But even over its known history, the last, say, really well documented history, the last 150 years or so, Old Faithful has not been steady. It started out in the late 1800s, all the way through the mid 1900s, about every hour, and over time in the last, especially 50 to 70 years, it's lengthened to be about every 90 minutes. So it does still change over time. And we’ve even seen geologic indications that there may have been time periods where Old Faithful went completely dormant for possibly up to decades before coming back to life.
So these things do change all the time. Sometimes they don't change on timescales we’re really aware of, but some also change like crazy, you know, far more than others, Old Faithful being sort of one end member of that, and maybe Steamboat being something of the other.
Wendy Corr
And of course, we're talking geologic time and not people time, not human time. Geologic time is a whole separate timeline.
Mike Poland
Yeah, when you look at geologic time, it's difficult to know, how long has Old Faithful really been there erupting? And one of the challenges we have is that the material that makes up the geyser mound is very difficult to date. We don't have the materials, the minerals, or the charcoal samples or the other things we would need in order to get a really accurate date on these geyser systems.
So we know all the cones that we see in Yellowstone today, you know, the Old Faithful mound or the Lonestar cone, those all have to have formed since the last ice age, because Yellowstone was under like half a mile of ice during the last ice age. That would have sort of swept it clean.
Wendy Corr
No kidding?
Mike Poland
Yes, it was a huge continental ice sheet. It would have just bulldozed everything. So all of the things that we see, the structures in the geysers have to have formed since the ice receded maybe about 13,000 years ago or so. But they were obviously there before then, too. And we don't know how those systems evolved.
We do know the plumbing is complicated beneath geysers. The plumbing, I like to think of as like the plumbing in an old house. And it's liable to spring leaks. And there's going to be minerals that precipitate in places and clog stuff up. And you know, when there's a little bit of earthquake shaking nearby, you can shake the plumbing and then break it and the water will have to find a new way to go. So it's delicate, and that can explain some of the variability we see. But then some of these other systems, like Old Faithful, seem to be pretty stable, pretty well developed. And they've obviously been there for at least hundreds of years, probably longer, but they still do go through phases of changes in activity.
Wendy Corr
You know, you talked about the shaking. And that's obviously one of the many things that you study there at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, is all the earthquakes. And people can get so caught up in it - “Oh my gosh, Yellowstone's gonna blow, the earthquakes are going to cause the Yellowstone supervolcano to go off!” And you and I chatted just briefly, you do not like that term, “supervolcano,” and I can definitely see why - it's the butt of too many jokes. But tell us about, why is that? Why is that not a term that you like to use?
Mike Poland
Well, I’ve got three reasons I don't like the term. First of all, I think it's kind of silly. It reminds me of back in the 90s when everyone was saying “Uber this, uber that,” you know, before Uber was a mode of transportation, right? And I've had people ask me, “Well, if Yellowstone is a supervolcano, is there such a thing as a mega volcano or a hyper volcano?” I’m like, Nah, it's just a silly made up word. So I think it's kind of trite.
Second, I think it's misapplied. The ‘supervolcano’ term is meant to apply to a volcano that has experienced an eruption of a certain size, an eruption that has produced about 1000 cubic kilometers of material - that's about 1000 times the size of the Mount St. Helens 1980 eruption. So really tremendous, mind bogglingly big eruptions.
But I see that term applied to volcanoes that have never had an eruption that big. An example, there's one in Italy called Campi Flegrei near Naples, and I've heard people say, well, that’s a supervolcano. It is a similar style to Yellowstone. It's this big caldera system. It's had large eruptions in the past but never one that would qualify as a super eruption. So how can it be a super volcano if it never had a super eruption? It doesn't diminish the fact that it could have really big eruptions, but it’s misapplied.
And I think it's also misleading. It implies that these volcanoes only have really big explosions, when in fact, the far more common type of activity are smaller lava flows. Yellowstone's had a couple of dozen, at least, lava flows since the last really big explosion. That's the way these volcanoes mostly behave. And so, yeah, I just think the term does a disservice to the geology. And you don't have to make Yellowstone more spectacular than it is, right? I mean, no matter how you slice it, it's an amazing place. You don't have, putting “super” in front of it, does that mean anything? No.
Wendy Corr
So all the people who are saying that it's a supervolcano, and it's overdue for an eruption, and it's been fodder for television movies and the whole works. Honestly, I love disaster movies. So you know, “Volcano” with Tommy Lee Jones, and “Dante's Peak” with Pierce Brosnan, I love those movies. Those are things that would not happen at Yellowstone National Park to your knowledge, is that right?
Mike Poland
Yeah, sorry, I lost my train of thought. The movie thing got me started thinking about movies and “Dante's Peak” and “Volcano.”
Wendy Corr
Those are my favorites.
Mike Poland
Dante's Peak wasn't bad. In fact, Pierce Brosnan came to the Cascades Volcano Observatory and talked with a whole bunch of geologists in order to really get the character right, and the mindset right. And you know, we all do push ups every morning. So he adopted that from us. (laughing)
Wendy Corr
I'm sure, I'm sure. Yes.
Mike Poland
Yeah, Yellowstone does have big explosions, certainly. But the far more common mode of activity are these smaller lava flows. In fact, if you're standing at Old Faithful, and you look all around you, there's high ground all around you, you're sort of in a hole at Old Faithful. The high ground you see everywhere around you are lava flows that erupted after the last big explosion.
So these claims that it's overdue - that's another misconception that drives me nuts - they missed two things. One, volcanoes don't work that way. The volcanoes are never overdue, they will erupt when they have enough eruptible magma beneath the surface and pressure to get that magma to the surface. And neither of those conditions exists at Yellowstone.
And besides, if you actually did want to do it by numbers and say, what's the average interval between big explosions, we're still not overdue. I hear this number, 600,000 years thrown around. I have no idea where that comes from. If you do the math, it's not close to that. So this is wrong all around.
But then it doesn't account for these smaller eruptions, which happen much more frequently. But one of the things we've learned about these small eruptions in Yellowstone, just in the last few years, is that they tend to happen in clusters. So you will get a series of a few to maybe 10 or so eruptions all happening, basically, at the same time. Lava is coming out of the ground at a bunch of places at once, and then it's quiet for a while. And then you get a bunch of lava flows, and then it's quiet for a while. And so we're in one of those quiet periods between episodes of activity. And anybody that claims it's overdue, they're clearly not thinking about the lava flow activity either because, you know, volcanoes just do not work that way.
Wendy Corr
That's so good to know. I mean, genuinely, this is such interesting information. I'm hearing what you're talking about, about the smaller flows. And I'm thinking about what's been happening in Hawaii. Is that the sort of thing that we could more realistically expect if something were to happen, and some magma that's below the surface at Yellowstone broke through - would it be more like that?
Mike Poland
It wouldn't quite resemble Hawaii because there, the magma is really runny. It's a magma composition called basalt. Very, very thin lava flows. The kind of thing that you see at Craters of the Moon, that's sort of the Hawaiian style flows. The flows in Yellowstone are made out of a much more viscous, kind of a pastier, thicker, stickier kind of magma called rhyolite. And so these rhyolite lava flows are higher in silica, that makes them stickier. So they're really, really thick, they can be hundreds of feet thick. So when you're driving around the geyser basins like the upper, lower and middle geyser basins, and you see this sort of high ground on either side of you, and some of them are cliffs that are hundreds of feet high. Those are lava flows. So you can imagine the way these things work in Yellowstone, it's like a wall of rock, rubbly rock, that’s sort of moving across the landscape slowly. It's not something that you would ever have to worry about outrunning. You could walk away from it with no problem, just as you could those in Hawaii. But it's sort of like a mountain of rock that's moving like a tank tread across the landscape. That's what they look like in Yellowstone.
Wendy Corr
That is fascinating. Oh, my goodness. This is all such new information.
The other thing that we hear from people that get concerned about Yellowstone - and the fact that we're basically sitting right on top of, or right near, a massive magma lake underneath the ground - is these earthquakes, and the number of earthquakes and the earthquake swarms that we hear about. And they think, oh, no, these earthquake swarms are going to trigger a volcanic explosion. Tell us about that, because I know that you guys have said this over and over, they're two separate things.
Mike Poland
Yeah, so the earthquake activity in Yellowstone is really interesting. And most people know that earthquakes are an important precursor of a lot of volcanic eruptions, because as magma rises to the surface, it's got to crack its way up to the surface, and that cracking results in earthquakes. So at a place like Kilauea in Hawaii, before an eruption, you'll have really, really abundant earthquake activity. Before Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, and again in 2004, there was really, really abundant earthquake activity.
But at Yellowstone, there's ALWAYS really, really abundant earthquake activity. There's 1500 to 2500 earthquakes located every year. This is because, like geysers, volcanoes have personalities, like people. Every volcano is a little bit different. The way it behaves, in terms of its earthquake activity, is related to a lot of different factors, like how many faults exist in the ground that the volcano is located at, how much groundwater is moving around beneath the surface, how much tectonic stress is there. That's sort of basically, the forces that are moving the plates of the Earth around that or that occupy the surface of the Earth, how much stress is building up in this area. And Yellowstone has all of the ingredients for lots and lots of earthquakes.
First of all, it's got huge numbers of tectonic faults all through the region. And that's because it's sitting on the edge of the part of the Western US that's getting stretched apart.
So if you drive, say from the Tetons, down to Salt Lake City, and then all the way across to Reno, you will pass over mountains and into valleys, and over mountains and valleys. Every one of those mountain ranges is associated with a fault. And that whole area is being stretched. And Yellowstone basically sits on the eastern edge of this stretching area. So there are faults everywhere. The Tetons have a major fault lying right at their base, and that fault extends right up into the Yellowstone Area.
You also have tons and tons of water. Obviously, right? I mean geysers, hot springs galore. And huge amounts of snow fall in the Yellowstone region.
So you put all that together, you got all that tectonic stress, you have all these existing faults, and the water moving around under the surface, is a recipe for earthquakes. And the place is sort of weak to begin with, because of the heat from this magma body that's beneath the surface.
So the vast majority, I'd say almost every earthquake swarm is related to water moving around in the subsurface. There have only been one or maybe two earthquake swarms. And we thought, well, maybe that's related to something else happening beneath the surface. But it's pretty difficult to tell. It's pretty difficult to say that it's not just water, which is by far the most common thing in Yellowstone, that’s always happening. And there's swarms happening all the time. Last year, there were two dozen earthquake swarms, and as there are lots of earthquakes occurring in the same place in a short period of time. So that's just sort of the way Yellowstone works. It's a noisy place in terms of earthquakes.
Wendy Corr
But they're small earthquakes. You don't even feel them. You guys can hear them, but we don't ever feel them.
Mike Poland
Yeah, 99% of these earthquakes are magnitude two or below, basically not felt. Every year, there's usually just a small number that are felt. Last year, 2023, there was just one felt event, it was a magnitude 3.7. But this is an important aspect of the hazards in the region. I mean, a lot of people hear “Yellowstone,” they focus on the volcanic aspects of it. The earthquake hazards are far bigger on human timescales.
So you just have to go back to 1959, and there was a magnitude 7.3 earthquake at the Hebgen Lake area just west of the park. That is still the largest earthquake ever recorded in the intermountain west. And it caused a massive landslide that unfortunately went into a campground in the middle of the night, you know, 28 people were killed, it dammed the Madison River and created a new lake. I mean, it was a devastating event.
That kind of thing can happen again. It can happen in many different places in the intermountain west because of all of those faults, but it's particularly prone to happen in the Yellowstone region. There was a magnitude six in 1975 in the park. So I think that is sort of an underappreciated hazard by some people that think of Yellowstone as being just the volcanic area. But a strong earthquake is much, much, much more likely on human timescales.
Wendy Corr
That is, again, something that I don't think I've ever really heard of, or heard about. So yeah, another thing to add to the nightmares, right?
Mike Poland
Yeah, there's always something out there, earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanoes, there's always something. No matter where you live, there's always some aspects of the natural world that you’ve got to watch out for.
Wendy Corr
That's very true. Now, real quickly, tell us about the instrumentation that you, and the staff that you have there - how many people do you have there that are monitoring the seismic activity and the geysers? Do you guys also measure the heat of the lake and things like that? Is that something else that you do?
Mike Poland
Yeah, so Yellowstone is one of the best monitored systems in the world - volcanic systems. And occasionally, people ask me, Well, if you're not worried about an eruption, then why is it so well monitored? Well, that's a fair question. One of the reasons is because it's not, just as I said, it's not just about the volcanic activity - there is thermal activity that could result in steam explosions, there's earthquake activity that can be very, very strong. So we're monitoring for more than just volcanic activity. And it's also because the more we learn about Yellowstone, the more we can apply that knowledge to other similar places around the world. Like that volcano, I mentioned in Italy, things that we learn in Yellowstone can have some impact on what we know about systems like that.
So we've got really comprehensive monitoring of earthquake activity, there's 47 seismic stations in the Yellowstone Area. We're monitoring how the ground rises and falls. There's several dozen continuous GPS sensors, they measure really subtle, you know, just an inch or so of motion of how the ground moves - really, really precise. We've got measurements on some of the thermal features that are taking their temperature.
Basically, we look at the composition of the rivers, all of those hot springs are dumping their waters into rivers. And so we use the rivers as a delivery system. And if we see changes in the chemical makeup of the rivers, we can trace that back to, maybe there was a change in a thermal area. We've been using satellites to look at thermal features and how the overall amount of heat coming out of the Yellowstone system changes.
So we're really doing a comprehensive job, and that involves people from all over the place. And that's one of the things that I think really makes the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory unique, is that it's not just the USGS. It's a consortium of nine different institutions.
So it's USGS, it's Yellowstone National Park - they have a really great handle on monitoring the hydrothermal activity because they’re right there. The University of Utah handles all of the seismic monitoring, they've got a huge staff of people that are keeping an eye on that. There's a group called Earthscope that monitors the ground deformation, they maintain all of the sensors that track how the ground is moving. We've got the University of Wyoming and Montana State University, they're experts in hydrothermal activity and geology, and so they look at doing research on those aspects of the system. And then there's the state geologic surveys of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, that have expertise in geologic hazards and geographic information systems, and earthquake studies. So all nine of these institutions get together and work together to better understand Yellowstone.
I think that's a really nice strength, is having this diversity of skills and experiences and applying it to Yellowstone. It really produces some fantastic results. And it's fun to be able to work with people from all over the region who have different expertise.
Wendy Corr
And you have guests that come in from time to time, right, and people who do major projects? And they coordinate with you to work on those extra research projects.
Mike Poland
Yeah, Yellowstone is a natural laboratory, not just for things like microbiology or ecosystems, but also for geology. So there are a lot of folks from outside the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory consortium, other universities in the US and even around the world that come to Yellowstone to study the magmatic system beneath Yellowstone. How geysers work, the chemistry of hot springs, things of that nature.
And so one of the wonderful things about Yellowstone is that it is this natural laboratory, and also that the National Park Service encourages this kind of research. They're very good about making sure that the research doesn't impact the visitor experience, and it doesn't impact the environment. They're very careful. They're wonderful stewards for the environment, in my experience, but they also are open to the idea of making sure we learn from this amazing place, and the sorts of things that have come out boggle my mind sometimes and not just in the geological realm.
One of the greatest examples I can think of is, in the 1960s, a scientist took a sample from a hot spring of a bacteria, not really knowing what he was going to find out about it. And over the years, that bacteria became the basis for PCR testing, which we now use for testing a variety of biological things, including COVID-19. The basis for COVID-19 testing, PCR testing, is from a Yellowstone hot spring. That blows me away every time I think about it.
Wendy Corr
It blows me away too, because I know the scientist that collected that sample. I got a chance to interview him just a couple years ago. So it just is really fascinating, like you say, the biology and geology, and all of these other wonderful scientific communities can come together in Yellowstone Park, which Wyoming is so proud to be the host, and to have Yellowstone park within our borders.
Where is the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory located? Is it in the park?
Mike Poland
Well, it's kind of everywhere. So the Volcano Observatory does not have a physical location. Because we have this dispersed, you know, consortium sort of approach to the monitoring, we really exist sort of online, in a way. We all collaborate, and all the data that we produce, that's all online, and so the public can get it. Collaborators can get it, YVO consortium members can get it and look at it. And then we meet in Yellowstone pretty regularly. For example, there is a team of scientists from the Montana bureau of mines and geology and the Wyoming State Geological Survey that are studying a fault that's in the northwest part of Yellowstone National Park, they collaborate, get together in Yellowstone, do the mapping, and then go back to their their offices and work on the results. And then every two years, everyone meets, usually in the Mammoth Hot Springs area, and we talk about the research that's been done, and what we've learned, and make plans for the coming year or two or beyond, for the things that we want to be able to do, talk with the park about what their interests are and what they'd like to see in terms of the kinds of products we produce. So it's a really collaborative spirit that doesn't need a physical location, which I suppose is sort of appropriate for, you know, this day and age.
Wendy Corr
It really is - the original remote learning, right?
Mike Poland
Yeah, we were virtual before virtual was cool.
Wendy Corr
Mike, this has been just absolutely fascinating. If people want to know more about what you do, about what your associates do there at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, where can they go? What are the resources that you can send people to?
Mike Poland
We've got a number of ways that people could find out more. One is the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory website. One of the cool things about that, is right on the front is a map that has all of the monitoring stations in Yellowstone - gas monitoring, GPS stations, seismic monitoring, microphones, which we put out to listen to geysers. And you can click on the symbols and see the data. You can actually see the data that we're looking at for yourself through our monitoring map.
We do a weekly series of articles called Caldera Chronicles, that comes out every Monday morning, and it's always written by a different member of the YVO consortium. And they'll write about the research they're doing, or maybe the latest earthquake swarm or some other activity or some bit of history, or some geologic point of interest, in Yellowstone.
We do annual reports. So every year we summarize the activity that happened in terms of earthquakes and ground deformation, geyser activity, and the like. The 2023 report should be out before the summer comes up. So you can get that online for free.
And then we do monthly video updates as well, just to talk about the kinds of things that have been observed over the past month in terms of the earthquake activity and ground deformation, geysers, and usually some neat kind of science tidbits about the kinds of things we're learning about how Yellowstone works.
Wendy Corr
Mike, just to wrap up, tell us about what it means to you, as a geophysicist, as someone who's been fascinated by volcanoes from the time he was four or five years old. What does it mean to you to be there on the ground and studying this every day?
Mike Poland
It's special. I feel incredibly lucky, because I know that I've got the job that many, many of my colleagues wish they had. I’ve met a lot of students, I run into them doing research in the Park, and they tell me you know, I want your job. And I know why they say that, because I felt the same way when I was starting out in my career.
To be able to be this close to all of the cool things that are happening - and I'm not just talking about being close to geysers. That's really cool, to be clear, that's fun - but then to be next to all of these amazing scientists and to be part of the work they're doing, to learn about Yellowstone by talking to the experts every day is fascinating.
I'm a geophysicist, I'm terrible at chemistry. I'm terrible at biology. There's a reason I went towards physics and not chemistry and biology. But I have learned more about chemistry and biology in the last few years by talking to colleagues that study the microbes and hot springs, or the chemistry of the geyser systems. And it's all just so utterly fascinating. So I feel really lucky.
When I was a kid, we did our first big family camp out in Yellowstone in the ‘80s. And I've got a picture of myself standing next to Steamboat Geyser, as a, you know, 10 or 11 year old, whatever it was. And it's sort of crazy to think now, I've been on that platform countless times since, as a geologist studying Yellowstone. So in a lot of ways I feel like I had a connection to the place for a while. We went on many, many vacations there, and to be able to go there now, and try to learn something about the geology and work with incredibly bright people is a treat. I'm very fortunate.
Wendy Corr
Well, we are fortunate to have you there, and the people that you work with, and your colleagues there. Mike, thank you for really enlightening us today. Even for people who don't do science. I am not, I don't do science, but this has been absolutely fascinating. So thank you, Mike, very much.
Mike Poland
Thanks very much. I appreciate it.
Wendy Corr
You bet. And folks, thank you for tuning into our podcast, The Roundup, I'm your host, Wendy Corr. Tune in next week when we chat with another great Wyoming personality about the news and the views and the issues and the topics that are important to you. Have a great week!
