In news– Yellowstone National Park in US has celebrated its 151st anniversary recently.
About Yellowstone National Park-
- It is a national park located in the western United States, largely in the northwest corner of Wyoming and extending into Montana and Idaho.
- It spans an area of over 9,000 sq. km comprising lakes, canyons, rivers, iconic geothermal features such as the Old Faithful geyser, and mountain ranges.
- It was established by the U.S. Congress on March 1, 1872.
- Native Americans were hunting and gathering here for at least 11,000 years. They were pushed out by the government after the park was established.
- In the lead up to Yellowstone becoming a national park, three major expeditions – in 1869,1870 and 1871 – raised public awareness of the area’s natural beauty.
- The last of these, known as the Hayden expedition, was particularly important.
- Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world.
- The park is known for many geothermal features, especially Old Faithful geysers.
- It is situated in a region that has been volcanically and seismically active for tens of millions of years.
- Tectonic movement of the North American Plate has thinned Earth’s crust in the area, forming a hot spot (a place where a dome of magma, or molten rock, comes close to the surface).
- While it represents many types of biomes, the subalpine forest is the most abundant.
- It is part of the South Central Rockies forest ecoregion.
- Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-elevation lakes in North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano in North America.
- Over half of the world’s geysers and hydrothermal features are in Yellowstone, fueled by this ongoing volcanism.
- In 1978, Yellowstone was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- The rivers of the Snake-Columbia basin, Green-Colorado basin, and Missouri River Basin all begin as snow on the Continental Divide as it weaves across Yellowstone’s peaks and plateaus.
- Grizzly bears, wolves, and free-ranging herds of bison and elk live in this park.
- The Continental Divide of North America runs diagonally through the southwestern part of the park.
- The highest point in the park is atop Eagle Peak and the lowest is along Reese Creek.
- The most prominent summit on the Yellowstone Plateau is Mount Washburn.
- It has one of the world’s largest petrified forests, trees which were long ago buried by ash and soil and transformed from wood to mineral materials.
