2003 Field Season in Yellowstone

This year was our first expedition from ASU and marked the beginning of several new projects.  The group from ASU included Melanie Holland, Jeff Havig, Todd Windman, Eileen Dunn, Beth Martin, Alysia Cox, and Nathan Schnebly.  We were joined by D’Arcy Meyer-Dombard and Maggie Osburn from Washington University, Bethany Burnett from University of New Mexico, Tom McCollom from University of Colorado, Roger Summons and Alex Bradley from MIT, and Peter Schultheiss from Geotek.

Using maps made by Bob Osburn on previous Yellowstone trips in 1999-2001 we expanded our sampling of hydrothermal ecosystems to include bio-films, dissolved organic compounds, dissolved gases, and the photosynthetic fringe.  Jeff is seeking diverse bio-signatures of strictly microbial communities with the aim of expanding the lines of evidence used to explore the geologic record of life.  Todd began a project to characterize the most abundant organic compounds dissolved in hot spring fluids, with the aims of testing ideas about the reactivity of organic compounds in hydrothermal systems and characterizing the carbon sources used by thermophilic heterotrophs. Mel and Peter employed new methods to sample dissolved gases, which yielded excellent results in the field.  They discovered problems with sample preservation, which need to be overcome before our next trip (!) Bethany, who is working with Tobias Fischer to characterize hydrocarbons in gases from Yellowstone, taught Tom and Eileen how to take gas samples with Giggenbach bottles and we greatly increased our number and variety of gas samples.  The edge of photosynthesis was Alysia’s focus this summer and the project is evolving into her senior thesis.  Watch for a poster presentation at AGU this fall!  Meanwhile, Beth, Maggie, and Nathan ran the sampling and spectrophotometry effort.  Their accomplishments far surpassed any of our previous expeditions, once again proving what can be done when we finally wise-up and put the undergrads in charge!!

We found new changes in the area around Obsidian Pool, which seems to be one of the most variable places where we’ve worked.  We expanded our sampling in White Creek, Sentinel Meadows, and other Lower Geyser Basin areas, assembled another assault on Washburn Springs, and thoroughly examined the Sylvan Springs system.  We now have data spanning five years from multiple locations and are beginning to get a picture of temporal variations.  All our geochemical data are being processed through thermodynamic calculations to yield energetics, trace element speciation, and the first steps toward characterizing nutrient cycles.