YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — In this week’s Caldera Chronicles, back after a pause during the government shutdown, the scientists of Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO) dig into what they consider one of the most interesting GPS stations in Yellowstone National Park (YNP).
The weekly column is written by the scientists and collaborators of YVO. This week’s edition, written by YVO Scientist-in-Charge Michael Poland, explains the recent repairs to the White Lake GPS station (known as WLWY) that had been malfunctioning for a year. WLWY is located approximately 8 miles east of Hayden Valley and about a mile southwest of White Lake on the Sour Creek resurgent dome. The dome is one of two uplifted areas in the caldera, having formed due to magma accumulation following the caldera-forming eruption of 631,000 years ago, per YVO. The other uplifted area is the Mallard Lake dome near Old Faithful.
In summer 2024, the WLWY station malfunctioned, having stopped collecting data. Due to the station’s remote location and other demands on the park’s helicopter access, a repair visit had to wait until September 2025, when engineers discovered that water had accumulated around an antenna cable, causing corrosion.
“The engineers replaced the cable, restoring connectivity between the receiver and the antenna,” Poland wrote. They also moved the GPS receiver closer to solar and battery power sources and added a new battery to the system. “Then, they replaced the radio link, which had connected the site to a radio hub at Mount Washburn several miles to the north, with a cellular modem. The new modem is much faster and allows data to be collected at high rates and even downloaded in real time, if needed — something that wasn’t possible using the older radio connection. Finally, the engineers added meteorological sensors that log temperature, barometric pressure, and other conditions — useful information when trying to understand how apparent motion of the GPS station might be related to changing weather.”
Poland and YVO detail the process and its importance to their work in the lab’s latest YouTube video:
“The improvements at WLWY should ensure that the site continues to provide high-quality ground deformation data from the Sour Creek resurgent dome for many years to come,” Poland wrote. “Thanks to EarthScope engineers Brendan Hodge and Lia Lajoie for their excellent work!”
Learn more about YVO here.
