[Geysers] Oscillating pairs of springs/geysers

[JEFFREY CROSS]

The Bead-Terracette pair oscillates as part of a regular cycle.  I'm unsure exactly what you mean by "chaotically."

Other pairs:
Minute Man and Minute Man's Pool
Daisy and Splendid
Beauty Pool and Chromatic Spring
Grotto and Rocket

The list could be a lot longer.

In his report on Beowawe (USGS Bulletin 1998), Donald White shows an exemplary graph of reciprocating water levels in Frying Pan Geyser and a nearby related hot spring.

The Cistern Spring-Steamboat connection is really fascinating because it disproves the notion that hydrologically isolated geysers are always regular.  Marler suggested that Old Faithful has been a regular performer over the Park's entire history because it is an isolated unit.  Fine, but Steamboat is nearly an isolated unit, and it has been undependable for most of its history.  White Dome Geyser is also very irregular, despite all the eruptions being very nearly the same length.  (See the upcoming Transactions for a nice analysis of the interval-duration relationship of White Dome.)  Regular geysers need not be isolated, either.  Daisy Geyser is often a regular performer, despite its intimate connections with nearly every other thermal feature in the vicinity.  It is true that Daisy dominates its neighbors most of the time, and that this dominance results in Daisy's regular performances.

Jeff Cross
jeff.cross at utah.edu

________________________________________
From: geysers-bounces at lists.wallawalla.edu [geysers-bounces at lists.wallawalla.edu] on behalf of Davis, Brian L. [brdavis at iusb.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 7:40 AM
To: geysers at lists.wallawalla.edu
Subject: [Geysers] Oscillating pairs of springs/geysers

Reading through "Geyser of Yellowstone" yet again, the description of Bead Geyser & "Terracette Spring" caught my eye. Evidently when water levels in Bead fall, "Terracette Spring" rises a few inches. Do these oscillate periodically, or chaotically? In a similar fashion when Steamboat erupts Cistern Spring can drop very deeply. What are some other common examples of this synchronicity between two or more features? Are many of these periodic pairs? At one point I developed a model that showed some of these behaviors, (in an attempt to understand Cistern Spring), but it confused me and I moved on... now I'm curious again?

So... favorite periodic pairs, with oscillation periods if known?

--
Brian Davis
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