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Robert Smith was on Yellowstone Lake in the mid-1970s when he noticed something amiss with the pines growing on the south shore. They weren't healthy, but there was no obvious explanation.
"I realized it was a bathtub ring. The land was tilting," said the University of Utah geophysicist. That realization helped drive Smith's long-term investigation into the seismic and volcanic processes under Yellowstone National Park.
That work will be recognized this fall when the U.S. Geological Survey gives Smith its top honor for scientists outside federal employment. It's the second time in four years that a U. geology professor has landed the John Wesley Powell award.
"Bob has been the go-to guy for decades on Yellowstone and Yellowstone seismicity and has been such a great friend to USGS," said agency director Marcia McNutt. "We look forward to many more years of productive collaboration with this stellar scientist."
The honor is named after the 19th-century explorer who developed the first detailed reports of the Colorado Plateau and was the USGS's second director. It recognizes achievements that advance the agency's mission, which is to provide scientific information about earthquake hazards, the health of the environment, and the management of natural resources.
U. seismologist Walter Arabasz, now retired, won the award in 2007.
Smith is an emeritus professor and researcher who identified and characterized a vast magma plume and related magma chamber associated with the breathing-like rise and fall of Yellowstone, and its frequent earthquakes and famous thermal features. The plume, which plunges at least 700 miles into the Earth's mantle, periodically recharges a magma chamber below the Yellowstone caldera, the remnant of a supervolcano that last exploded 600,000 years ago, according to Smith's research. The chamber causes the caldera to rise and subside every several years, distorting Yellowstone Lake's shoreline and triggering "swarms" of minor earthquakes.
Smith has supervised 68 graduate students on the Yellowstone investigations.
"It's a very serious group effort, and the university has been very supportive," he said.
In a letter Smith received July 18, McNutt praised his work on the causes and effects of earthquakes, operation of the network that records quakes in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, and his role with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
Smith first started studying Yellowstone in 1956 and continued pursuing that interest after joining the U. faculty almost a decade later.
It's been an amazing career. When I first came to Utah, I noticed all these [Yellowstone] earthquakes and no one has been doing anything with it," said Smith, who now lives outside of Jackson, Wyo., and remains active in field research and gives frequent public presentations, including one Thursday at a research center in Grand Teton National Park.
He is currently leading an effort to upgrade the network of seismic monitoring equipment in place around the Yellowstone region with federal stimulus money funneled through the USGS.