The Yellowstone hotspot is the region of anomalous volcanism and subsurface thermal structure associated with Yellowstone and the younger end of the eastern Snake River Plain. The observed volcanic progression constrains a relative history of the surface plate and the source of heat; it does not by itself prove an immobile vertical conduit.
Laboratory experiments have tested how subduction-driven mantle flow can distort a buoyant mantle plume and produce contrasting surface thermal progressions. This provides a physical mechanism to compare with the Snake River Plain and High Lava Plains patterns, while remaining conditional on the model geometry and flow properties.[ref]
Bifurcation of the Yellowstone plume driven by subduction-induced mantle flow by Christopher Kincaid and others. Abstract: laboratory plume–subduction interaction and opposite volcanic progressions
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