ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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Yellowstone National Park () is a protected area located in the United States, named World Heritage by UNESCO and three states, i.e. the North-West section of Wyoming (mostly), the South-East of Idaho (at the border with the national forest of Caribou-Targhee) and the South-West of Montana (near Gallatin National Forest). Founded on 1 March 1872 by President Ulysses S. Grant, Yellowstone is the oldest national park in the world and extends over a larger area than the whole of Corsica and slightly below Cyprus. The park is known for its diverse wildlife and its numerous geothermal features, especially the geyser of Old Faithful, among the most famous and picturesque of the place. Among the many ecosystems that include, that of the subalpine forest is the largest; the park, in turn, falls in terms of classification in the vast terrestrial ecoregion of the forests of the Central-South Rocky Mountains.

Despite Native Americans having lived in the Yellowstone region for at least years, apart from the widespread visits made by Europeans before the mid-19th century, the exploration season began only in the late 1860s. The management and control of the park remained in principle under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Interior, with the banker and jurist Columbus Delano who was the first Secretary of the Interior to watch over the protected area. Later, the U.S. Army was commissioned to oversee the management of Yellowstone for thirty years between 1886 and 1916. In 1917, the administration of the park was headed by the National Park Service (NPS), established the previous year; since then, hundreds of structures were built and among them some were later recognized as worthy of an even greater protection for their historical and architectural value. Also in the twentieth century, researchers began to examine more than a thousand sites of archaeological interest.

Inside its vast perimeter, it includes canyons, rivers, mountain chains and lakes: about the water mirrors, Lake Yellowstone is one of the largest high-altitude lakes in North America and overlooks the Yellowstone caldera, the largest supervulcan in the world considered dormant. The last time it exploded, it caused devastating eruptions on several occasions over the last two million years. More than half of the geysers and the world's hydrothermal sources are located in Yellowstone, all powered by this current volcanism. The lava flows and rocks of volcanic eruptions cover most of the Earth's area of Yellowstone: the protected area houses the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem), the largest complex of its kind remained almost intact on Earth in the northern temperate zone. In 1978, Yellowstone was named