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	Podcast:		Aspen Public Radio Podcasts
	Episode:		In Yellowstone, America’s 'First Water Park,' Decades-Old Blaze Marked Start Of Megafire Era
	Category:		Government & Organizations
	Duration:		00:05:08
	Publish Date:		2020-10-12 12:00:00
	Description:		National Park Service hydrologist Erin White likes to call Yellowstone “America’s first water park.” It’s home to the headwaters of multiple major rivers and hundreds of waterfalls. Thousands of geysers, mudpots, and hot springs—heated by an underground supervolcano—gush, bubble, and boil in the national park’s 2.2 million acres, too. These waters comprise one of the largest nearly intact temperate ecosystems in the world. So when a series of lightning strikes sparked the 1988 fires that torched more than a third of America’s first national park, the nation was captivated—if not devastated. The flames touched nearly every landscape in some way and “very few watersheds were not impacted,” White said. The wildfires had implications that stretched beyond the park’s boundaries too. They marked a paradigm shift, ushering in a new chapter of massive, frequent fires that communities across the American West face today. But they also deepened our understanding of wildfires from a destructive
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