The Northern Sylvan Springs area (in the Gibbon Geyser Basin) has historically been seismically active. It is suspected that the 1959 Hegben Lake earthquake was responsible for the creation of Sylvan Spring, the largest pool in the group, and the transformation of several other features. This event likely changed the arrangement of faults and fissures in the underlying bedrock allowing large volumes of reduced gases to flow into the previously hot-water-dominated system. The resulting terrain is a highly chemically weathered tuff, often consisting only of residual piles of pure quartz sand. Now an acid-sulfate-chloride hot spring system, hot springs in the area are commonly acidic (pH 1-2) with a few circumneutral and alkaline features existing at higher elevations.

DEAPS students conducted a study of geochemistry in the Sylvan Springs area, focusing on changes in temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and sulfide concentrations as a function of potential biological activity and distance along an acidic outflow channel. Active communities of photosynthetic and chemosynthetic microorganisms, adapted to life at high temperatures and low pH, are known to affect sulfur redox chemistry in this system.