Volcano Watch

The lava lake deep within Kīlauea's currently active summit vent is known for being a bit capricious.

Many people visit the Footprints Area on the southwest rift zone of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park. If lucky, they find human footprints indenting a...

Footsteps. Jumping up and down. Wind, machinery, traffic, surf. Many things shake the ground.

E.T., the stranded alien botanist from the blockbuster 1982 movie, may have been the most popular extraterrestrial in recent history; but he had no...

The Puhi-o-Kalaikini lava delta in Kalapana abruptly shed its western edge last week—no injuries or deaths this time. The Puhi-o-Kalaikini lava delta...

The eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano in April created what has been called the worst disruption of European and global air transport...

In 2003, almost two-thirds of the Kahuku Ranch in south Hawai‘i Island was purchased by the Nature Conservancy and Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park...

Hawai‘i is the quintessential "hotspot." The geologic definition of a "hotspot" is that region of the Earth beneath an area that has experienced high...

Humans seem to have a limited ability to remember disasters. Some researchers who study disaster preparedness and risk mitigation speculate that...

Seventy-six years ago—on October 8, 1934—a 33-day-long eruption in Halema‘uma‘u Crater came to an end. This eruption began after almost three years of...

"Volcano Watch is a weekly article and activity update written by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory." These...

For the last several years, scientists at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) have made use of a satellite-monitoring method called InSAR, which...

Disaster movie fans may remember the 2000 film "The Perfect Storm," in which economic hardship drives a fishing boat to risk a late-season expedition...

How long is the warning between the first rumblings of a volcano and its eruption? This haunting question was raised anew with the eruption of the...

There's a new volcanology book available from a Hawai‘i-based volcanologist, the first in almost 40 years.

Like other volcano observatories, HVO devotes most of its resources to volcano monitoring, using time-tested methods that have been found to deliver...

Anyone looking at a map of the Pacific cannot help but be astounded by the feat of the first Polynesian navigators to these isolated islands of Hawai...

It may surprise some readers that the Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō eruption, now halfway through its 28th year of almost continuous activity, is not the longest-running...

Last week, Ken Honma bid farewell to friends and colleagues at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) as he retired from a U.S. Geological Survey...

Most readers will see the headline and think it refers to events in Kalapana this past week. The title is actually from a back page story in the...