Image of area around flow front

This map uses a satellite image acquired in March 2014 (provided by Digital Globe) as a base to show the area around the front of Kīlauea's active East Rift Zone lava flow. The area of the flow early yesterday morning (December 15) is shown in pink, while advancement of the flow as mapped on December 16 at 11:15 AM is shown in red.

The active tip of the flow was about 1.5 km (~0.9 miles) from the upslope edge of the Pahoa Marketplace along the path of steepest descent that the flow is currently following. The flow width varies from about 30 to 230 m (33 to 250 yd), and the current flow front is near this maximum width. Tick marks have been placed along the steepest-descent path at an interval of 0.4 miles, measured from Pahoa Marketplace.

The blue lines show steepest-descent paths calculated from a 1983 digital elevation model (DEM; for calculation details, see http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2007/1264/). Steepest-descent path analysis is based on the assumption that the DEM perfectly represents the earth's surface. DEMs, however, are not perfect, so the blue lines on this map can be used to infer only approximate flow paths.