Image of area around front of Kīlauea's ERZ lava flow

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 on December 1, 2014, at 11:30 AM is shown in pink, while widening and advancement of the flow as mapped on December 9 at 2:30 PM is shown in red.

Most surface flow activity is focused into a narrow lobe that branches off the west edge of the flow field north of the East Rift Zone crack system. The front of this finger (19.487854, -154.983492 Decimal Degrees) was 3.4 km (2.1 mi) upslope from the intersection of Highway 130 and Pahoa Village Road at the Pahoa Marketplace, at an elevation of 275 meters (900 ft).

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. All older Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō lava flows (1983-2014) are shown in gray; the yellow line marks the active lava tube.