Images

Forest cover being removed for cattle pasturage and development. Smoke from bulldozed trees is visible in background with cattle in the foreground.

Forest cover being removed for cattle pasturage and development. Bulldozer and smoke from bulldozed trees in the background with cattle in the foreground.

Forest cover being removed for cattle pasturage and development. Smoke from bulldozed trees is visible in background with cattle in the foreground.

Kīlauea Volcano's summit eruption began on March 19, 2008, and continues today. The lava lake is contained within the Overlook crater, which is set within the larger Halema‘uma‘u Crater. In this February 28, 2016, photo, the lava lake surface was just 30 m (100 ft) below the rim of the Overlook crater. Spattering is visible in the southeast portion of the lake.

Thomas A. Jaggar founded the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory in 1912 and served as its Director until 1940.  Shown here in 1925, Jaggar is at work in HVO's first building, which, at the time, was located on the northeast rim of Kīlauea Volcano’s summit caldera, near the present-day Volcano House hotel.

USGS researcher Craig Allen stands on the edge of Mesa Alta, amid diverse forest and woodland in the uplands of northern New Mexico; note some recently dead ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir in the field of view. Forest drought stress is strongly correlated with tree mortality from poor growth, bark beetle outbreaks, and high-severity fire.

This landslide occurred at La Conchita, California in 2005. Ten people were killed.

Rush River at Amenia, North Dakota, streamflow 1,650 cubic feet per second,  looking upstream.  Photograph taken during spring 2009 flooding.

2006 Rockslide on Ferguson-Hwy 140 in California along the Merced River about 8 miles west of El Portal and the entrance of Yosemite National Park.

Footprints made in muddy ash during Kilauea's 1790 eruption are reminders that people experienced the largest explosive eruption in Hawai‘i in 1,000 years. More than 80, and possibly several hundred, people were killed by the eruption soon after the footprints were made.

Debris flow deposits in Stevens Creek fan near Durango, Colorado. This area is in a drainage basin burned by the 2002 Missionary Ridge Fire in Colorado.

A massive forest die-off is projected to occur more frequently in the Southwest. Piñon pines, normally evergreen, have reddish-brown foliage in October 2002 (left). By May 2004 (right), the dead piñon pines have lost all their needles, exposing gray trunks and branches. The photos were taken from the same vantage point near Los Alamos, N.M.

USGS scientist Jimmy Hopkins takes a streamflow measurement on the Sabine River on March 12 near Bon Weir, Texas.

This satellite image was captured on March 2 by the Advanced Land Imager instrument onboard NASA's Earth Observing 1 satellite. The image is provided courtesy of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Although this is a false-color image, the color map has been chosen to mimic what the human eye would expect to see.

This Quicktime video shows spattering activity at a small vent in Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō Crater.

A closer look at the active flow in Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō crater, with a small vent in the distance throwing spatter.

Small vents in the southern portion of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō crater have been active recently, and erupting new lava flows onto the floor of the crater. The light-colored flow in the center of the photograph was active this morning, and slowly spreading across the crater floor.

Scattered breakouts remain active northeast of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō, with the farthest activity slightly more than 6 km (3.7 miles) from the vent. Some of the breakouts were active along the forest boundary, creating small brush fires. Other breakouts, like the one shown in this photograph, are covering earlier portions of the flow field.

An HVO geologist carefully approaches a skylight on the June 27th lava tube. The skylight provided a view into the lava tube, and revealed a swiftly moving lava stream.

A vent in the southern portion of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō Crater contained a small lava pond and was throwing spatter a short distance. The accumulated spatter has built a small cone around the opening. A thick layer of Pele's hair covers the far side of the cone.

During a 2015 field trip with Franklin and Marshall College students, Don Swanson, a geologist at the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, demonstrates that reticulite (frothy basalt, less dense than pumice, explosively erupted in lava fountains) sinks, rather than floats, in water due to its high permeability.