Images

View of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō crater, looking northwest. The floor of the crater was paved in late August by lava that erupted from a vent at the northeast edge of the crater, which is the heavily fuming area to the right.

This bathymetric grid represents approximately 3900 kilometers of bathymetric data collected in 2014. These data were collected using a dual-head R2Sonic 2024 multibeam echosounder (MBES) by Alpine Ocean Seismic Survey, Inc., during USGS field activity 2014-072-FA.

George Kojima, circa 1959, analyzing volcanic gases using the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory's state-of-the-art (at the time) mass spectrometer. USGS photo.

This satellite image was captured on Wednesday, September 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.

A time-averaged image from Duck, North Carolina, on September 1, 2015. Dark bands extending offshore from the beach show the rip current channels.

A large breakout from the lava tube on the north side of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō yesterday (August 27) formed a large channelized flow, but it did not last long. The activity died in the evening, the same day, and traveled only about 500 m (about 550 yards).

As magma rises toward Earth's surface, gases dissolved in the molten rock bubble out and escape through surface vents called fumaroles. HVO established sensors atop Mauna Loa in late 2005 to continuously monitor the concentration of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide gases and fumarole temperature within Moku‘āweoweo, the summit caldera.

Divers prepare patterns of known targets for verification of sonar resolution.

A tiny lava pond, about 10 m (33 ft) across, was visible within a vent near the south edge of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō's crater. Can you spot it? It's near the center of the photograph.

Yesterday's lava flows in Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō erupted from a vent at the northeast edge of the crater and added a new layer to the crater floor. This photograph looks northeast across the relatively smooth crater floor toward the vent that erupted, which is a spatter cone that appears as a faintly visible mound in the fume in the background.

This photo is from within the crater, looking back at the USGS scientist who took the adjacent photo.

USGS scientists make observations from the edge of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō's current crater. Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō's high point - the northwestern remnant of the original cone that formed in the 1980's - is in the background. This higher ground provides a good perch for some of HVO's webcams, near upper right.

View of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō crater, looking south. The floor of the crater was resurfaced yesterday (August 27) by lava flows erupting from a vent at the northeast edge of the crater (fuming area to the left).

View of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō from the south side, looking north. The current crater in Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō is only about half the diameter of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō's previous crater, which is defined by the rim of the tephra cone remnants in the foreground and background. That older crater's western edge extended to about the left edge of the photograph.

A piece of the new flow on the crater floor was collected for chemical analysis. Can you spot the USGS geologist collecting the sample? He is just below the center of the photograph. The small lava pond is just above center, partly hidden by a small spatter mound.

This map shows recent changes to Kīlauea's active East Rift Zone lava flow field. The area of the flow on August 5 is shown in pink, while widening and advancement of the flow as of August 26 is shown in red. The yellow lines show the active lava tube system. Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō lava flows erupted prior to June 27, 2014, are shown in gray.

Two of three lava flows that raced down the southwest slope of Mauna Loa on June 2, 1950, are shown here. As lava entered the ocean, steaming water marked its offshore course. A semicircular area of hot, turbulent water killed many fish that were seen drifting on currents or washing up on shore over the next few days. Photo courtesy of U.S. Air Force.

Scientists, civil authorities, and emergency managers from Chile and the U.S. met in California to discuss the challenges of effective volcanic hazard education, response planning, hazard mitigation, and risk reduction, as part of the second Bi-national Exchange program for Volcanic Risk Reduction in the Americas.

This volcanic-gas monitoring station installed at Mount St. Helens consists of weather monitoring equipment and sensors for measuring the concentrations of water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in volcanic gas plumes.

Sediment-laden White River 11 km downstream of the OR35 bridge. Heavy rains resulted in high-sediment loads within this river, which drains Mount Hood, Oregon.

View from the OR35 bridge over the White River looking downstream. Glistening areas are deposits from recent debris flows.