Publications

At 0258 Hawaii‐Aleutian Standard Time (HST) on 19 March 2008, a small explosion scattered altered and fresh lithic debris across a 40‐hectare area at the summit of Kilauea volcano. This explosion, the first recorded there since 1924, issued from a vent about 35 meters wide along the east wall of Halema'uma'u Crater. Ballistic fragments—the largest measuring nearly 1 meter across—were...

The first eruptive activity at Kīlauea Volcano’s summit in 25 years began in March 2008 with the opening of a 35-m-wide vent in Halema‘uma‘u crater. The new activity has produced prominent very-long-period (VLP) signals corresponding with two new behaviors: episodic tremor bursts and small explosive events, both of which represent degassing events from the top of the lava column...

The Volcano Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is part of the Geologic Hazards Assessments subactivity as funded by congressional appropriation. Investigations are carried out in the USGS and with cooperators at the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, University of Hawaii Manoa and Hilo, University...

The operational version of the United States Geological Survey one-minute Dst index (a global geomagnetic disturbance-intensity index for scientific studies and definition of space-weather effects) uses either four- or three-station input (including Honolulu, Hawaii; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Hermanus, South Africa; and Kakioka, Japan; or Honolulu, San Juan and Guam) and a method based on...

In late 2007, a perched lava channel, built up to 45 m above the preexisting surface, developed during the ongoing eruption near Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō cone on Kīlauea Volcano’s east rift zone. The lava channel was segmented into four pools extending over a total of 1.4 km. From late October to mid-December, a cyclic behavior, consisting of steady lava level rise terminated by vigorous spattering and...

The spatiotemporal patterns of seismicity beneath Kilauea's south flank give insight to the structure and geometry of the decollement on which large, tsunamigenic earthquakes have occurred, and its relation to slow slip events (SSEs), which have been observed every 1 to 2 years since 1997. In order to record earthquakes triggered by a SSE that was predicted to occur in March 2007, a...

We study the source process of the Kīholo Bay earthquake (MW 6.7), which occurred beneath the northwest part of the Island of Hawai‘i on 15 October 2006, and static stress drops of small earthquakes that occurred in 2006 and 2007 around the main shock including aftershocks. We relocate the aftershocks to determine the fault plane from the two nodal planes. The relocated aftershocks...

The United States is one of the most volcanically active countries in the world. According to the global volcanism database of the Smithsonian Institution, the United States (including its Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands) is home to about 170 volcanoes that are in an eruptive phase, have erupted in historical time, or have not erupted recently but are young enough (eruptions...

The formation, evolution, collapse, and subsequent resurrection of a vent within Halema'uma'u Crater, Kilauea Volcano, produced energetic and varied degassing signals recorded by a nearby infrasound array between 2008 and early 2009. After 25 years of quiescence, a vent-clearing explosive burst on 19 March 2008 produced a clear, complex acoustic signal. Near-continuous harmonic...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) summary presents seismic data gathered during the year. The seismic summary is offered without interpretation as a source of preliminary data and is complete in that most data for events of M greater than 1.5 are included. All latitude and longitude references in this report are stated in Old Hawaiian Datum. The HVO...

The opening of a new vent within Halema'uma'u Crater in March 2008 ended a 26-year period of no eruptive activity at the summit of Kilauea Volcano. It also heralded the first explosive activity at Kilauea's summit since 1924 and the first of eight discrete explosive events in 2008. At the onset of the eruption, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) initiated a rigorous program of sample

Radiocarbon dates have been obtained for 30 charcoal samples corresponding to 27 surface lava flows from the Mauna Loa and Kilauea volcanoes on the Island of Hawaii. The submitted charcoal was a mixture of fresh and archived material. Preparation and analysis was undertaken at the NERC Radiocarbon Laboratory in Glasgow, Scotland, and the associated SUERC Accelerator Mass Spectrometry...