Images

The colorful caldera lake at Kīlauea summit. The view is from the western rim of Halema‘uma‘u crater, 1900 ft (580 m) above the water surface, in a restricted area of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park. USGS photo by M. Patrick 08/25/2020.

ANIMATED GIF: Saturday, July 25, marks the one year anniversary since water was first spotted at the bottom of Halema‘uma‘u, at the summit of Kīlauea. Over the past year, the summit water lake has grown to more than 270 m (885 ft) long and 131 m (430 ft) wide, with a surface area over 2.5 hectares (6 acres).

Kīlauea

Summit crater lake growth

July 25, 2019 to July 25, 2020

Comparison of images showing growth of Kīlauea's summit water lake over the past year. The left image, taken on August 2, 2019, shows a small green pond that was approximately 6 ft (2 m) deep. The right image, taken on July 21, 2020, shows a lake more than 130 ft (40 m) deep with shades of tan to brown and a sharp color boundary often cutting across the lake.

The Raspberry Shake 4D (RS4D) is a personal seismograph with a vertical-component velocity transducer, and three-component (vertical, north-south, and east-west) accelerometer. A Raspberry Pi, which is a computer about the size of a credit card, powers the RS4D unit, which is about the size of a can of Spam.

Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) electronics technician Steven Fuke stands near a solar panel system that powers a volcano-monitoring station. 

A GPS station that monitors ground deformation on Kīlauea Volcano, one of the approximately 240 volcano-monitoring stations that Steven Fuke, as part of the HVO Technician Group, designs, installs, and maintains. 

The May 29 overflight provided updated thermal images of Kīlauea summit, covering the caldera floor and showing the warm surface of the water lake in Halema‘uma‘u crater. No significant changes were observed in the surface temperature of Kīlauea's summit crater lake.

The May 29 overflight provided updated aerial photographs of Kīlauea summit, covering the caldera floor and showing the current size of the water lake in Halema‘uma‘u crater.

Steep walls, collapsed blocks, and rubble border Halema‘uma‘u Crater and Kīlauea's growing summit crater lake. In this photo, looking northwest, the summits of both Kīlauea (foreground) and Mauna Loa (background) are visible. USGS photos by K. Mulliken

This series of maps compares aerial imagery collected prior to Kīlauea's 2018 summit collapse and the "Geologic Map of the Summit Region of Kīlauea Volcano, Hawaii" (Dutton and others, 2007; Neal and others, 2003)—created before Kīlauea's 2018 summit collapse—with aerial imagery collected after the 2018 summit collapse and a preliminary update to Kīlauea's summit ge

May 2020 earthquake swarm at Lōʻihi seamount

_{A map of the lower East Rift Zone of Kīlauea Volcano showing the fissures and flow fields from the 1955 (blue) and 2018 (pink) eruptions. Portions of the 1955 lava flows that were covered during the 2018 eruption, are represented with a blue outline.}
 

HVO technician inspects power/communication station at Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō on on April 16, 2020. USGS photos by F. Younger.

View of the recently cleared Boiling Pots on the Wailuku River in Hilo. The pots, each about 15 m (50 ft) in diameter, are eroded into a 10,000 year old Mauna Loa lava flow. When the water is low, the river does not flow over some of the pot rims but it continues to flow through them.

Clear weather allowed HVO geologists to make observations and take measurements of the water pond at Kīlauea's summit. No major changes were observed, and the water level continues to slowly rise. Note the former HVO observation tower can be seen above the geologist's helmet. 

Example 2-hours of seismic data from station near Mauna Kea on April 14, 2020. The large spikes are earthquakes under Mauna Kea repeating every ~11 minutes. Bottom waveform zooms in on 15 seconds of an individual event.

Scanning electron microprobe images show the complexity of tiny Icelandic ash grains (150 micron, or 0.006 inch). Image (a) shows a dense and blocky grain, and (b) shows a foamy grain.

This section of brown Icelandic soil (top) contains 800 years of ash deposits erupted from five different volcanoes. The black layers, 5-10 cm (2-4 in) thick, are from Katla Volcano. A white arrow points to a closeup of the 1755 Katla ash deposit (lower left).

Aerial view of a bomb detonating on Mauna Loa near the source of the 1935 Humu‘ula lava flow on the morning of December 27, 1935. This was one of 20 demolition bombs dropped on the lava flow that morning by the Army Bombing Squadron from Luke Field, O‘ahu.

A U.S. Army Air Corps biplane is prepared for a mission to drop bombs on a lava flow advancing toward Hilo during the Mauna Loa 1935 eruption.