New USGS Data Releases

If you have questions or comments about these data release products, please email askHVO@usgs.gov.

Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details

Timelapse camera and webcam images of the fissure 8 lava flow during the 2018 lower East Rift Zone eruption of Kīlauea volcano, Island of Hawaiʻi

Patrick and others (2024), view the data here: https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/651883ecd34e44db0e2c9909

The 2018 lower East Rift Zone eruption of Kīlauea volcano, Island of Hawaiʻi, was one of the most destructive effusive eruptions worldwide in the past century, destroying over 700 structures.  Between May and September 2018, a total of 24 fissures opened, producing a lava flow field with an area of 36 km2.  By the end of May, the eruption had focused at fissure 8, which produced the dominant lava flow of the eruption.  While monitoring the fissure 8 flow and its hazards, staff from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory placed several small timelapse cameras near the flow margin to better track and understand the flow changes.  This data release includes images collected by five timelapse cameras, consisting of two deployment locations.  One deployment location was close to the vent, and imaged the proximal portion (also called the “spillway”) of the fissure 8 flow.  The second deployment location was 10 km downflow, on high ground in an active quarry on the cinder cone from the 1960 eruption. 

Thermal camera images of lava lake and crater filling activity at Puʻuʻōʻō, East Rift Zone of Kīlauea Volcano,

 Island of Hawaiʻi, 2011-2019

Patrick and others (2024), view the data here: https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/653b1c26d34ee4b6e05bc0e6

The 35-year-long Puʻuʻōʻō eruption, on the East Rift Zone of Kīlauea Volcano, was the longest volcanic eruption on the Island of Hawaiʻi in the past 100 years. The eruption, whose vent area was focused at and around Puʻuʻōʻō cone, produced episodic fountaining in its initial few years followed by decades of effusive activity that created an expansive lava flow field. While vents erupted on the flank of the cone, the activity within the cone’s crater often consisted of lava lakes, lava flows, and small spattering hornitos. The crater also experienced several cycles of gradual crater filling culminating in abrupt crater draining, via vents on the cone flanks.  Activity within Puʻuʻōʻō abruptly ended on April 30, 2018, when magma migrated into the lower East Rift Zone, triggering the destructive eruption in Leilani Estates and nearby regions.  To capture and document this dynamic behavior within the crater, a thermal camera was deployed on the rim of Puʻuʻōʻō crater in March 2011 by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. This data release contains the entirety of data collected by that camera, named the “PTcam”, spanning 2011-2019. The camera captured several cycles of crater filling and draining, as well as prolonged periods of lava lake behavior, and many of these changes were correlated with those of the concurrent eruption at the summit of Kīlauea. This data release should provide useful information to better understand these basaltic eruption processes.  

Campaign GPS measurements on the Island of Hawaiʻi collected by the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory in

Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details

 2021

Ellis and others (2024), view the data here: https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/65b15eb7d34e36a39044abd9

This release includes data collected during campaign GPS surveys at Kīlauea and Mauna Loa Volcanoes on the Island of Hawaiʻi in 2021. It includes data from a total of 63 sites occupied from January 1 to December 31, 2021. For each site, we include its measured raw data in daily files, Receiver INdependent EXchange (RINEX) files for each day, field log sheet(s), and associated metadata information. We also include a few days of data at the end of 2020 at 3 longer-term campaign sites at Kīlauea’s summit. These sites (109Y, NDDB, OVRL) were deployed in late December 2020 in response to the December 20, 2020, Kīlauea summit eruption.