Volcano Watch

A widely-held belief is that Thomas Jaggar, founder of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, was able to stop a Mauna Loa lava flow in 1935. But is it...

If you follow Kīlauea Volcano's ongoing East Rift Zone eruption, you are likely aware that when lava enters the ocean, it often forms new land. But...

Route 200, the Daniel K. Inouye Highway, crosses Humu‘ula Saddle, which separates Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, the two largest volcanoes on the Island of...

Scientists at the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory routinely collect lava samples from Kīlauea and use the chemistry of these samples to infer the...

What exactly do volcano threat rankings mean?

Using detailed geologic mapping and modeling of how a fluid (in this case, lava) responds to surface topography, USGS-HVO constructed nine maps...

The U.S. Geological Survey has produced a documentary, "Kīlauea Summit Eruption–Lava Returns to Halema‘uma‘u," to tell the story of the eruption, and...

As the summer months began to wind down this year, Nature's fury began to wind up and grab much of the news cycle.

In today's age of aerial photography, satellites, and drones, bird's-eye views of geologic features are taken for granted. A century ago, such...

Thirty-seven years after the May 18, 1980, eruption of Mount St. Helens, Washington, scientists, engineers, land managers, and Federal, State, and...

This mosaic of thermal images is basically a thermal map of the lava flow surface, and reveals the exact location of all the active surface breakouts.

What's up with Mauna Loa, and is any change in sight?

For information about Hawaiian volcanoes, a good place to start is the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Between its websites and publications, abundant...

The caldera was a dynamic place during the 300-plus years just before written history began at Kīlauea (in 1823), and the newly defined subdivisions...

The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) has a long tradition of innovation when it comes to the tools that we use to monitor the status and...

The longest-lived and most voluminous rift-zone eruption of Kīlauea Volcano in more than 500 years—the ongoing Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō eruption—began in January...

Thermal cameras have been used by volcanologists around the world for many years to study volcanic processes and search for signs of impending...

Kīlauea has now passed the one-year anniversary of the episode 61g lava flow reaching the Pacific Ocean. But what was this busy volcano up to a decade...

On June 8, 2017, many Island of Hawai‘i residents were awakened by a sharp jolt just past 7 a.m. This natural wake-up call was caused by a magnitude-5...

July 26th marks the one-year anniversary of Kīlauea Volcano's episode 61g lava flow reaching the sea. And at this time, there's no indication that the...