Volcano Watch

Last week, nearly 24,000 scientists from the U.S. and abroad met in San Francisco for the American Geophysical Union's 2015 Fall Meeting, the largest...

This time last year, Kīlauea Volcano's lava flow was threatening Pāhoa. Today, the immediate danger to Puna communities no longer exists, but lava...

Many readers know that the Island of Hawai‘i is made of five volcanoes—Kīlauea, Mauna Loa, Hualālai, Mauna Kea, and Kohala.

Modern science could not exist without exchange of data and ideas. The exchange can be informal—at meetings and in casual conversations—or formal—in...

In early November, volcano scientists from Hawai‘i, Chile, Indonesia, Italy, and Japan participated in a workshop at the Mount Fuji Research Institute...

The surface of Kīlauea Volcano is rarely stationary. There are a variety of processes that each move or change the shape of the volcano and, when...

One of the wondrous things about visiting a young lava flow on the Island of Hawai‘i is encountering the tenacious plant life that emerges from a...

A lot has changed over the past year on Kīlauea Volcano. One year ago, the June 27th flow was threatening to cross Pāhoa Village Road and, potentially...

One year ago, the now infamous June 27th lava flow was headed toward the middle of Pāhoa and threatening to cross the main village road and cut off...

It happened again. Did you notice? Last week a portion of Kīlauea Volcano's south flank slowly slipped seaward. Its movement is part of a recurring...

Geologic mapping is considered by some to be "old school" science. By current standards, there's certainly nothing glitzy or high tech about walking...

October 15, 2015, is the 3rd annual Great Hawaii ShakeOut. That day also marks the 9th anniversary of Hawaii's two most recent damaging earthquakes.

The State of Hawaii has a long history of destructive earthquakes. More than 30 magnitude-6.0 or greater earthquakes have impacted the islands since...

Bottled soda, when opened suddenly after shaking, is commonly used as an analogy for volcanic eruptions. Perhaps the first use of this analogy for...

The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) changed the Volcano Alert Level and Aviation Color Code for Mauna Loa Volcano from NORMAL/GREEN to...

During the 1950s, a decade of major change in volcano monitoring, the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) was moving from the mechanical into the...

This week marks the one-year anniversary of when the June 27th lava flow, named for the date in 2014 that it began erupting from Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō on Kīlauea...

Does lava continue to flow exactly as it did on land or does it behave differently after it enters the ocean?

In early 1918, visitors swarmed to Kīlauea Volcano to see a splendid show. The molten lake in Halema‘uma‘u had been rising and the pit was almost full...

As part of our monitoring of subsurface activity at Mauna Loa, we recently conducted a series of measurements of the force of gravity at various...