Multimedia Gallery

This 3-dimensional computer model shows the structure of the fissure 8 cone on Kīlauea Volcano's lower East Rift Zone. The model was created from thermal images acquired during a helicopter overflight on August 15, 2018. The cone is currently about 30 m (100 ft) tall with a broad base. The bright white area within the cone is a small pond of lava, now largely crusted over

Landsat 8 captured satellite views of California’s largest wildfire on record in the summer of 2018. The Mendocino Complex Fire in northern California is a combination of two fires: the Ranch Fire and the River Fire. 

Both fires started July 27, and hot, dry, windy conditions caused them to spread rapidly. Landsat 8 imaged the area the day before the fires broke out

The Markup Application is a web-based mapping communication tool that allows users to suggest edits, or “markups”, to the National Hydrography Dataset, or NHD, Watershed Boundary Dataset, or WBD, and High Resolution National Hydrography Dataset Plus, or NHDPlus High Res.
 

Lava continues to enter the ocean near the Isaac Hale Beach Park on Kīlauea Volcano's lower East Rift Zone. Although lava output from fissure 8 remains low, the ocean entry was still active during HVO's helicopter overflight on August 9, 2018. Numerous small streams of lava were oozing into the ocean near Ahalanui, creating weak plumes of laze. The southern flow margin

The Landsat archive has added its 8 millionth scene. 

This stunning image was captured by Landsat 8 on July 28, 2018. It shows the coastline of Nordaustlandet, the second-largest island in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago.

Most of the island is covered by massive white ice caps. The exposed rocky coast appears in reddish brown, peppered with blue and black lakes

During this morning's overflight, HVO geologists observed low levels of lava fountaining within the fissure 8 spatter cone and crusted lava in the spillway and channel downstream. The significance of this change is not yet clear. Eruptions can wax and wane or pause for days to weeks before returning to high levels of lava discharge. New outbreaks in the area of the active 

Between mid-May and early August, 2018, the depth of Halema‘uma‘u more than tripled and its diameter more than doubled as magma from Kīlauea's shallow summit reservoir moved into the lower East Rift Zone. Evidence of subsidence is visible in this video, taken during an early morning helicopter overflight on August 6, 2018. Cracks and down-dropped blocks of the caldera 

This lava, erupted from fissure 8 on Kīlauea Volcano's lower East Rift Zone, shows classic pāhoehoe behavior. Exposed to the air, the surface of the flow chills to form a thin crust that can be stretched or broken apart, forming pieces of crust that are "subducted" back into the molten interior. The main sound is wind noise, but crackles can also be heard as flakes of

Title: Iron Mountain, California: An Extreme Acid Mine Drainage Environment

• "The world's most acid water" — explaining negative pH
• Colorful mineral salts that store metals and acidity in underground mine workings
• Microbial iron oxidation and formation of pipe scale in the water treatment system
• Challenges and successes of

Landsat sensor technology has come a long way since the days of the Return Beam Vidicon cameras on the first three Landsat satellites. Known as the RBV, it wasoriginally intended to be the satellites’ primary sensor. But the Multispectral
Scanner, or MSS, became the more stable and superior instrument.

Each week, the Earth Resources Observation and Science (

A collapse event occurred at the summit of Kīlauea this morning (July 24, 2018) at 6:41 a.m. HST, releasing energy equivalent to a magnitude-5.3 earthquake, which is similar to that released by previous collapse events. In this video, watch as today's event unfolds from the perspective of HVO's live-stream camera. At 6:41:08 (time stamp at upper left), a small tree along

Torrential rainfall swamped western Japan in July of 2018. The rain caused mudslides that flooded cities, damaged buildings and rattled the
nation’s infrastructure. More than 170 people died.

At the USGS EROS Center, we study land change, operate the Landsat satellites, and maintain the longest, continuously acquired collection of images of the Earth's land

During HVO's early morning helicopter overflight along the coastline, orange streams of lava were entering the ocean in the vicinity of Ahalanui. Strong trade winds were pushing the white laze plumes inland.

Researchers start drilling an ice core in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

In this July 14, 2018, video captured by the UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) team, lava was erupting from within the 120-foot-high fissure 8 cinder cone built of chilled lava fragments. Lava emerging from the cone was traveling about 13-16 miles per hour, flowing freely over a small set of cascades (rapids) and into a perched channel that was as much as 50 feet above the

Since early May 2018, the floor of Halema‘uma‘u Crater has dropped 450 m (about 1480 ft). Extensive cracking and faulting around the crater, along with inward slumping of the crater rim, has more than doubled its diameter. Like a balloon slowly losing air, subsidence occurs because magma in Kīlauea's shallow summit reservoir is moving into the East Rift Zone more rapidly

Listen to the sounds of rockfalls at Kīlauea Volcano's summit in this short video taken from the northeast rim of the caldera. At 2:42 p.m. HST on July 12, 2018, a collapse/explosion event at Kīlauea's summit released energy equivalent to a magnitude-5.3 earthquake. Rockfalls that occurred in Halema‘uma‘u and along the steep summit caldera walls during the event can be

Black rats were unintentionally introduced to Hawai’i in the late 1800s, most likely as hitchhikers on trading vessels. Since their introduction, they have disrupted native ecosystems by destroying native plants, eating native arthropods, and depredating bird nests. Black rats have contributed to population declines and species extinctions of Hawaiian forest birds, and

Black rats were unintentionally introduced to Hawai’i in the late 1800s, most likely as hitchhikers on trading vessels. Since their introduction, they have disrupted native ecosystems by destroying native plants, eating native arthropods, and depredating bird nests. Black rats have contributed to population declines and species extinctions of Hawaiian forest birds, and

A whirlwind spins skyward on the northwest side of the fissure 8 cinder cone in this video taken on July 10, 2018. A number of whirlwinds have formed in the area due to the extreme heat of the open lava channel heating the air above it. As the heated air quickly rises, a light wind can push the air column to begin a rotation, which spins faster as it is stretched and

Lava oozes from a small breakout near Bryson's 

This series of images from June 13 through July 7, 2018, show dramatic down-dropping of part of Kīlauea Volcano's summit caldera floor. For weeks,

Since August 4, 2018, Kīlauea Volcano's summit activity has diminished dramatically. But between mid-May and early August, 62 collapse events occurred, with each releasing energy equivalent to a magnitude-5+ earthquake and causing extensive ground shaking in the summit area. On July 5, 2018, USGS video cameras stationed at various summit locations happened to record one of