Videos

Changes at the summit of Kīlauea between April 14 and August 20, 2018, were captured by a USGS–Hawaiian Volcano Observatory camera. This time-lapse series includes roughly one image per day. The lava lake within Halema‘uma‘u is visible in April, with overflows onto the caldera floor on April 23.

The camera glances at the bottom of the boat above and then pans down to the lake bottom. The lake bottom is covered in tons of round gobies swimming around in and out of the cladophora. Again the camera pans up to show a diver and the dive camera completing a transect in the distance.
 

Smallmouth bass swimming in front of the dive camera system during a transect. Camera system is attached to the center pivot by a line in order to follow around in a circle.
 

Descending to the lake bottom to get ready for transects with the camera system and cladophora sampling. Organizing quadrats and sampling bags near the center pivot before sampling.
 

This video provides an overview of the different indirect measurement methods used by the USGS, as well as a brief description of what you'll need to survey for each. 
 

The Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) team assessed conditions at the fissure 8 cone and upper lava channel on August 17, 2018. At the time of the flight, the lava pond within the cone had crusted over with no observed incandescence.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 patented “Handheld Underwater Suction Sampler” is shown here with a sample collection net attached. The sampler was initially called the "Vasco Explorer." USGS biologists from Flagstaff, Arizona, are researching food sources for fish such as the rainbow trout, which are stocked in the Glen Canyon stretch of the Colorado River.

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.

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

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.

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.

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