Images

Mount Rainier volcano looms over Puyallup Valley, near Orting, Washington.

Scientists conduct a stream channel cross-section survey of the Toutle River on the north side of Mount St. Helens (view to the southwest).

Colors ranging from red to purple indicate the water depth around the Island of Hawai‘i, while shades of gray show land topography above sea level. Red shows lava flows erupted over the past 200 years. The Puna Ridge represents the submarine extension of Kīlauea's east rift zone.

During the 1926 Mauna Loa eruption, an ‘a‘ā flow about 457 m (1500 ft) wide and 9 m (30 ft) high headed straight for the village of Ho‘ōpūloa on April 18, as shown here. By the next day, the lava flow had destroyed a dozen houses, a church, and the wharf, and had nearly obliterated the bay. 

Map showing the submarine shape of the Hawaiian hotspot track, which extends from the Hawaiian Islands, through a prominent bend in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, to Alaska's Aleutian Islands. The inset shows the volcanoes in the main Hawaiian Islands.

View of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō, looking southwest. The vent for the Kahauale‘a 2 flow is on the near side of the crater, close to the center of the photograph (but obscured by white fume).

The Kahauale‘a 2 flow remains active northeast of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō, with the flow front this week consisting of a narrow finger that has reached 7.5 km (4.7 miles) northeast of the vent on Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō. The flow front has cut a narrow swath through the forest, and is igniting numerous small fires.

The Kahauale‘a 2 flow remains active northeast of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō, with the flow front this week consisting of a narrow finger that has reached 7.5 km (4.7 miles) northeast of the vent on Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō. The flow front has cut a narrow swath through the forest, and is igniting numerous small fires.

During the first few hours of the Kamoamoa fissure eruption in March 2011, lava bubbled to the surface through a ground crack that propagated along Kīlauea Volcano's East Rift Zone. How it and other Hawaiian fissure eruptions work will be the topic of a talk at UH-Hilo on January 16, 2014.

Erupting vents on Mauna Loa's Northeast Rift Zone near Pu‘u‘Ula‘ula (Red Hill) on Mar. 25, 1984—just hours after the eruption began—sent massive ‘A‘ā lava flows moving toward Hilo at 4 miles per hour. By the time the eruption ended on April 15, lava flows had reached to within four miles of Hilo city limits. USGS photo.

Hawaiian Volcano Observatory seismologists will talk about Hawaii's history of destructive earthquakes in two public presentations. Paul Okubo (right) will speak at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo on November 20, and Wes Thelen (left) will speak in Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park on November 26.

Top: Map of repeating earthquake areas corresponding to the deformation episodes, below. Bottom: Left 1996-1998 Yellowstone caldera uplift episode. Middle: 1998-2004 subsidence episode. Right: 2004-2010 uplift episode. Bottom: vertical ground deformation from GPS observations at station, WLWY, on the Sour Creek resurgent dome.

Top: Examples of some of the photos taken from helicopter over Mammoth Hot Springs in September 2013. Photos taken by Hank Heasler. Bottom: Hill-shade image calculated from the 2013 DEM over Mammoth Hot Springs and that was derived from a series of overlapping photos using Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry.

Julia Griswold is a geologist with the USGS-USAID Volcano Disaster Assistance Program.

Seismogram signal examples from volcanic earthquakes: volcano tectonic (VT) Low Frequency (LF)/Deep Long-Period (DLP), hybrid (mix of VT and LF), very low frequency (VLF), and Tremor.

Trout Lake lowland view from the south, downslope from Mount Adams, Washington. The lowland area along the White Salmon River (trees) is underlain by lahar deposits 300 and 6000 years old.

This shaded relief image was produced from LIDAR data. LIDAR is an acronym for Light Detection and Ranging, a modern remote sensing technique used to map topography very accurately—more so than is possible with older techniques. The crater is 1.2 miles (1.9 km) wide east-west. Elsewhere the scale varies owing to the oblique viewing angle.

Wes Hildreth is an expert when it comes to studying the Long Valley Caldera. Here, he is standing on Tertiary basalt lava flows on the north rim of the caldera, view to the southeast with Lake Crowley visible in the center of the caldera, and McGee Mountain above the lake on the skyline.

The seismic records or waveforms are from two seismic stations, and show the highly repetitive and similar nature of the seismic events.

Map showing one-year probability of accumulation of 1 centimeter (0.4 inch) or more of tephra from eruptions of volcanoes in the Cascade Range.

Tabernacle Hill tuff cone, part of the Black Rock Desert Volcanic Field in Utah, used to house a lava lake in the center of the crater.