Images

This satellite image was captured on Thursday, January 7, by the Advanced Land Imager instrument onboard NASA's Earth Observing 1 satellite. The image is provided courtesy of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Although this is a false-color image, the color map has been chosen to mimic what the human eye would expect to see.

In recent days, the lava lake in Halema‘uma‘u Crater has been at a relatively high level. This view, looking roughly north-northeast, shows typical behavior, with lava rising into the lake at the distant end opposite the photographer, and sinking all along the base of the crater wall in the foreground and at right.

Zoomed-in view of the spattering at the southeast corner of the lava lake. The vent wall is overhung in this area.

Preview image for video: When large rockfalls impact the lava lake, they trigger explosive events that propel volcanic rock fragments (tephra) upward. This morning's event was vigorous enough to hurl incandescent fragments onto the rim of Halema‘uma‘u Crater, about 110 m (360 ft) above the lava lake surface.

The January 8, 2016, rockfall and subsequent explosive event littered the rim of Halema‘uma‘u Crater with fragments of molten lava. In this image, you can see what remains of the Halema‘uma‘u Overlook wooden fence, which has been repeatedly been bombarded by spatter and rock fragments since 2008.

The rim of Halema‘uma‘u Crater was covered in a nearly continuous blanket of tephra following today's early morning rockfall and subsequent explosive event. Tephra is the general term for volcanic rock fragments exploded or carried into the air during an eruption, and can range from dust-size particles to fragments more than 1 m (3.2 ft) in diameter.

The 10 cm (4-inch) pocket knife in this image provides scale for one of the larger fragments of molten lava that was thrown onto the rim of Halema‘uma‘u Crater at 3:51 a.m., HST, on January 8, 2016. So much spatter was ejected to the crater rim this morning that it is hard to discern one lava fragment from another.

View of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk amusement park in Santa Cruz, California. Photo was taken from the bluff on East Cliff Drive, east of the San Lorenzo River mouth. Sand on the beach gets eroded, redistributed, and deposited due to the dynamic conditions brought about by storms and changing river flow.

Waves flood across a coastal road near Santa Cruz, California.

In this shaded relief and bathymetric map of Ni‘ihau and Kaua‘i, colors indicate water depth, from shallow (orange and yellow) to deep (purple), with shades of gray indicating island areas above sea level. From: U.S.

This small-scale map shows Kīlauea's active East Rift Zone lava flow in relation to the eastern part of the Island of Hawai‘i. The area of the flow field on December 3 is shown in pink, while widening and advancement of the flow field as mapped on January 5 is shown in red. The yellow lines show the active lava tube system.

This map shows recent changes to Kīlauea's active East Rift Zone lava flow field. The area of the flow field on December 3 is shown in pink, while widening and advancement of the flow field as mapped on January 5 is shown in red. The yellow lines show the active lava tube system. Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō lava flows erupted prior to June 27, 2014, are shown in gray.

In this photo of Kīlauea Volcano's summit lava lake, the light-colored rock in the vent wall to the left of the spattering lava shows were a rockfall occurred on January 2. The shadow of the gas plume appears as a brown streak perpendicular to the dark-colored lava on the floor of Halema‘uma‘u Crater.

On January 4, a rockfall within the Overlook vent at the summit of Kīlauea generated another small explosive event at 3:18 a.m., HST. In this image, captured by a USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory webcam, the dusty gas plume can be seen rising from the vent after rocks impacted the lava lake.

Fragments of molten lava were thrown on the rim of Halema‘uma‘u Crater during the January 2 explosive event. This close-up shows the dust and small rock particles that adhered to the surface of these fragments as they were thrown upward through the ashy plume.

Preview image for video: Around 2:17 p.m., HST, on January 2, a rockfall from the east rim of the Overlook vent within Halema‘uma‘u Crater at the summit of Kīlauea impacted the lava lake, generating a small explosive event captured by HVO webcams. shows the rockfall as seen from HVO and Jaggar Museum.

Preview image for video: shows the same rockfall as captured by the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory webcam perched on the rim of Halema‘uma‘u Crater. Note the fragments of molten lava flying toward the camera—just one of the hazards that led to the closure of this area.

On remote Barter Island, Alaska, Bruce Richmond (right) and Cordell Johnson drill into 500-foot-thick permafrost using a handheld drill with a 2-inch drill bit—a challenging task! It can take 3 hours to drill nearly 20 feet down.

Volcanic eruptions happen in the State of California about as frequently as the largest earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault Zone. At least 10 eruptions have taken place in California in the past 1,000 years—most recently at Lassen Peak in Lassen Volcanic National Park (1914 to 1917) in the northern part of the State—and future volcanic eruptions are inevitable.

Study region along the Queen Charlotte-Fairweather fault offshore southeastern Alaska. Rectangles show locations of the two USGS-led marine geophysical surveys in May and August 2015. The third cruise was offshore Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, and southern Alaska in September 2015.