Images

At Halema‘uma‘u, the west vents (visible in the foreground of this photo as two glowing holes on a cone-shaped feature) erupt occaisional spatter.

Eruptions of Steamboat Geyser over time.  (A) Cumulative eruptions of Steamboat Geyser since 1960. Each dot represents an eruption. (B) Comparative plot of the cumulative eruptions in each active phase (1960s, 1980s, and 2018-). Data from GeyserTimes.

View of the west vent area and lava lake in Halema‘uma‘u, at Kīlauea Volcano's summit. USGS photo by K. Lynn.

Telephoto photograph of the west vent area and lava lake in Halema‘uma‘u, at Kīlauea Volcano's summit. USGS photo by K. Lynn.

Steamboat Geyser eruption signals recorded by nearby monitoring instruments. The vertical pink lines mark when the signal first appears. (A) Seismic station YNM records a signal which slowly tapers as the eruption decreases in intensity. Spikes seen before the eruption are mostly due to human activity.

Over the past week, the lava lake in Halema‘uma‘u has developed a subtle levee around its perimeter that allows the lake to be slightly perched above its base, like a mesa. The levees grow from repeated small overflows, and the rafting and piling of pieces of surface crust that fuse together into a barrier that impounds the fluid lake.

Kīlauea eruption in Halema‘uma‘u on Jan. 1, 2021. The channel-like feature remains visible on the lava lake surface within Halemaʻumaʻu crater at Kīlauea Volcano's summit. This feature originates from the influx of lava from the western fissure. USGS photo by M. Patrick. 

Kīlauea's summit lava lake in Halemaʻumaʻu is continually re-surfacing. Like the 2008-2018 lava lake, the current lava lake is exhibiting crustal foundering, when fragments of solidified lava crust on the surface break and sink back into the liquid portion.  USGS photo by M. Patrick. 

Kīlauea's summit lava lake in Halemaʻumaʻu continues to re-surface. This process is called crustal foundering, in which pieces of solidified lava crust on the surface of the lava lake break and sink back into the liquid portion. USGS photo by M. Patrick. 

The margins of the lava lake in Halema‘uma‘u are showing a subtle levee around the perimeter. The levees grow from repeated small overflows, and the rafting and piling of pieces of surface crust that fuse together into a barrier that impounds the lake.

Telephoto view of the west vent area in Halema‘uma‘u, Kīlauea Volcano. The west vents are in the northwestern wall of Halema‘uma‘u crater; intermittent spattering at the vents has constructed a perched pointed cone on the crater wall. USGS photo by M. Patrick. 

Another telephoto view of the west vent area in Halema‘uma‘u, Kīlauea Volcano. The west vents are in the northwestern wall of Halema‘uma‘u crater; intermittent spattering at the vents has constructed a perched pointed cone on the crater wall. USGS photo by M. Patrick. 

The western portion of the lava lake in Halema‘uma‘u, Kīlauea Volcano summit. The island has migrated closer to the west vent area, which remains active. USGS photo by M. Patrick. 

The KW webcam captured this image of Kīlauea's ongoing summit eruption, which continued overnight. The KW webcam looks in an east direction; north is to the left in the photo, south to the right, west to the bottom, and east to the top. This photo, taken at 6:30 a.m.

Map of seismicity (red circles) in the Yellowstone region during 2020. Gray lines are roads, red line shows the caldera boundary, Yellowstone National Park is outlined by black dashed line, and gray dashed lines denote state boundaries.

HVO field crews deployed a dense network of temporary seismic instruments at Kīlauea’s summit on January 1, 2021, and with permission from Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park.

On January 1, 2021, with permission from Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, HVO researchers set up temporary seismic instruments around Halema‘uma‘u crater to collect data that will help them learn more about how magma travels in the shallow magmatic plumbing system beneath Kīlauea Volcano.

Within an hour of the Kīlauea summit eruption starting on December 20, 2020, HVO's permanent seismic network detected a signal called volcanic tremor.

With the onset of the eruption at Kīlauea summit on December 20, 2020, the HVO monitoring network has been recording volcanic tremor, a signal that travels through the subsurface as magma degasses and erupts from vents to fill a lava lake at the summit.

Photo Contest Winner | January 2021 | USGS at Work
Winter Wonderland in Lake Placid, NY

Lab Manager, Adrian Mann, analyzes pore water samples on an Ion Chromatograph.