Images

GeoGirls deploy seismometers at Mount St. Helens and learn how to interpret earthquake data.

Charcoal collected from under the base of a pāhoehoe flow in a black sooty zone over orange ash.  The black sooty zone represents the region where the vegetation was converted to charcoal.  The hammer is approximately 13 inches long. USGS photo by F. Trusdell. 

A balloon and simple point-and-shoot camera is used to collect digital images that are stitched together to build a 3D elevation model of the landscape.

GeoGirls use ground-penetrating radar to locate rock and ash layers from past eruptions at Mount St. Helens (Mount Adams is pictured in the background).

Meet the GeoGirls, their high school mentors, teacher mentors and scientists at the GeoGirls media day on August 1, 2018.

The episode 61g lava delta at the Kamokuna ocean entry is unstable with many cracks parallel to the coast. Comparing time-lapse images from July 22 (left) and July 31 (right), the large crack in the center of the delta continues to widen.

On the coastal plain, the front of the June 26 breakout was stalled approximately 1.5 km (0.9 mile) from the emergency route road. The flow front had advanced approximately 300 m (0.2 mile) since HVO last mapped it on July 25. A couple of weak surface breakouts were observed near the flow front, with the closest about 50 m (yards) behind the stalled front.

This viscous, slow-moving ropy pāhoehoe flow was one of only two weak surface breakouts observed by HVO geologists.

This satellite image was captured on Sunday, July 30, by the NASA/USGS Landsat 8 satellite. Although this is a false-color image, the color map has been chosen to mimic what the human eye would expect to see. Bright red pixels depict areas of very high temperatures and show active lava. White areas are clouds.

Mount St. Helens, Washington seen from the flank of Mount Adams to the east.

Mount Adams viewed from Glenwood, Washington.

At Mount St. Helens, the GeoGirls explore the Ape Cave lava tube and learn how to interpret the layers left in the rock wall. 

The summit lava lake level continued to drop through Saturday July 29 as the summit deflated. Rockfalls from the Overlook crater walls have been frequent over the past two days, due to the lowering lava level, and these collapses trigger spattering in the lake.

Summit deflation over the past day occurred as part of a deflation-inflation (DI) event, and, as usual with deflation, the lava lake level dropped. Over the past two days the lake level has dropped about 20 m (66 ft).

HVO geologists captured this image of a Koa‘e kea (white-tailed tropicbird) flying high over the summit lava lake this morning (visible between the two spattering sources). These graceful birds nest in the crater walls of Halema‘uma‘u and other rocky cliffs in Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, but fly to the ocean to feed.

This movie shows a sequence of 8 time-lapse photos—one photo per day from July 6 to July 13, 2017—of the lava delta at Kīlauea Volcano's Kamokuna ocean entry. The sequence shows the front of the delta subsiding, and cracks running parallel to the coast widening, over the 8-day time period.

Scattered breakouts continue on the coastal plain inland of the Kamokuna ocean entry, but are relatively weak and have not advanced much over the past week. Breakouts were located about 1.8 km (1.1 miles) upslope of the emergency access road.

Mount Hood photographed near Parkdale, Oregon.

A beautiful sunset over Mauna Loa (in distance at left) provided a backdrop to the lava lake within Halema‘uma‘u. HVO and Jaggar Museum are on the horizon near the center of the panorama.

Crustal foundering, in which pieces of the thin, flexible lake crust sink beneath the surface, is common in the southern portion of the lake.

This video clip shows spattering along the south margin of the summit lava lake. Note the large slab of crust migrating into the spatter site, where it is consumed. Unfortunately, wind noise masks much of the spattering sound in this video.