The people living in Puna and Hawai’i County understand the risk. Knowing they aren’t in control and can’t stop nature from happening is the first step to becoming resilient in the face of future volcanic eruptions on the Big Island.
Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week s contribution is from Shaul Hurwitz, research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological
Based on geologic mapping and dating of minerals, we know that the Yellowstone caldera formed 631,000 years ago. But how did the caldera collapse? Observations and monitoring data from several caldera collapses at other volcanoes in the 20th and 21st centuries provide clues.
Five years ago, volcanic activity at Kīlauea dramatically changed when magma intruded into the lower East Rift Zone or “LERZ.” The summit region experienced 62 total collapse events during the eruption.
‘We have an eruption,” announced Ikaika Marzo on Facebook Live late in the day of May 3, 2018, as he stood on Mohala Street in Leilani Estates, where the first of 24 fissures began spewing molten lava during the historic 2018 Kilauea eruption in Lower Puna.
Communities on the Island of Hawai‘i continue to recover from Kīlauea’s 2018 lower East Rift Zone eruption and summit collapse as does the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO). During the events of 2018, HVO instruments were lost, monitoring infrastructure was impacted, and HVO staff had to evacuate the observatory, which was damaged beyond repair.