We have organized ten National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)–sponsored planetary volcanology field workshops on Hawai‘i since 1992, providing an opportunity for almost 140 NASA-funded graduate students, postdocs, and junior faculty to view basaltic volcano features up close in the company of both terrestrial and planetary volcanologists. Most of the workshops have been thematic, for example, concentrating on large structural features (rift zones and calderas) or lava flows, or features best viewed in high-spatial-resolution data, but they always include a broad set of topics. The workshops purposely involve long field days—an appreciation of scale is important for planetary scientists, particularly if they are or will be working with slow-moving rovers. Our goals are to give these young scientists a strong background in basaltic volcanology and provide the chance to view eruptive and volcano-structural features up close so that they can compare the appearance of these features in the field to their representations in state-of-the-art remote-sensing images, and relate them in turn to analogous planetary features. In addition, the workshop enables the participants to start a collection of field photographs and observations that they can use in future research and teaching. An added benefit is that the participants interact with each other, forging collaborations that we hope will persist throughout their careers.

The Big Island of Hawai‘i presents ample opportunities for young planetary volcanologists to gain firsthand field experience in the analysis of analogs to landforms seen on Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Mars, and Io. In this contribution, we focus on a subset of the specific features that are included in the planetary volcanology field workshops described in the previous chapter in this volume. In particular, we discuss how remote-sensing data and field localities in Hawai‘i can help a planetary geologist to gain expertise in the analysis of lava flows and lava flow fields, to understand the best sensor for a specific application, to recognize the ways in which different data sets can be used synergistically for remote interpretations of lava flows, and to gain a deeper appreciation for the spatial scale of features that might be imaged in the planetary context.

The Pinacate volcanic field is ~330 km SSW of Phoenix, and it is a popular destination for volcanology and planetary geology field trips. The volcanic field, located on the Pinacate Biosphere Reserve in Sonora, Mexico, is a 1500 km 2 basaltic field including a shield volcano, lava tubes, maars, a tuff cone, cinder cones, pāhoehoe and ‘a‘ā lava flows as young as 12 ka, and phreatomagmatic constructs as young as 32 ka. We developed an image-based set of exercises for a 2 day field trip focusing on (1) Crater Elegante, a maar crater, (2) pāhoehoe and ‘a‘ā flows near Tecolote Cone campground, (3) the complex eruptive history of Mayo (cinder) Cone, and (4) Cerro Colorado tuff cone. This paper discusses exercises to teach concepts in visible and radar image interpretation and planetary volcanology, and provides an overview of the field trip.