ABSTRACT In 2014–2015, a slow-moving pāhoehoe lava flow from the remote Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō vent on Kīlauea Volcano advanced 20 km into populated areas of the Puna District on the Island of Hawai‘i. The staff of the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) mobilized their resources to closely monitor the flow and provide up-to-date information to the Hawai‘i County Civil Defense (HCCD) agency, the public, and the news media. Scientists issued formal USGS notifications about the flow and Kīlauea’s two eruptions, prepared maps and annotated photographs, infrared images, and videos for dissemination online, and wrote weekly “Volcano Watch” articles for local newspapers. They also provided regular briefings for federal, state, and county agency representatives, answered questions during near-daily briefings with local and national media, and offered information through an established lecture series and participation in community emergency preparedness fairs. Noteworthy among the communication activities was a series of public meetings organized by the Hawai‘i County mayor’s office and led by the HCCD administrator. The meetings were a regular forum for many HVO scientists to talk directly and frequently with residents, business owners, elected officials, and other stakeholders about their concerns, the evolving status of the eruptions, and the uncertain prognosis of the flow’s advance and extent. The dialogue was essential for HVO staff to describe their observations and insights about the lava flow’s behavior and to gain credibility with the community during the crisis. This experience suggests that personal engagement with people at risk from future lava flows in Hawai‘i and elsewhere in the world will remain a crucial part of an eruption response, even with greater capability to disseminate warnings and information digitally via the Internet.

Abstract Hawaiian volcanoes are highly accessible and well monitored by ground instruments. Nevertheless, observational gaps remain and thermal satellite imagery has proven useful in Hawai‘i for providing synoptic views of activity during intervals between field visits. Here we describe the beginning of a thermal remote sensing programme at the US Geological Survey Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO). Whereas expensive receiving stations have been traditionally required to achieve rapid downloading of satellite data, we exploit free, low-latency data sources on the internet for timely access to GOES, MODIS, ASTER and EO-1 ALI imagery. Automated scripts at the observatory download these data and provide a basic display of the images. Satellite data have been extremely useful for monitoring the ongoing lava flow activity on Kīlauea’s East Rift Zone at Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō over the past few years. A recent lava flow, named Kahauale‘a 2, was upslope from residential subdivisions for over a year. Satellite data helped track the slow advance of the flow and contributed to hazard assessments. Ongoing improvement to thermal remote sensing at HVO incorporates automated hotspot detection, effusion rate estimation and lava flow forecasting, as has been done in Italy. These improvements should be useful for monitoring future activity on Mauna Loa.

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.