Aloha, I'm David Phillips
from the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.
As part of HVO's 2022 Volcano Awareness Month,
I will provide a short update on HVO's ongoing recovery
from 2018 Kīlauea eruption.
The catastrophic events of 2018 impacted HVO in many ways.
Many instruments were lost.
Monitoring infrastructure was impacted,
including power and communications,
and HVO staff had to evacuate
the observatory building itself
which was damaged beyond repair.
However, thanks to disaster relief funding,
HVO is not just rebuilding but is actually
gaining new capabilities and new scientific knowledge
in order to continue its mission better than ever.
The disaster relief funding for HVO
is focused on three major activities.
One is restoring and hardening volcano monitoring
and eruption-response capabilities.
Most of today's update will provide highlights
of this activity.
Another area is new scientific investigations
to better understand volcanic processes and future threats.
Many of these projects are still in progress
and have been delayed due to the pandemic and other factors.
Finally, the third area is building new HVO facilities.
Two new buildings are planned:
the new headquarters will be at the University of Hawai'i
at Hilo campus;
there will also be a small field station
up in Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park.
We're still in the very earliest phases of the design
of these buildings and we don't have any other updates
at this time, so let's talk more about restoring
and hardening volcano monitoring and eruption response.
As we just saw, one of the major activities
of HVO's disaster recovery
is restoring and hardening volcano monitoring
and eruption-response capabilities.
A big part of this is scientific instrumentation
to monitor and analyze activities such as earthquakes,
ground deformation, gas emissions, and so on.
New instruments will bring new capabilities
but also expanded coverage,
and this is critical in areas
such as Kīlauea's East Rift Zone.
In addition to instruments in the field,
new lab equipment as well.
And all of these instruments require a solid foundation
of infrastructure for communications and computing.
We're also bringing new capabilities
such as UAS or drones
and we'll look at some examples of that.
And finally, we collected a high-resolution
airborne LiDAR data set from a helicopter
that will allow us improved analysis
and base maps for future studies.
So let's look at some highlights of some of these things.
As was demonstrated throughout the 2018 eruption,
and also the more recent eruptions,
visual, and thermal imaging is a very powerful tool.
And this equipment allows HVO
to capture high-quality eruption datasets
with high spatial and temporal coverage
for monitoring as well as research.
This is a photo of an HVO scientist monitoring
the active lava lake within Halema'uma'u
using a variety of imaging instruments.
For example, on the left, a small camera on small tripods,
we have rapid-deployment instruments.
These can be put out and they include remote telemetry
and they can capture the evolution and changes
of events through time.
We also have a specialized high resolution video camera
and high dynamic range thermal imaging cameras.
In addition to the rapid-deployment types of cameras
that were shown in the previous slide,
this is an image from one
of the continuous monitoring cameras
that HVO has deployed in strategic places around Kīlauea,
as well as other volcanoes.
This one is a live continuous 24/7 coverage view
of the current eruption and lava lake within Halema'uma'u
and this is an image from January 18.
Here is an image of one of our continuous thermal cameras,
which is monitoring the current activity
within Halema'uma'u.
So between this and the previous examples,
these continuously-operating cameras provide HVO scientists
with real-time situational awareness
in terms of the activity that's going on.
And also this provides a rich database of images
through time so that we can make more advanced calculations
in addition to the situational awareness on demand.
HVO's camera network not only provides real-time assessment
of activity but also allows us to analyze changes
in activity through time.
All of the webcam feeds
are available on the public HVO website.
And also on the website are images like this
where we have an interactive slider that allows you
to compare images from the same camera
at different points in time.
This is an example showing two images
of the current Halema'uma'u eruption.
The image on the left was taken on September 29th, 2021,
literally just minutes before the new eruption started.
On the right is the same angle of view
but the eruption in full swing several days later.
And on the website, you can slide this back and forth
and look at the before and after.
Another instrument that is widely used on both
on a continuous basis and also by field crews
are laser rangefinders.
These allow accurate measurements of the lava lake surface,
for example, and we use these instruments either handheld
or on tripods or again in 24/7 continuous deployments.
For example, these rangefinder measurements
that we've had allow us to estimate
that the total rise of the lava lake
since the latest eruption began on September 29th, in 2021,
has been over 70 meters or 230 feet.
Another type of imaging and rangefinding instrument
that's being used by HVO to monitor the current eruption
is a terrestrial laser scanner.
And this actually generates a three-dimensional point cloud
using LiDAR to measure many things
including high-resolution maps, topographic changes,
and volume estimates through time.
We are evaluating the instrument that we plan
to purchase using supplemental funds.
Supplemental funds are also allowing HVO
to update and really revolutionize our ability to measure
subsurface mass changes due to magma movements
using gravimeters.
HVO used supplemental funds to acquire
the very first absolute quantum gravimeter acquired
by any US federal agency.
This state-of-the-art instrument brings
exciting new capabilities to HVO
and complements HVO's existing gravimeters,
including new state-of-the-art campaign systems
and real time instruments as well.
HVO uses GPS/GNSS instruments to measure ground deformation.
Many of our instruments in the field
provide a continuous data stream.
Others are deployed as needed as part of regional surveys
or as part of rapid deployment eruption response.
This photo shows an HVO scientist deploying one
of these rapid response GPS/GNSS systems
after the eruption started in December of 2020.
She is using one of the new upgraded instruments
that were procured as part of the supplemental funding.
And on the right, you can see example of how we are building
more of these rapid deployment systems
to have on hand to improve our response.
As you can imagine, a robust and reliable infrastructure
is a huge and necessary part of HVO operations.
This includes telemetry,
which is about getting the data from the field instruments
back to the observatory for analysis,
especially in real time,
and also the computing infrastructure that is used
by HVO scientists to analyze the data
and of course for all manners of communication
within the observatory between other groups
and emergency responders on the island
and groups off the island as well.
So a big part of HVO's ongoing recovery
is focused on the essential communications
and computing infrastructure
that makes observatory operations possible.
In addition to instruments that collect data
out in the field,
part of the recovery includes
new laboratory equipment as well.
One of the highlights so far is HVO's new tephra lab.
This will allow us to better analyze tephra
including things like volcanic ash, bombs,
and glasses such as Pele's hair and Pele's tears.
So the new and upgraded lab instruments include many things
from optical and infrared microscopes
to 3D scanners optimized for scanning particles
such as tephra.
Pycnometers to measure the density of tephra samples.
And another major aspect of a lot of these procurements
is that supplemental lab resources will be used
not only by HVO but in collaboration
with other volcano observatories within the USGS
and certainly with the University of Hawai'i
at Hilo here on the island
with a lot of shared resources between these two groups.
Another emerging and revolutionary aspect
of HVO's monitoring and research program
is the use of unoccupied aircraft systems, UAS or drones,
that are being flown by HVO to measure things
like volcanic gas emissions,
to collect photos for mapping surveys of volcanic features,
to measure other changes associated with the volcanoes.
And we even used UAS missions to collect samples
from the water lake that briefly formed within Halema'uma'u
between the time of the collapse in 2018
and the onset of the new phase of summit eruptions
in late 2020.
It's not just the UAS systems themselves
and the flying them but it's the actual scientific payload
and the instruments that we use.
So on the left you can see some modified systems
being installed and used in the field by an HVO scientist.
And over on the right,
HVO scientists who are in the process
of designing and building the electronics
and the sensors that will be deployed on these UAS systems
to collect data in the field.
One of the other major contributions
from supplemental funding in this category
was the collection of high-resolution airborne LiDAR data
for the generation of high-resolution topographic maps.
And in particular we're talking
about a helicopter LiDAR dataset that was acquired in 2019.
And that covered over 220 square miles of land
that was affected by the 2018 eruption.
This is an example of some of these LiDAR data
that are used at the summit and these data
to help us directly address primary eruption questions
such as, "How deep is the lava lake?";
"What is the erupted volume?";
"When and where will lava overflow from Halema'uma'u
onto other parts of Kīlauea caldera floor?"
As part of HVOs' fundamental mission,
we work closely with Hawaii County Civil Defense,
Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park
and Hawaii Emergency Management Agency
in terms of sharing data, and assessing hazards and threats
to the people of Hawaii.
As HVO continues to recover
from the catastrophic events of 2018,
the disaster relief supplemental funding
is allowing us to continue our mission now
and into the future.
Mahalo.