Thermal maps of the 2018 lower East Rift Zone eruption of Kīlauea Volcano, Island of Hawaiʻi

The 2018 eruption of Kīlauea Volcano included both a large effusive eruption on the lower East Rift Zone and associated collapse and subsidence of the caldera floor at the summit (Anderson and others 2019; Neal and others 2019; Patrick and others 2020).  Lava erupted from 24 fissures on the lower East Rift Zone over four months, with high effusion rates (>100 m³ s^-1) often supplying lava into channelized flows (Dietterich and others 2021).  This effusion produced an extensive lava flow field, covering 36 km² and creating 3.5 km² of new land along the coast (Zoeller and others 2020).  The eruption was notable for the sustained high effusion rates, which produced complex and prolonged evolution of the lava flow field, dominated by the large channelized flow from fissure 8 that extended 13 km from the vent to the ocean.  The eruption had a severe impact on the community, destroying over 700 structures in the lower Puna district (Meredith and others 2022). 

In this data release, we include thermal maps of the eruption that document the highly dynamic evolution of the lava flow field on the lower East Rift Zone during this 2018 eruption.  The thermal maps were constructed from oblique airborne imagery captured with a handheld thermal camera, using structure-from-motion software to construct thermal orthomosaics.  The maps were generally made every 1-3 days, thus providing a sequence to illustrate how the flow field changed through the course of the eruption.  These data are meant to better understand the behavior of large channelized lava flows, in order to improve forecasting their hazards in the future.   

The methodology described in this document closely mirrors that described in Patrick and others (2017) for mapping the slowly advancing pahoehoe lava flow that threatened the town of Pāhoa, Hawaiʻi, in 2014-2015.  In the conclusion of that paper, it was noted that the method might be useful for mapping the evolution of a channelized ʻaʻā flow.  This data release shows that the method was indeed highly effective for mapping large ʻaʻā flows during the 2018 eruption of Kīlauea.  

During the eruption we produced and published thermal maps on the HVO public website generally on the same day as the acquisition, in order to provide timely updates on the flow evolution.  Those maps were produced using moderate quality settings due to time constraints.  In this data release we have reprocessed the maps using higher quality settings.   

In version 1 of this data release, we include thermal maps from May 30 to August 15, which covers the evolution of the dominant flow, from fissure 8.  In a subsequent version we will include the maps from May 5 to May 28 which cover the highly dynamic initial phase of the eruption that included multiple fissures.