DOI: 10.5066/p9cysyqj
title: Thermal camera images of lava lake and crater filling activity at Puʻuʻōʻō, East Rift Zone of Kīlauea Volcano, Island of Hawaiʻi, 2011-2019

description: 
The 35-year-long Puʻuʻōʻō eruption, on the East Rift Zone of Kīlauea Volcano, was the longest volcanic eruption on the Island of Hawaiʻi in the past 100 years (Wright and Klein 2014; Mulliken and others 2023). The eruption, whose vent area was focused at and around Puʻuʻōʻō cone, produced episodic fountaining in its initial few years followed by decades of effusive activity that created an expansive lava flow field (Heliker and Mattox 2003; Orr and others 2015). While vents erupted on the flank of the cone, the activity within the cone’s crater often consisted of lava lakes, lava flows, and small spattering hornitos (Heliker and Mattox 2003; Heliker and others 2003). The crater also experienced several cycles of gradual crater filling culminating in abrupt crater draining, via vents on the cone flanks (Orr and others 2015; Patrick and others 2019).  Activity within Puʻuʻōʻō abruptly ended on April 30, 2018, when magma migrated into the lower East Rift Zone, triggering the destructive eruption in Leilani Estates and nearby regions (Neal and others 2019; Patrick and others 2020).  

To capture and document this dynamic behavior within the crater, a thermal camera was deployed on the rim of Puʻuʻōʻō crater in March 2011 by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (Patrick and others 2014; Shiro and others 2021). This data release contains the entirety of data collected by that camera, named the “PTcam”, spanning 2011-2019. The camera captured several cycles of crater filling and draining, as well as prolonged periods of lava lake behavior, and many of these changes were correlated with those of the concurrent eruption at the summit of Kīlauea (Patrick and others 2021). This data release should provide useful information to better understand these basaltic eruption processes.  

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