VOLCANOES NATIONAL PARK — A good field geologist is an opportunist. Never content with what outcrops are available, she jumps at the chance to see another one, hoping that it will provide a better understanding to some question about what happened in the past. But it isn’t every day that new outcrops are created, and rarer still when they are on the scale of those formed during the faulting of Kilauea Volcano’s caldera floor in summer 2018.
As Halemaumau sank and widened, its crater wall began to expose lava flows that formed during earlier eruptions and were covered by later flows. In particular, the north side of Halemaumau bites some 1,640 feet deeper than before, potentially making accessible lava flows that erupted and gradually filled the caldera early in the 19th century.
In addition, the faults that bound the down-dropped sector of the caldera exhumed the south sulfur bank and expose lava flows not previously observed by scientists.
Why are these new outcrops so important? Aaron Pietruszka, USGS scientist and former University of Hawaii graduate student, and his UH adviser, Mike Garcia, discovered gradual changes in the chemical composition of Kilauea lava with time, starting before the 19th century and continuing to the present. The number of lava flows that could be sampled from the 19th century itself was, however, very small.
Chemical and isotopic analysis of 19th-century caldera fill exposed in the high wall of Halemaumau and adjacent faults will augment and refine their startling finding. It won’t be easy to do the sampling, though, because a lot of rocky rubble mantles much of the wall, possibly obscuring some flows. But it needs to be done before lava returns to Halemaumau.
The faults cutting the caldera floor may reveal details about the 19th-century caldera fill that have long eluded geologists. Maps and sketches of the floor made at various times show wide, multiple lava lakes and probably several editions of “black ledges” adjacent to the lakes.
How deep were those lakes? Were they merely shallow ponds and bays no more than a few tens of meters deep, or were one or more of them so deep that they connected with the magma reservoir perhaps 0.6 miles or more deep?
The new exposures provide cross-sections through some of the 19th-century caldera fill. These cross-sections can be examined to look for the margins and floors of ancient lava lakes, spills from those lakes, eruption conduits, and other features leading to a greater understanding of how the caldera was filled.
Thick explosive deposits formed between about 1500 and the early 1800s are exposed high on the south wall of Halemaumau, covered only by one or two younger lava flows. Binocular observations of the lower north wall of Halemaumau, several hundred meters below the caldera floor, have not seen any explosive deposits. Yet the explosive debris must have fallen into the caldera as well as around it.
If the binocular observations are correct, then the explosive deposits must be buried still deeper than the base of the north wall. That would imply that the deposits formed when the caldera was very deep, as geologists have hypothesized but never documented. This interpretation badly needs boots-on-the-ground checking, because the binocular observations alone are inconclusive.
The news isn’t all good. Shaking during the more than 60 large earthquakes last summer caused rockfalls along the west side of the caldera that buried at least one outcrop of explosive deposits more than 1,000 years old. Luckily, those deposits had already been sampled.
For a tantalizing time, a much larger outcrop of these old deposits reappeared in the caldera wall as the caldera floor dropped; this outcrop is shown in a photograph taken a few years before the 1919 lava flow covered it. But gradually throughout the summer 2018, this exhumed outcrop became stranded and inaccessible as the caldera floor sunk below it. Perhaps a way will eventually be found to study this superb outcrop.
Summer 2018 gave field-focused geologists lots to do and think about in Kilauea Volcano’s caldera. With new samples and first-hand observations, their work will build on what is already known or surmised and help us better understand the caldera and how its 19th-century activity differed so much from that of the past 100 years.
Volcano Activity Updates
Kilauea is not erupting. Rates of seismicity, deformation, and gas release have not changed significantly over the past week.
On Tuesday, March 26, the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory lowered the Volcano Alert Level for Kilauea to normal and the Aviation Color Code to green. For definitions of USGS Volcano Alert Levels and Aviation Color Codes, see https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vhp/about_alerts.html.
Three earthquakes with three or more felt reports occurred in Hawaii during the past week: a magnitude-2.5 quake 32 miles southwest of Kahaluu-Keauhou at a depth of 17 miles on March 26 at 10:04 p.m.; a magnitude-3.0 quake 19 miles southeast of Waimea at a depth of 11 miles on March 24 at 3:43 a.m.; and a magnitude-3.5 quake 3 miles south of Volcano at depth of 8 miles on March 23 at 11:13 p.m.
Deformation signals are consistent with refilling of Kilauea Volcano’s deep East Rift Zone (ERZ) magma reservoir. Sulfur dioxide emission rates on the ERZ and at Kilauea’s summit remain low and have been steady over the past several weeks.
Hazards still exist at the lower ERZ and summit of Kilauea. Residents and visitors near the 2018 fissures, lava flows, and summit collapse area should heed Hawaii County Civil Defense and Hawaii Volcanoes National Park closures and warnings. HVO continues to closely monitor Kilauea for any sign of increased activity.
The USGS Volcano Alert level for Mauna Loa remains at normal.
Visit HVO’s website (https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hvo) for past Volcano Watch articles, Kilauea and Mauna Loa updates, volcano photos, maps, recent earthquake info, and more. Call 967-8862 for weekly Kilauea updates. Email questions to askHVO@usgs.gov.
Volcano Watch is a weekly article and activity update written by U.S. Geological Survey Hawaiian Volcano Observatory scientists and affiliates.