Preliminary analyses of volcanic hazards at Kīlauea Volcano, Hawai‘i, 2017–2018

Abstract

From 2017 to 2018, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) responded to ongoing and changing eruptions at Kīlauea Volcano as part of its mission to monitor volcanic processes, issue warnings of dangerous activity, and assess volcanic hazards. To formalize short-term hazards assessments—and, in some cases, issue prognoses for future activity—and make results discoverable to both the public and the authorities, HVO released reports online. These reports were published rapidly, received peer review under the USGS’s Fundamental Science Practice guidelines, and were intended to address a focused question posed by one or more cooperating agencies—for this reason, they were called “cooperator reports.” This Open-File Report concatenates four such products issued in 2017 and 2018 into a single publication. These reports have been reformatted and lightly edited for clarity, but the content has not otherwise been changed from the versions first publicly released.