Geohazard Supersites and Natural Laboratories (GSNL)

In 2018, the Hawaii Supersite was impacted by a crisis at Kilauea volcano, where a lava flow destroyed over 700 homes. Starting in late May, the Kilauea caldera began to rapidly subside. In two months, parts of the ground had dropped by 400 meters, a level rarely observed in a volcano eruption.

High resolution InSAR monitoring with COSMO-SkyMed and TerraSAR X images granted through the GSNL Supersite provided unprecedented views of the collapse and have been critical for understanding how the subsidence was evolving over time. This data, along with high temporal resolution global positioning system (GPS) and seismic data, were analysed by the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and the scientific community, generating information which guided the disaster response.

0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *