New Maps of East Rift Zone Released

The U.S. Geological Survey released this map as of 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 29, 2018.

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Given the dynamic nature of Kīlauea’s lower East Rift Zone eruption, with changing vent locations, fissures starting and stopping, and varying rates of lava effusion, map details shown here are accurate as of the date/time noted—and could have changed rapidly since that time. Shaded purple areas indicate lava flows erupted in 1840, 1955, 1960 and 2014-15.

This thermal map shows the fissure system and lava flows as of 1:15 p.m. on Monday, May 28, 2018.

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The flow from Fissure 8 that reached Pohoiki Road Monday, May 28, stalled, though activity restarted at Fissure 8 in the afternoon shortly after this map was made. The channelized flows that had reached the ocean were inactive Monday—a small amount of residual lava was draining from the abandoned eastern channel into the ocean, creating a weak ocean entry plume.

Fissure 22 restarted on May 29, with lava starting to reoccupy the drained channel. The black and white area is the extent of the thermal map. Temperature in the thermal image is displayed as gray-scale values, with the brightest pixels indicating the hottest areas. The thermal map was constructed by stitching many overlapping oblique thermal images collected by a handheld thermal camera during a helicopter overflight of the flow field. The base is a copyrighted color satellite image (used with permission) provided by Digital Globe.