Volcano Watch — Upgrades below the surface
Technicians at the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) are constantly engineering, building, deploying, maintaining, troubleshooting, or upgrading equipment and instruments that we use to monitor Hawaii’s active volcanoes. This week’s “Volcano Watch” article focuses on the installation process of newly upgraded seismometers that are used to detect and locate earthquakes.
Volcano Watch is a weekly article and activity update written by U.S. Geological Survey Hawaiian Volcano Observatory scientists and affiliates. Today’s article is by Research Corporation of the University of Hawaii technician Miki Warren.
After the 2018 lower East Rift Zone eruption and summit collapse of Kīlauea, Congress allocated funding to HVO via the Additional Supplemental Appropriations for Disaster Relief Act of 2019 (H.R. 2157). Part of the funding was used to restore monitoring stations damaged or lost during the 2018 Kīlauea events. Part of the funding was also used improve or update other existing volcano monitoring sites around the Island of Hawaiʻi.
Many of the sites that were restored, or improved and upgraded, are seismic stations. While some of the seismic stations were disrupted during 2018, others were in need of improvement in data quality or transmission reliability. These factors are important for being able to accurately locate earthquakes and determine their magnitude, which in turn helps us to understand volcanic processes and associated hazards.
To help imp
