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The science of volcanology advances disproportionately during exceptionally large or well-observed eruptions. The 2018 eruption of Kīlauea Volcano (Hawai‘i) was its most impactful in centuries, involving an outpouring of more than one cubic kilometer of basalt, a magnitude 7 flank earthquake, and the volcano's largest summit collapse since at least the nineteenth century. Eruptive activity was documented in detail, yielding new insights into large caldera-rift eruptions; the geometry of a shallow magma storage-transport system and its interaction with rift zone tectonics; mechanisms of basaltic tephra-producing explosions; caldera collapse mechanics; and the dynamics of fissure eruptions and high-volume lava flows. Insights are broadly applicable to a range of volcanic systems and should reduce risk from future eruptions. Multidisciplinary collaboration will be required to fully leverage the diversity of monitoring data to address many of the most important outstanding questions. ▪ Unprecedented observations of a caldera collapse and coupled rift zone eruption yield new opportunities for advancing volcano science. ▪ Magma flow to a low-elevation rift zone vent triggered quasi-periodic step-like collapse of a summit caldera, which pressurized the magma system and sustained the eruption. ▪ Kīlauea's magmatic-tectonic system is tightly interconnected over tens of kilometers, with complex feedback mechanisms and interrelated hazards over widely varying time scales. ▪ The eruption revealed magma stored in diverse locations, volumes, and compositions, not only beneath the summit but also within the volcano's most active rift zone. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Volume 52 is May 2024. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
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This content will become publicly available on December 1, 2025
Awakening of Maunaloa Linked to Melt Shared from Kīlauea’s Mantle Source
Abstract Maunaloa—the largest active volcano on Earth—erupted in 2022 after its longest known repose period (~38 years) and two decades of volcanic unrest. This eruptive hiatus at Maunaloa encompasses most of the ~35-year-long Puʻuʻōʻō eruption of neighboring Kīlauea, which ended in 2018 with a collapse of the summit caldera and an unusually voluminous (~1 km3) rift eruption. A long-term pattern of such anticorrelated eruptive behavior suggests that a magmatic connection exists between these volcanoes within the asthenospheric mantle source and melting region, the lithospheric mantle, and/or the volcanic edifice. The exact nature of this connection is enigmatic. In the past, the distinct compositions of lavas from Kīlauea and Maunaloa were thought to require completely separate magma pathways from the mantle source of each volcano to the surface. Here, we use a nearly 200-yr record of lava chemistry from both volcanoes to demonstrate that melt from a shared mantle source within the Hawaiian plume may be transported alternately to Kīlauea or Maunaloa on a timescale of decades. This process led to a correlated temporal variation in 206Pb/204Pb and 87Sr/86Sr at these volcanoes since the early 19th century with each becoming more active when it received melt from the shared source. Ratios of highly over moderately incompatible trace elements (e.g. Nb/Y) at Kīlauea reached a minimum from ~2000 to 2010, which coincides with an increase in seismicity and inflation at the summit of Maunaloa. Thereafter, a reversal in Nb/Y at Kīlauea signals a decline in the degree of mantle partial melting at this volcano and suggests that melt from the shared source is now being diverted from Kīlauea to Maunaloa for the first time since the early to mid-20th century. These observations link a mantle-related shift in melt generation and transport at Kīlauea to the awakening of Maunaloa in 2002 and its eruption in 2022. Monitoring of lava chemistry is a potential tool that may be used to forecast the behavior (e.g. eruption rate and frequency) of these adjacent volcanoes on a timescale of decades. A future increase in eruptive activity at Maunaloa is likely if the temporal increase in Nb/Y continues at Kīlauea.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2011366
- PAR ID:
- 10621291
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Petrology
- Volume:
- 65
- Issue:
- 12
- ISSN:
- 0022-3530
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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