Introduction. More than 500 million people live within the potential exposure range of a volcano. The risk of catastrophic losses in future eruptions is significant given population growth, proximities of major cities to volcanoes, and the possibility of larger eruptions. The objectives of this review are to describe the impact of volcanoes on the human population, in terms of mortality, injury...

The May 18, 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption perturbed the atmosphere and generated atmosphere-to-ground coupled airwaves, which were recorded on at least 35 seismometers operated by the Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network (PNSN). From 102 distinct travel time picks we identify coherent airwaves crossing Washington State primarily to the north and east of the volcano. The travel time curves pro...

Volcanoes as targets for InSAR vary greatly in the quality of their returned phase signal. There are two end-member volcano types from this perspective. Basaltic, low-relief shield volcanoes with frequent effusive eruptions and shallow magma reservoirs generally give excellent coherence and large magnitude ground deformations (~1m) that can be easily detected and modelled. However, their indivi...

Volcanic eruptions pose a threat to lives and property when volcano flanks and surroundings are densely populated. The local impact of an eruption depends firstly on its location, whether it occurs near a volcano summit, or down on the flanks. Then forecasting, with a defined accuracy, the location of a potential, imminent eruption would significantly improve the assessment and mitigation of vo...

A half-century of investigations are summarized here on the youngest Hawaiian volcano, Lō"ihi Seamount. It was discovered in 1952 following an earthquake swarm. Surveying in 1954 determined it has an elongate shape, which is the meaning of its Hawaiian name. Lō"ihi was mostly forgotten until two earthquake swarms in the 1970s led to a dredging expedition in 1978, which recovered young lavas. Th...

One of the most important components of the magmatic plumbing system of Kilauea Volcano is the shallow (2–4 km deep) magma storage reservoir that underlies the volcano’s summit region. Nevertheless, the geometry (shape and size) of Kilauea’s summit reservoir is controversial. Two fundamentally different models for the reservoir’s shape have been proposed based on geophysical observations: a ple...

Volcano monitoring uses knowledge of volcanic processes and extensive data gathering to analyze areas of volcanic activity. The main goal is to learn the nature of the volcano, the magmatic processes occurring, and the likelihood of a future eruption. Volcano monitoring centers around three aspects of volcanic processes: ground deformation, seismic activity, and gas emissions. These techniques ...

Quantifying the eruption potential of a restless volcano requires the ability to model parameters such as overpressure and calculate the host rock stress state as the system evolves. A critical challenge is developing a model-data fusion framework to take advantage of observational data and provide updates of the volcanic system through time. The Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) uses a Monte Carlo...

Volcanic eruptions and other potentially hazardous natural phenomena occur independently of any human actions. However, such phenomena can cause disasters when a society fails to foresee the hazardous manifestations and adopt adequate measures to reduce its vulnerability. One of the causes of such a failure is the lack of a consistent perception of the changing hazards posed by an ongoing erupt...