USGS Home Contact USGS Search USGS

Welcome to the Volcano Hazards Program (VHP) of the U.S. Geological Survey

Volcanic Activity Information:

VHP News

Scientists say the nearly three and a half years of eruption at Mount St. Helens is over for now and have lowered the Volcano Alert Level from Advisory to Normal and the Aviation Color Code from Yellow to Green. For more information please see http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/MSH/Eruption04/Monitoring/July2008/.

View the new VHP Web Site we've been building to better highlight our volcano status information. Access the latest U.S. Volcano Alerts and Updates from our Home Page, learn what's going on at our volcanoes with elevated statuses on our new Elevated Status page, and don't miss our U.S. Volcano Status map. The site construction phase will continue until early October 2008 when we make the site live at this (volcanoes.usgs.gov) address in time for Earth Science Week. You can see the new site under construction at http://volcano.wr.usgs.gov.

This April AVO is celebrating twenty years of volcano research and hazard mitigation in the North Pacific. AVO was founded in 1988 in the wake of the 1986 eruption of Augustine Volcano and only 18 months before the reawakening of Redoubt Volcano in Cook Inlet. Over the next twenty years, eighteen Alaskan volcanoes have erupted including several significant events near main population centers in south-central Alaska. At least seven more volcanoes were restless, producing significant gas plumes, sudden acidic crater lakes and floods, or strong earthquake swarms. For more information and the opportunity to "Join the Celebration" please see http://www.avo.alaska.edu/avo20/.

On the evening of March 23, 2008 small incandescent particles were observed erupting from the vent below the Halema`uma`u Overlook. A few particles were ejected with sufficient velocity to be deposited on the rim of Halema`uma`u Crater. For more information on the changing eruption at Kilauea including photos, text updates, a new Halema`uma`u Crater webcam, and details about the Kilauea 1924 explosive eruption please see the HVO Web Site.

A National Volcano Early Warning System (NVEWS) is being formulated by the Consortium of U.S. Volcano Observatories (CUSVO) to establish a proactive, fully integrated, national-scale monitoring effort that ensures the most threatening volcanoes in the United States are properly monitored in advance of the onset of unrest and at levels commensurate with the threats posed. Volcanic threat is the combination of hazards (the destructive natural phenomena produced by a volcano) and exposure (people and property at risk from the hazards).

According to a new USGS report on NVEWS, since 1980, 45 eruptions and 15 cases of notable volcanic unrest have occurred at 33 U.S. volcanoes. About half of the most threatening U.S. volcanoes are monitored at a basic level and a few are well monitored with a suite of modern instruments. However, the report cautions, monitoring capabilities at many hazardous volcanoes are sparse or antiquated, and some hazardous volcanoes have no ground-based monitoring whatsoever.

Recognizing that there are potentially dangerous volcanoes within the United States and its Territories that have inadequate or no ground-based monitoring, the USGS Volcano Hazards Program, with CUSVO, is preparing a plan for a National Volcano Early Warning System (NVEWS).

A workshop of a broad group of stakeholders including representatives of emergency- and land-management agencies at the Federal, State, and local levels and the aviation sector was held in Portland, Oregon on February 22-23, 2006 to solicit input about implementation of NVEWS and specific information requirements. Information about the workshop can be found in the Summary of the Stakeholders Workshop to Develop a National Volcano Early Warning System (NVEWS) (pdf format).

For more information on NVEWS, please see the NVEWS Fact Sheet (pdf format).

Previous news stories are available in the VHP News Archive

Predict an Eruption: Case Study from Kilauea and Mount St. Helens volcanoes

Try your hand at predicting an eruption of Mount St. Helens volcano using data collected by scientists of the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory. This presentation uses data from several eruptive episodes of Mount St. Helens in the 1980's to show the way in which a series of eruptions were accurately predicted by USGS scientists as far as 3 weeks in advance. Go to Predict an Eruption.