Founding Vision Lives on in the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory

By Steve Brantley and Don Swanson

Perched on the rim of Kilauea Volcano's expansive caldera, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) stands as a monument to the early vision that continuous scientific study of active volcanoes can save lives. When the world's second volcano observatory was created in 1912, Kilauea boasted an active lava lake on its caldera floor that permitted quick and easy access for scientists and visitors alike. Today, Kilauea's 22-year long eruption at Pu'u 'O'o, 12 miles east of the summit, continues to offer remarkable opportunities to observe volcanic activity and test new ideas, instruments, and new smart computer programs.

The main driving force behind the establishment of HVO, and its guiding scientific leader for three decades, was Dr. Thomas T. Jaggar, then a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor. Ten years before arriving on the rim of Kilauea as HVO's first Director, he joined an expedition to the West Indies to investigate two volcano disasters--the 1902 eruptions of Soufriere St. Vincent and neighboring Mt. Pelee, the latter resulting in 29,000 deaths. The experience profoundly changed Jaggar's life.

In his autobiography, Jaggar recounts, "It was hard to distinguish where the streets had been. Everything was buried under fallen walls of cobblestone and pink plaster and tiles, including 20,000 bodies. As I look back on the Martinique experience, I know what a crucial point in my life it was. I realized that the killing of thousands of persons by subterranean machinery totally unknown to geologists was worthy of a life work."

During his early years as Director, Jaggar struggled after private endowments with the hope of eventually securing sponsorship by the Federal Government. He lobbied Congress in 1916 to support the new observatory through the U.S. Weather Bureau and to create a national park centered on Kilauea's erupting summit caldera. Hawaii National Park (now Hawaii Volcanoes National Park) was created by Congress that same year, and became the managing landlord for HVO.

The fledging observatory was later supported by the U.S. Weather Bureau (1919-24), the U.S. Geological Survey (1924-35), the National Park Service (1935-47), and again the USGS since 1947. The original HVO building, built in 1912 with a seismograph vault in its cellar and now the site of the Volcano House Hotel, was in use until the early 1940s, when the Observatory moved into a new building 200 m back from the caldera rim (now the Volcano Art Center). In 1948, HVO moved to the top of Uwekahuna Bluff on the northwest rim of Kilauea caldera. On the observatory's 75^th anniversary, a modern building, complete with observation tower, geochemistry laboratories, computer room, and many new offices, was dedicated with traditional Hawaiian blessings and dance.

As was Jaggar's original vision, the present observatory adjoins a park visitor center--the Jaggar Museum--that describes the work of volcanologists and the results of their studies increasingly in real time to more than a million visitors each year.

In 1941, Jaggar predicted that a variety of ". . . electrically controlled measurement stations reporting to a central office, and extended automatic and auto-metric facilities sending wired or wireless messages of underground and over-ground happenings" would be used to track the activity of volcanoes. Today, more than 100 such stations record earthquakes, the changing shape of the ground, and emissions of volcanic gases with increasing precision, and their data are sent via radio and satellite to HVO and elsewhere in real time and disseminated further via the Internet.

Demonstrating the reality of Jaggar's vision, new generation GPS receivers detected renewed inflation of Mauna Loa remotely in May 2002, a sure sign that magma is accumulating in the volcano's magma reservoir once more. Even as Kilauea's eruption continues unabated, the HVO staff is prepared to issue warnings and respond to the next eruption of Mauna Loa.

Jaggar never lost sight of his original vision that "the main object of the work should be humanitarian . . . prediction and methods of protecting life and property on the basis of sound scientific achievement." This remains the goal of HVO and the USGS Volcano Hazards Program, which now supports four additional volcano observatories, the Alaska, Cascades, Long Valley, and Yellowstone observatories.