The Hawai`i Supersite: Update and results (Invited)

The Hawai`i Supersite was initially established in 2008 and was made permanent in 2012. Over the course of its existence, SAR data have been provided to the Supersite by the Canadian, Japanese, European, Italian, and German space agencies. Well over 2000 individual scenes are part of the Hawai`i archive, amounting to nearly 10 TB of raw data. A diversity of ground-based data, including deformation, seismic, and gas emissions, are also part of the Supersite, supplied by the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and collaborators. The availability of such a broad suite of remote and terrestrial data has facilitated numerous explorations into Hawaiian volcanism, including both operational volcano monitoring and scientific investigations. For example, the 5-9 March 2011 Kamoamoa fissure eruption at Kilauea Volcano was tracked by a spatially and temporally dense set of deformation data. Models based on GPS, tilt, and multiple interferogams acquired over the course of the 4-day-long eruption by the ALOS, TerraSAR-X, and COSMO-SkyMed satellites revealed the complexity of dike opening over time and were corroborated by seismic and gas emission measurements. SAR data provided by the Supersite have also enabled views of surface change that are not possible using other means. High-resolution interferograms (3-m pixel size) from TerraSAR-X and COSMO-SkyMed have detected localized, cm-scale subsidence around Kilauea's summit eruptive vent, with increases in rate during periods of vent instability and rim collapse. South of the summit, along the Koa`e fault zone, InSAR data detected deformation due to shallow earthquakes in June 2011 that could only loosely be characterized by vertical deformation from leveling. Along Kilauea's east rift zone, SAR data have proven invaluable in mapping lava flow activity, especially given their all-weather, broad-scale, and high resolution capabilities. Continued contributions of both ground- and space-based data to the Hawai`i Supersite will expand both the use of such data, as well as the scope of the monitoring and scientific investigations of Hawaiian volcanism. The ultimate goal of the Supersite is to facilitate large-scale collaborations on complex problems of extreme importance to society, for instance, volcanic flank instability, magma plumbing system structure, and eruption precursors.