GVP Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for April 13-19, 2011: Kamchatka and Hawaii in the spotlight

It has been a couple weeks since I posted the USGS and Smithsonian Institute’s Global Volcanism Program Weekly Volcanic Activity Report – being busy with work every day for the last 2 weeks will do that. Things are a little more settled, so I thought I’d highlights some of the activity worldwide as gathered by Sally Kuhn Sennert.

Kamchatka: Not too surprisingly, volcanoes being noisy in the eastern Russia peninsula. The current activity at Kizimen, in fact, has been intense enough to cause concern about local fauna, such as reindeer that frequent the area near the volcano. The moss that the ~1,000 reindeer that live in the area’s wildlife preserve subsist on is buried under ice and ash. A recent NASA Earth Observatory MODIS image shows the thick layers of grey ash on the snow to the north and west of the volcano. Bezymianny, Karymsky and Shiveluch all make the list as well. The latest KVERT update has more information on all this activity as well.

Hawai`i: I know a lot of you have been following the resumption of activity at Pu`u O`o and Halema`uma`u on Kilauea much closer than I have – mostly via the webcams for the volcano. It seems that the lava lake at the summit crater is slowly refilling, now back to within ~100 meters of the crater floor, although it has been disrupted by rock falls from the edges of the crater as well. The lava lake that is perched in Pu`u O`o is currently covering half of the crater floor there (see below). You can see all the details on the HVO status update for Kilauea as well.

The small lava lake in the Pu`u O`o crater at Kilauea, as seen on April 21, 2011. Image courtesy of HVO/USGS.

In case you missed last’s week’s GVP Report, check it out here.

Top left: Kizimen with an impressive steam-and-ash plume seen in February 2011.