After 35 years of eruptive activity focused at and near the Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō vent in Kīlauea’s East Rift Zone, a drastic shift in early May 2018 culminating in the opening of a new fissure system 20 km downrift within Leilani Estates. This eruption was a unique opportunity to examine the magmatic architecture and eruption processes of this classic basaltic shield volcano.

 

Fe-Mg zoning patterns in olivine record the magma interaction history dating back from a few days to a few years, and were used as output constraints for diffusion modeling to extract these characteristic mixing-to-eruption timescales. Timescale information obtained via our petrological methods complement the timescale information provided by USGS monitoring systems (GPS, seismicity).