A report on Volcano and Kīlauea

It is an active shield volcano with relatively gentle slopes, with a volume estimated at 18000 mi3, although its peak is about 125 ft lower than that of its neighbor, Mauna Kea.

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park covers the summit and portions of the southeastern and southwestern flanks of the volcano, and also incorporates Kīlauea, a separate volcano.

A shield volcano is a type of volcano named for its low profile, resembling a warrior's shield lying on the ground.

Hawaiian eruptions are often extremely long-lived; Puʻu ʻŌʻō, a cinder cone of Kīlauea, erupted continuously from January 3, 1983, until April 2018.

Four of these volcanoes are active, two are dormant; more than 123 are extinct, most now preserved as atolls or seamounts.

According to Wilson's theory, the Hawaiian volcanoes should be progressively older and increasingly eroded the further they are from the hotspot, and this is easily observable; the oldest rock in the main Hawaiian islands, that of Kauai, is about 5.5 million years old and deeply eroded, while the rock on Hawaii island is a comparatively young 0.7 million years of age or less, with new lava constantly erupting at Kīlauea, the hotspot's present center.

Only seven caldera-forming collapses are known to have occurred between 1911 and 2016. More recently, a caldera collapse occurred at Kīlauea, Hawaii in 2018.

A collapse is triggered by the emptying of the magma chamber beneath the volcano, sometimes as the result of a large explosive volcanic eruption (see Tambora in 1815), but also during effusive eruptions on the flanks of a volcano (see Piton de la Fournaise in 2007) or in a connected fissure system (see Bárðarbunga in 2014–2015).

The Hawaiian Islands are the exposed peaks of a great undersea mountain range known as the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain, formed by volcanic activity over a hotspot in the Earth's mantle.

Kīlauea had been erupting nearly continuously since 1983 when it stopped August 2018.

Lava may be erupted at a volcano or through a fracture in the crust, on land or underwater, usually at temperatures from 800 to 1200 C. The volcanic rock resulting from subsequent cooling is also often called lava.

Koae and Kapoho, Hawaii were both destroyed by the same eruption of Kīlauea in January, 1960. (abandoned)

At Mount St. Helens in Washington state, hundreds of steam explosions preceded the 1980 Plinian eruption of the volcano.

Kilauea – Hawaii, United States – the volcano has a long record of phreatic explosions; a 1924 phreatic eruption hurled rocks estimated at eight tons up to a distance of one kilometer.