For some people, it’s a choice based on cultural beliefs or economic opportunities provided by the volcano. Other times it’s less a choice than the only option.
The eruption of Mauna Loa is a profound spiritual experience for many Native Hawaiians. An anthropologist explains Native American beliefs on the living Earth and volcanic lava.
Magma fountains through a fissure on Mauna Loa, becoming lava, on Nov. 30, 2022.
K. Mulliken/USGS
A scientist who led one of the first projects to map the Hawaiian Islands’ deep volcanic plumbing explains what’s going on under the surface as Mauna Loa erupts.
Earth has liquid rock inside. Here’s what happens to that rock to make lava happen.
Lava flows from a fissure in the aftermath of eruptions from the Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island, May 22, 2018.
Andrew Richard Hara/Ena Media Hawaii via Getty Images
Volcanoes might seem like nature’s incinerators, but using them to burn up trash would be dangerous and disrespectful to indigenous people who view them as sacred.
A key goal of the Chang'e-5 mission was to find evidence of some of the youngest volcanic eruptions on the Moon.
Men cross the front of the still smoking lava rocks from an eruption of the Mount Nyiragongo on May 23, 2021 in Goma in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
GUERCHOM NDEBO/AFP via Getty Images
Nyiragongo is one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of its fast-moving lava. It can flow at a speed of about 100km per hour.
Still standing: a structure surrounded by lava following a volcanic eruption on 23 May 2021 in Goma, a city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Moses Sawasawa via GettyImages
Earth’s magnetic field locks information into lava as it cools into rock. Millions of years later, scientists can decipher this magnetic data to build geologic timelines and maps.
Rocks contain a layer-by-layer record of the history of our planet.
Fred Moore/flickr
When magma rises towards the surface gas bubbles start to form. Whether or not they can escape as the magma is rising affects how explosive the eruption will be.
Lifeguards and volunteers run across an ash covered slope after the June 3 eruption of the Fuego volcano in Guatemala.
Esteban Biba/AAP
Important points about volcanoes: location matters, explosiveness can be predicted to an extent, and fast-moving flows of volcanic materials (known as pyroclastic flows) are deadly.
Pyroclastic flows are biggest danger in these eruptions.
A massive fast moving lava flow from Kilauea consumes everything in its path, as the flames from the remnants of one home burns on the left, while it approaches another on the right.
EPA/Bruce Omori/Paradise Helicopters
The current eruption of Kilauea on Hawai'is big island can tell us a lot about what is going on beneath the volcano and may provide lessons for future eruptions.