The Hawai´i Supersite: Improved understanding of Hawaiian volcanism made possible by increased data accessibility

The Hawai´i Supersite was established in 2008 to encourage basic research into Hawaiian volcanoes and their attendant hazards by making a diverse suite of ground-based, airborne, and satellite data available at no cost to the scientific community. These data include almost 10 TB of synthetic aperture radar imagery, which, in combination with other geological, geochemical, and geophysical measurements, have yielded insights into eruption dynamics, lava flow emplacement, surface deformation, and other processes. The major challenge facing the Supersite is the management, archiving, and distribution of the large volume of available data - a problem that only increases with time given the growing number of ground-based instruments and satellite missions, in particular. Provided that these challenges can be met, multidisciplinary scientific collaborations made possible by the Hawai´i Supersite should continue to yield new insights into how Hawaiian and other volcanoes work, and the Supersite will serve as a model for how targeted research initiatives can impact the understanding of hazardous Earth processes.