"(BIVN) – As the water level of a new, green pond at the Kīlauea summit crater continues to rise, scientists are keeping a close eye on the volcano.

On a recent episode of Island Conversations on KWXX radio, Sherry Bracken sat down with USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory geophysicist Jim Kauahikaua for an in-depth discussion on the hot pond in Halemaʻumaʻu.

Bracken kicked off the talk by asking Kauahikaua where all that water is coming from?

“The water level is rising, slowly,” Kauahikaua said. “We can’t get real accurate measures of how fast it’s moving but we have a couple of indirect measures that suggest it’s rising at about, maybe, a yard a week.”

“The water is there possibly for two reasons,” he continued. “One is that it’s just rainfall collecting down there, in which case that should wax and wane with rainfall. The other is that this is actually the water table that was there, at a higher elevation, but got dragged down with the collapses of 2018. And it is now just, basically, rebounding after the collapse. It’s coming up to its former level, slowly.”

“So far, because the water level is rising steadily, and that it’s colored so it’s not like pure rainwater, the evidence is sort of leading towards ground water rebounding from the 2018 collapse,” Kauahikaua said. “From our observations it looks like it’s steadily rising, as opposed to going up and down with rainfall.”

Later in the interview, Kauahikaua explained how USGS has “a research drill hole that is about half a mile south of Halemaʻumaʻu, and so we know the water level in that well. And the lake will have to rise another 50 or so yards to be in hydraulic equilibrium with the water. So, if our hypothesis is correct that it’s groundwater that’s rebounding, that lake should rise to about that same level and then stall or stay there.”"

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