GIS 4035 Final Project 

For the last few weeks we have been working on a final project. As a final project I decided to use multispectral images to track lava eruptions and flows from the 2018 lower Puna eruption associated with the Kilauea volcano on the Island of Hawaii in the state of Hawaii. 

From some research I did I found that multispectral imagery can be used to track lava using data from the infrared spectrum. The heat radiated by lava makes it particularly sensitive to sensors that can pick up the IR spectrum. I used Sentinel - 2 imagery and tracked lava eruptions weekly or as close to weekly as possible. Some images could not be used because of intense cloud and or smoke cover over the study area. I used ERDAS Imagine to run supervised classifications of the images and teased out lava in the images. I then transferred data from ERDAS Imagine to ArcPro. In ArcPro I made two maps. One map shows lava on the days that the imagery was captured and the second map shows impacts to parcels and major roads within the study area. 

Unlike typical eruptions that occur from a center caldera of a volcano the lower Puna eruption occurred out of geographically dispersed fissures within an approximately four square mile area. On my first map it could be seen that new lava appears at different locations on a single day. 

An accuracy assessment that I carried out using Google Earth imagery showed that my image classification of lava was 82% accurate while my overall image classification was 93% accurate. 

Below are both of the maps that I put together for this project.