A popular tourist attraction, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is home to two of the world’s most active volcanoes, and now scientists say the volcano Kiluaea could be much more dangerous than previously thought, reports the BBC News.
At a recent annual conference of Earth scientists, new research revealed that the Kilauea volcano, with its photogenic lava fountains and rivers, is more likely to erupt explosively, and could cause a permanent evacuation of large areas around the volcano.
"We’ve found from our work that over the past 2,500 years, which is about as far back as we can see, Kilauea has been in an explosive mode about 60 percent of the time and in a lava-producing mode, such as it’s in now, only about 40 percent of the time,” explained Dr. Don Swanson.
"We found that explosive eruptions are not infrequent events, that they occur over long periods of time and that the hazard from them is much greater than we’d anticipated," he noted.
If Kilauea returns to its eruptive phase, the concern is that it would most likely require a large permanent evacuation area. The national park on the island of Hawai, which welcomes huge numbers of international visitors, would also have to change its operations.