Kīlauea

Kīlauea, on the southeastern flank of the island of Hawaiʻi, is one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, having erupted almost continuously from 1983 to 2018 and producing significant eruptions since, including a major event in 2018 that destroyed over 700 homes in the Puna district and dramatically reshaped the coastline. In Native Hawaiian tradition, Kīlauea's summit caldera, Halemaʻumaʻu ("House of the ʻāmaʻu fern"), is the sacred home of Pele, the akua (deity) of volcanoes and fire, who is described in oral tradition (moʻolelo) as a powerful and temperamental figure who travelled through the Hawaiian island chain — each island in turn formed and then abandoned as her home — before settling at Kīlauea.

Pele remains a living presence in Hawaiian cultural and religious practice rather than a purely historical figure: offerings of flowers, food, and gin (a substitution that became traditional after Western contact) are still left at the crater rim, and eruptions are widely interpreted by practitioners as expressions of Pele's activity or displeasure — a framework that coexists, often without contradiction in the eyes of Native Hawaiian scientists and cultural practitioners, with the U.S. Geological Survey's instrumental monitoring of the same volcano from the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, established in 1912 on Kīlauea's rim and one of the oldest volcano observatories in the world. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which contains the summit, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987 partly in recognition of this living cultural significance alongside its geological importance.