A team of 25 researchers from the United States, Japan, and Italy joined the staff of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) from January 8 through February 9, 1996, to make the most detailed seismic recordings on Kilauea Volcano ever. One-hundred-sixteen portable seismographs were installed in and near Kilauea Crater in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park as a joint Japanese-U.S. research project to record volcanic earthquakes and tremor. The importance of these events has long been recognized, but their origin remains poorly understood due to inadequate network coverage and limitations of the analog instrumentation used in the past.

On February 1, a swarm of over 500 earthquakes was recorded by the dense network, providing the best recording of an intrusive earthquake swarm at Kilauea. The data collected offer an unprecedented opportunity to understand earthquakes associated with magma transport.