Continuous volcano monitoring stations can be used to gauge both short-lived degassing episodes that happen within minutes to hours as well as long-lived activity that happens over days to years. With advancing technology, scientists are able to set up a station to monitor gases from fumaroles, vents, soils, hydrothermal deposits, etc and transmit the data directly to an online directory or observation location. 

To monitor the activity at the Pu `u `O `o vent on the Big Island of Hawai’i, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) set up a monitoring station on the flanks of Kilauea’s east rift zone. Gas emissions as well as the wind speed and wind direction are periodically sampled and get transmitted every 10 minutes to HVO. This allows HVO to monitor degassing at the active vent almost instantaneously.