Page 424 - Hawaii: Diving, Surfing, Pearl Harbor, Volcanoes and More

he Hawaiian Islands are volcanic in plates come together, sometimes volcanoes to as the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount. This
T origin. Each island is made up of at least will form. Volcanoes can also form in the includes a 1,500 miles of archipelago. In
one primary volcano, although many islands middle of a plate, where magma rises upward total, the State of Hawaii officially recognizes
are composites of more than one. The Big until it erupts on the sea floor, at what is 137 “islands” within the Hawaiian Seamount
Island, for instance, is constructed of 5 major called a “hot spot.” section of this chain. Located approximately
volcanoes: Kilauea, Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea, 2,400 miles from the nearest continental land
Hualalai and Kohala. Mauna Loa is the largest he Hawaiian Islands where formed by mass, Hawaii is the most remote population
active volcano on Earth. Kilauea is presently T such a hot spot occurring in the middle center on earth. As a consequence of this
one of the most productive volcanoes on of the Pacific Plate. While the hot spot itself isolation, the Hawaiian Islands were one of
Earth (in terms of how much lava it erupts is fixed, the plate is moving. So, as the plate the last places of earth to be discovered,
each year). The primary volcanoes on each moved over the hot spot, the string of islands occupied and modified by humans. Addition-
of the islands are known as a shield volca- that make up the Hawaiian Island chain ally, this segregation caused the processes of
noes, which are gently sloping mountains were formed. The Hawaiian Islands form an selective migration and evolution to result
produced from a large number of generally archipelago that extends over a vast area of in a native plant and animal species that are
very fluid lava flows. “Hotspots” is the name the North Pacific Ocean. The archipelago is over ninety percent endemic, or found no
given to volcanic areas believed to be formed made up of 132 islands, atolls, reefs, shal- other place in the world.
by mantle plumes, which are hypothesized low banks, shoals, and seamounts stretching
to be columns of hot material rising from the from the island of Hawaii in the southeast to fter several hundred thousand years
core-mantle boundary in a fixed space that Kure Atoll in the northwest. The next island A and countless eruptions, the volcano
causes large-volume melting. Because tec- to appear in the Hawaiian chain has already rises above sea level to build a new is-
tonic plates move across them, each volcano been identified, and named as Lo’ihi. It is land. As the plate moves, like a conveyor
becomes dormant and is eventually reformed currently 975 metres below sea level, and is belt across the plume, new volcanoes are
as the plate advances over the postulated estimated to emerge above sea level in the formed, and the previous volcano eventu-
plume. The Earth’s outer crust is made up next 10,000 to 100,000 years. The Big Island ally becomes dormant.
of a series of tectonic plates that move over of Hawaii is part of a 3,600 mile-long chain,
the surface of the planet. In areas where the located in the east Pacific Ocean, referred