Youngest lava flows on East Maui
probably older than A.D. 1790
September 9, 1999
A weekly feature provided by scientists at the Hawaiian Volcano
Observatory.
Youngest lava flows on East Maui
probably older than A.D. 1790
In our efforts to refine the geologic map of Haleakala, we recently
obtained radiocarbon ages from the youngest lava flows, those at La Perouse
The ages indicate these flows were emplaced sometime between A.D.
1480 and 1600.
This finding shakes the long-held assumption that the flows
are vintage A.D. 1790.
The charcoal that produced the ages was sought to
test the 1790 hypothesis, and therein lies an unfinished story of
scientific investigation.
The lava flows in question lie 2.5 miles south of Makena, south of the
resorts that line Ma`alaea Bay from Kihei to Wailea.
Erupted from a
prominent spatter cone, Kalua o Lapa, the flows spread outward and built
the promontory of Cape Kina`u and, to the east, La Perouse Bay.
Perouse flows, as they became known informally, were thought to have been
emplaced in the time between the voyages of La Perouse (1786) and Vancouver
(1793) because of the subtly different charts produced by geographers from
those journeys.
But neither of these charts is accurate enough for
definitive comparison.
Our initial interest in these lava flows was to use them to calibrate our
knowledge of the Earth's magnetic pole.
The magnetic north pole changes
through time, so that a compass needle at a stationary site will point in a
different direction today compared with 10 or 1,000 years ago.
Lava flows
contain minerals that record the magnetic orientation existing at the time
they form.
By determining the magnetic orientation of precisely dated
flows, we can learn of the exact path followed during magnetic polar
variation.
The surprise came when we compared the magnetic record of the La Perouse
flows with Big Island flows emplaced in 1802; although thought to be
similar in age, the pole positions were substantially different.
raised serious doubt that the La Perouse flows were erupted in 1790.
Indeed, the La Perouse magnetic poles more closely match those from Big
Island flows whose ages range from 350 to 460 radiocarbon years before
This information led us to look for charcoal beneath a La Perouse flow and
beneath spatter at the Kalua o Lapa vent, which we found at both sites.
The laboratory ages are 390 and 460 radiocarbon years before present
(before A.D. 1950); analytical uncertainty is plus or minus 50 years.
Unlike many isotopic dating clocks, the radiocarbon clock must be
calibrated to account for changes in the atmospheric abundance of the
carbon-14 isotope, which varies as a consequence of cosmic-ray bombardment.
When calibrated, these ages correspond to dates ranging respectively from
A.D. 1428 to 1640 and from 1402 to 1609.
Thus the two charcoal ages are
roughly coincident, within analytical error.
They indicate an age
substantially older than the previously assumed age of A.D. 1790.
Our effort to resolve the discrepancy between different scientific
findings, however, is unfinished.
People questioned in 1841 about the age
of the flow stated that their grandparents saw it.
Their reports indicate
a lava-flow age of about A.D. 1750.
Oral history is important and not to
be overlooked among the numbers from laboratories.
Perhaps some of our
Maui-born readers have additional knowledge to share about the La Perouse
flows that could resolve all pieces of the puzzle.
Eruption Update
Eruptive activity of Kilauea Volcano continued unabated during the
past week. Lava is erupting from Pu`u `O`o and flowing through a network of
tubes from the vent to the sea.
Lava is entering the ocean near Kamokuna
and enlarging the bench.
The public is reminded that the ocean-entry area
is extremely hazardous, with explosions accompanying unpredictable
collapses of the unstable, new land.
The steam clouds are highly acidic
and laced with glass particles.
A magnitude-3.7 earthquake was reported felt by a resident of
Hawaiian Ocean View Estates at 2:09 a.m. on September 7.
The earthquake
was located 30 km (18 mi) north of South Point at a depth of 1.4 km (0.9
The URL of this page is
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/archive/_09.html
Updated: 4 Oct 1999National Guard arrives in Hawaiian town threatened by river of lava as villagers prepare to evacuate - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Television
National Guard arrives in Hawaiian town threatened by river of lava as villagers prepare to evacuate
A contingent of National Guard troops has arrived in a Hawaiian town to provide security to the Big Island community threatened by a river of molten lava that is slowly creeping toward the town's main road.The troops were greeted with cheers by residents as they arrived in the village of Pahoa.The lava flow from the Kilauea volcano has been sliding towards the town for weeks but has slowed to less than five metres an hour, said Darryl Oliveira, director of Hawaii County Civil Defence."The activity on the flow front is very inactive, very sluggish," Mr Oliveira said.The lava threatens to destroy homes and cut off a road and a highway through Pahoa.Officials have yet to offer predictions of when exactly the molten flow could bisect the town which is at the site of an old sugar plantation with a population of 800.
The glowing leading edge of the lava flow is about 145 metres from Pahoa Village Road, the main street through the town, officials said.Residents of about 50 dwellings in what civil defence officials called a "corridor of risk" have been asked to be ready to leave. Some 83 National Guard troops arrived on Thursday in the community, where some residents have expressed concern about potential looters targeting evacuated homes. "These are local troops, people from the community," Mr Oliveira said. "They'll be here working to take care of their family and friends."No homes have yet been destroyed while a finger of lava threatening one house on the edge of town has not advanced since Wednesday night, Mr Oliveira said.In another challenge, authorities said the lava could take down power poles and leave residents without electricity.Kilauea has erupted continuously from its Pu'u O'o vent since 1983, with its latest lava flow beginning on June 27.The last home destroyed by lava on the Big Island was at the Royal Gardens subdivision in Kalapana in 2012.
First posted
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Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
Rutgers University geological sciences professor Claude Herzberg offers new evidence that parts of the Earth's crust that long ago dove hundreds or thousands of kilometers into the Earth's interior have resurfaced in the hot lava flow of Hawaiian volcanoes. Writing in Nature, Herzberg claims to have found telltale chemical evidence at Mauna Kea that pieces of this submerged crust have been forced up through plumes and now make up most of this volcano's lava flow.
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Snow caps the summits of Mauna Loa (center) and Mauna Kea (toward the top, center) volcanoes on the island of Hawaii. This true-color image was acquired by the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), flying aboard NASA's Terra satellite, on February 28, 2002.
Credit: Image courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC
A geologist at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, has come up with evidence our planet practices recycling on a grand scale.
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Writing in the prestigious British science journal Nature, geological sciences professor Claude Herzberg offers new evidence that parts of the Earth's crust that long ago dove hundreds or thousands of kilometers into the Earth's interior have resurfaced in the hot lava flow of Hawaiian volcanoes.
"This concept has been a big issue in the earth sciences," Herzberg said. While it had been proposed earlier by some geologists, the profession hasn't embraced it because evidence until now remained sketchy. "Many geologists felt that when Earth's crust was forced deep into the mantle, a process called subduction, it would simply stay there."
Herzberg claims to have found telltale chemical evidence at Mauna Kea that pieces of this submerged crust have been forced up through plumes and now make up most of this volcano's lava flow. "The low calcium in the Hawaiian magma pegs it as crust that had melted and been forced to the surface," he said. The calcium levels in traditional magma, which comes from melting the Earth's mantle layer below the crust, are much higher.
Herzberg said his research doesn't stop in Hawaii and that his chemical findings will be useful in understanding the makeup and action of other volcanoes around the world. These findings extend beyond calcium and include sulfur, along with isotopes of the heavier elements hafnium and lead that are tracers for clays and other materials that originated close to the surface prior to subduction.
"Chemical patterns we've found elsewhere used to be puzzles but are now starting to make sense," he said.
Still, the big island of Hawaii remains the prime site for uncovering the secrets of volcanic action, as it has the largest volcanoes on Earth and is the most productive in terms of lava outpouring. Herzberg believes the information he's uncovered about magma chemistry might one day help scientists predict eruptions, as different chemical abundances show up at different times in the volcanoes' eruption cycles.
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Cite This Page:
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. "Evidence From Hawaiian Volcanoes Shows That Earth Recycles Its Crust." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 30 November 2006. &/releases/.htm&.
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. (2006, November 30). Evidence From Hawaiian Volcanoes Shows That Earth Recycles Its Crust. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 14, 2014 from /releases/.htm
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. "Evidence From Hawaiian Volcanoes Shows That Earth Recycles Its Crust." ScienceDaily. /releases/.htm (accessed December 14, 2014).
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Read ScienceDaily's top , or browse by topic:How Volcanoes Work - Hawaiian eruptions
HAWAIIAN ERUPTIONS
the Hawaiian Goddess of Fire
Many native Hawaiians have a strong religous
belief concerning Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of
fire. According to legend, her spirit resides in the
crater on the .
At one time, she had a short and violent marriage to Kamapuaa,
the god of water. As demonstrated in the painting shown here (courtsey
of the artist, Herb Kane), Pele routed Kamapuaa from their
Halemaumau home and, in a rage, chased him with streams of lava
into the sea. This symbolism accurately portrays the often violent
interaction of lava and water associated with explosive .
Typically, however, Hawaiian eruptions are much more quiescent.
The frequent outpouring of basaltic lava on Kilauea is a fitting
reminder to the faithful that Pele is alive and well.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
Hawaiian eruptions are the calmest
of the eruption types. They are characterized by the effusive
emission of highly fluid basalt lavas with low gas contents. The
relative volume of ejected pyroclastic material is less than that
of all other eruption types. The hallmark of Hawaiian eruptions
is steady lava fountaining and the production of thin lava flows
that eventually build up into large, broad . Eruptions are also common in central vents
near the summit of shield volcanoes, and along fissures radiating
outward from the summit area. Lava advances downslope away from
their source vents in
are common
occurrences on the &Big Island& of Hawaii. They often
begin as a line of vents ()
that gives way to eruptions
concentrated at one or two cental vents lying along the fissure.
The Pu'u O'o eruptive series, for example, has been
erupting basaltic lava on the
since 1983. These eruptions began on January
3 with a six-kilometer-long curtain of fire on the east rift system
of Kilauea. Intermittent fissure eruptions soon gave way to a
centralized eruption site on the east rift, about 15 km east of
the Kilauea summit caldera, which generated a scoria-and-spatter
cone, called the .
In 1986 the Kupaianaha volcano developed
about 3 kilometers farther down rift. It erupted smoothed-surface
pahoehoe lava until early 1992. Since that time the main eruption
site has been centered at Pu'u O'o.
&Kilauea in 3D
The Kilauea summit caldera and
east rift system are evident on the above map-view and 3D images.
The blue-to-purple regions descending down the southeastern slope
of Kilauea (far right) are lava flows generated during the Pu'u
O'o eruptive series, through early 1994.
Central-vent Hawaiian eruptions are noted
for their spectacular jet-like sprays of liquid lava called fire
fountains. These incandescent jets ascend hundreds of
meters into the air. They can occur in short spurts, or last for
hours on end. One of the most spectacular fire fountaining events
ever recorded on Kilauea produced a lava spray 580 m high at the
vent in 1959. However, this is dwarfed by the 1600 m fire
fountain generated by an Hawaiian eruption on the Japanese Island
of Oshima in 1986. The top of fire fountains are often carried
away downwind to produce an airborne curtain of glowing fragments
that showers downward. The indivudual liquid-to-plastic fragments
(clasts) generally cool quickly by radiating their heat into the
atmosphere. Thus, they are chilled and solid by the time they
hit the ground, where they accumulate as cindery fragments called
. However,
during very high eruption rates, the fire fountains become so
dense that the clasts can no longer radiate heat freely into the
atmosphere. These clasts are kept hot by the heat of surrounding
clasts. Under these conditions the molten clasts, , may
hit the ground and fuse
together to form agglutinated spatter cones and spatter ramparts.
If the eruption rates are high enough, spatter-fed flows
(clastogenic lavas) may develop as hot spatter fragments
blend together on the ground and flow away.
The smallest pyroclasts
during fire-fountaining will be carried downwind from near the
the top of the eruptive jet. They will chill quickly into small
glassy black spheres, dumbells, or teardrop shapes called .
high winds, the teardrop shapes are sometimes drawn out as long
filaments, the tails of which can break off to produce .
During periods
of high vesiculation, basalt foam can quench into the glassy rock
, also known as thread-lace
scoria, which has the lowest density of any know rock type.
LAVA LAKES
The fluid basalt associated with Hawaiian
eruptions sometimes ponds in vents, craters, or broad depressions
to produce lava lakes. In some cases, lava may erupt from a vent
located within a crater, or surface lava flow may pour into a
crater or broad depression. The image shown here is a lava lake
that occupied the Kupaianaha vent on the east rift system of Kilauea
in 1986. Currently active lava lakes occur in only a few locations:
Mt. Erebus in Antarctica, Erta' Ale in Ethiopia, and
in the Congo. The Kilauea
volcano has had an active history of producing lava lakes in its
numerous craters. Perhaps longest-lived lava lake in historic
times was the near permanent lake that occupied the
for most of the hundred-year period between 1823 to 1924. This
lake was destroyed in 1924 by a massive . As lava lakes cool, they produce a grey-silver
crust that is usually only a few centimeters thick, as shown here
in the image of the Kupaianaha lava lake. Active lava
lakes contain young crust that is continually destroyed and regenereated.
Convective motion of the underlying lava causes the crust to break
into slabs and sink. This then exposes new lava at the surface
that cools into a new crustal layer which will again break up
into slabs and be recycled into the circulating lava beneath the}