Active Volcanoes

Mauna Loa is located on the Big Island of Hawaii and reaches over 4,000 meters above sea level. Taking into account the part that is below water, it is over 9,000 meters high. Mauna Loa makes up half the entire island. Mauna Loa has been erupting for at least 100,000 years.Over a period of a hundred years, there were thirty-four recorded eruptions. The volcano shares the Hawaiian hotspot with Kilauea and Loihi seamount. Mauna Loa is a shield volcano which means it is a gently sloping mountain produced from a large number of generally very fluid lava flows. Shield volcanoes have three important features. First, fissure eruptions play a vital part in their growth. Fissures are usually radially arranged around the summit. Second, much of the lava emitted during an eruption emerges from fissures on the flanks of the volcano, rather than from the summit crater. Third, although fire fountains are a common and spectacular part of eruption, the pyroclastic material they eject contributes little to the total volume of new basalt erupted. The largest proportion of the erupted material comes up as basalt flows and it is this that gives shield volcanoes their characteristic shapes. (Francis)

The Kilauea volcano is located on the southeast side of the island of Hawaii. It is on of the most active volcanoes on Earth. Kilauea is under 4200 feet tall. Kilauea normally erupts balsaltic lava in effusive eruptions but sometimes it has explosive eruptions too. Currently Kilauea is experiencing an eruption known as the Pu'u'O'o Eruption. The eruption started in January of 1983 and there are no signs that this current eruption is slowing or will stop anytime soon. Lava flows destroyed 181 houses and resurfaced thriteen kilometers of highway with as much as twenty-five meters of lava. The eruption destroyed a National Park visitor center and a seven hundered year-old Hawaiian temple.

Loihi is the youngest Hawaiian volcano, submerged in the Pacific Ocean off the southeast coast of Hawaii. The Loihi volcano is an undersea mountain rising more than 3000 meters above the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Both Loihi and Kilauea sit on the flank of Mauna Loa. Loihi was thought to be an old seamount of the type that surrounds the Hawaiian islands. In 1970, the ideas about the Loihi seamount changed when on an expedition that went to Loihi to study an earthquake swarm, it was discovered that Loihi was a young, active volcano. The volcano is manteled with young and old lava flows and is actively venting hydrothermal fluids at its summit and south rift zone. (Rubin)