A review and call reversal from the line judge

An astute reader noticed that my geology photo from a few weeks ago was probably misidentified. I was looking at a top-down satellite image of the Big Island of Hawai'i and trying to extrapolate which peaks I was looking at in this picture:



I had originally identified them as Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea, and Kohala. However, one reader questioned my original ID. And after looking more carefully (and not early in the morning before I had coffee), I had to agree with MacLaren that I had Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa switched. Then the reader suggested I was actually seeing Hualalai and not Kohala. I looked at the geometry of the image and from the satellite photo I wasn't 100% sure of that. So I went to the ultimate arbiter of what one can see from a particular spot: Google Earth. And sure enough, MacLaren was spot on:



I guess the moral of the story is this: double check your geographic reference points - using Google Earth can be very helpful - and welcome suggestions from readers. I probably wouldn't have noticed my error until much later without MacLaren's suggestions. Thanks :)

Weird Geology?

So the topic for Accretionary Wedge #34 is "Weird Geology." So I've been thinking about what strikes me as "weird." As a budding geologist, there were odd things, but I'm wracking my brain to put details to what specific concepts really weirded me out... for now, let me share with you something I see as the "weirdest" geo-topic in my mind right now. Molten Rock.



My wife and I took a trip to Hawai'i last year, and we got to (barely) watch the eruption. The idea that there is enough heat within the earth to melt rock - and that this melt can reach the surface still amazes me. The landscapes are also so foreign to a geologist raised on the North American Craton, what with the shallow dipping layers of sedimentary rock lying atop igneous-metamorphic crustal basement rocks.


The barren landscape inside the Haleakala crater is very alien to what I'm familiar with.


In fact, if you shift the blues in the sky towards red, you could almost imagine you were walking across the surface of Mars...

This is what a shield volcano looks like

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From left to right: Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa and Hualalai - the three tallest peaks that make up the big island of Hawaii. It's not one shield volcano, it's several. The currently active volcano, Kilauea, is out of view, behind Mauna Kea in this view.

Where there's smoke...

Something appears to be burning to the south of the Kamoamoa fissure. Judging from the color, it looks more like a forest fire than lava.


The area was clear the other day:


And the eruption earlier was generating white smoke:


Don't know if some smoldering wood caught fire, or if it's indicating some kind of new/renewed activity. Nothing to indicate activity on the deformation or earthquake data.

Earthquakes

Some big events in Japan, as a huge 8.9 mag. earthquake shakes much of the island of Honshu. There was an associated tsunami that is washing across the Pacific. Callan Bentley has a good summary and intro to the events.

I was looking at the Hawaii seismic data - the newly formed Kamoamoa vent eruption appears to be waning and there's minimal incandescence visible on any of the webcams. The Hawaiian Lava Daily blog was mentioning that sea entry had stopped for now and he was waiting for earthquake swarms to point to where activity would re-emerge.

I had been poking around the HVO earthquake map and saw several small earthquakes just off the coast of Kalapana (where the lava had been pouring into the sea until last weekend). I tweeted a bit with Ron Schott (@rschott) about these quakes, and I think this could be related to bench collapses. As the lava pours into the sea, it cools - and forms an oversteepened slope or cliff. The quakes were a bit deep for this (10 km), but these are small quakes, so it could be related to problems in data resolution.


There was another fairly strong pair of quakes (3+) early this morning, before the tsunami, and the distribution of quakes still appears clustered around Kalapana.



Here's the whole-island view. You can see the flurry of seismic activity from the Kamoamoa event. It's still not enough data to really say what's going on, but I do find it interesting the majority of recent seismic activity has shifted to the coast (for now). If you will allow this paleobiologist to speculate on why - my first guess would be that there is some settling and "relaxing" related to the cessation of flow down the pali and into the ocean at Kalapana. I don't see it as foreshadowing new eruptive activity - but I could be totally wrong, I guess. It's happened before.

HVO updated images/video

The HVO has updated their images page. Included is a lovely video of the Pu'u 'O'o crater floor collapse. And some nice fountaining lava.

Hawaiian Night Light

The freshly named Kamoamoa eruption continues. It was shining brightly this morning leaving what looks like an incandescent lava flow to the left. You can check out the USGS Napau crater cam here.

Fun Hawai'ian words

I gave an eruption update to all of my classes in the last couple of days. I did it partly because of the educational quality of the imagery and material, but also because I love saying the Hawai'ian names. I probably said "Hah-ley mah-ooh mah-ooh" and Pu'u 'O'o about a hundred times today.

Gorgeous Fountain near Napau

I just checked the Napau Crater webcam this morning: There's a gorgeous fire fountain visible:

Hawaiian Activitiy Revisited

When we went to Hawaii last January (2010), my wife and I trekked over to Kalapana and watched the lava. Well sort of. At that time, the lava was entering the sea outside the park boundary, and the county highway department wasn't too keen on letting people get too close. So they had a viewing area set up about half a mile away from the action. With a telephoto lens, I managed to see some nice splashes, but mostly it was just kind of okay. Nothing like you see in the documentaries or hear tell of stories where the silly tourist in flip-flops nearly burns their leg off by getting close to an active flow...

The trail was well-marked, but rough.
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The first view was somewhat uninspiring. But I reminded myself that I was on an active volcano, which was better than not being on an active volcano.
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Long lenses were de rigueur.
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Much of the late evening views were nice, but not stunning. It wasn't until the sun almost hit the horizon that the light really looked surreal. (note tour boat for scale at left)
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Once the sky darkened, the light from the glowing lava began to color the base of the steam plume.
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There were some nice vortices kicked up by the rising plume. At dusk, the steam had a nice sculptural quality to it.
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I need to reprocess this image to remove some of the digital noise. Zoomed in at 400mm, it still seems small and harmless.
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Currently, there are reports that the new vent activity near Napau is siphoning off the lava from the tube supplying the sea entry activity. Only time will tell if the current activity will form a new point of entry for the lava. That's the way it is with these dynamic systems.

Hawaiian Activitiy

It looks like there's a bit of activity over on the big island. The Eruptions Blog has some great synopses. Watching the movies, it made me long to go back. My wife and I were there just 14 months ago.

Here's an image taken from the Mauna Ulu overlook, looking east. Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō (hope the glottal stops format correctly here) is the most distant peak visible in the image. The activity appears to be between the intermediate peak and Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō. In this image, you can also see the line of steam emanating from the eastern rift zone.



I hope I can get back there someday in the not too distant future.

Neato stuff!

Some cool video of a rim collapse at Halema'uma'u. So, for those that know, is it pronounced "halay mau mau" or "halay mah ooh mah ooh" I haven't been able to get a definitive answer yet...

AW #32

I guess the next Accretionary Wedge is coming due.

So here's one of my favorite pictures - Haleakala crater. Technically, this isn't the actual crater, it's the eroded summit, widened by erosion. The smaller hills are cinder cones that erupted after most of the shield volcano was eroded away.

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