Lava flows found to have formed most of islands' mass - Hawaii News -...
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Lava flows found to have formed most of islands' mass
By Marcel Honoré
POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Oct 20, 2013
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A new study co-authored by University of Hawaii
researchers challenges the conventional wisdom of how the
Hawaiian Islands were formed.
Its peer-reviewed findings could also change how scientists
understand the ongoing Kilauea eruption, its authors say.
That flow has added about 500 acres to Hawaii island in the
past 30-plus years.
For decades, geologists have held that the islands were
mostly formed by intrusion, in which magma pushes up
against rock from below the surface, said Garrett
Apuzen-Ito, a professor of geology and geophysics at UH's
School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology and
the study's co-author.
However, the study, which Apuzen-Ito completed with
Ashton Flinders, a graduate student at the University of
Rhode Island, found instead that most of the land mass
making up the Hawaiian Islands was formed by external
eruptions — the lava that poured out onto the surface.
The researchers concluded this, Apuzen-Ito said, by
gathering data over several years measuring how dense
the rock is on and around the islands.
ASHTON FLINDERS / UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII SOEST
1 of 4
Denser rock exists where the islands were formed from
magma pressing below the surface, while the less-dense
rock exists where lava flowed externally, Apuzen-Ito said.
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Lava flows found to have formed most of islands' mass - Hawaii News -...
This is a 3-D view of the topography of the Hawaiian Islands (gray
shaded) and seafloor relief viewed from just south of the Big Island.
The colors represent differences in gravity, which researchers from the
University of Hawaii and University of Rhode Island used to measure
rock density on different parts of the islands.
http://www.staradvertiser.com/newspremium/20131020_Lava_flows_fo...
The map showed that the islands' higher elevations, such
as the peaks of Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea on the Big Island
and the Koolaus on Oahu, contained the denser rock. But
most of Hawaii's land mass is composed of the less-dense
rock, the data showed.
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To measure rock density, scientists use special instruments
that can detect extremely small changes in gravity in the
area, Apuzen-Ito said.
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The discovery that the external lava flows created most of
the Hawaiian Islands' mass could mean that eruptions such
as the one that continues at Kilauea aren't very rare — and
scientists might expect that flow to continue for years to
come, he added.
Magma intrusions — the internal effects — are also
occurring at the Kilauea East Rift Zone but they don't
represent how most of the islands were formed, Apuzen-Ito
said.
Flinders first started gathering gravity data for the study on
Kauai in 2008 when he was a UH master's degree student,
Apuzen-Ito said. The rest of the study took place during the
past two years, and it was peer-reviewed by the
international journal Geophysical Research Letters, he
Columns
added. The study was publicized earlier this month.
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The process to form each island lasted about 1 million years, Apuzen-Ito said.
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Name: apuzenito
Comment:
palani wrote:
2 of 4
10/22/2013 8:50 AM