Week 4: Kohala Volcano

Source Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauna_Loa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohala_(mountain)

Reference(s):
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/HCV/haw_activity.html









In deciding which Hawaiian Island to visit again, my sister and I chose to take a cruise to the Big Island. My sister wanted to have a nice vacation there, and I wanted to show her the very old Kohala volcano (but now considered more of a mountain). Upon arrival, my sister and I headed straight to Kohala since I knew she just wanted to enjoy the rest of the week back at the hotel.

To our amazement, we didn't see any magma spewing out or any surrounding molten rock. Like most Hawaiian shield volcanoes, Kohala is located over the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain on top of hotspots. We chipped away some rock to find a similar rock we have seen a couple weeks back: basaltic rock. This basaltic rock had already took a solid form. In fact, it wasn't quite surprising knowing that Kohala is a quiescent volcano. Finally finding signal on my phone, I searched up the approximated time the Kohala volcano last erupted. Ken Rubin, the author of Hawaii Center for Volcanology show us that Kohala's last eruption occurred 120,000 years ago! When I showed this to my sister, we were both in shock. We are now standing on the oldest shield volcano among the Hawaiian shield volcanoes. With the Kohala volcano, there is less likely to be any hazards to occur compared to Mauna Loa and Kilauea shield volcano brethren because it is not likely to erupt again. A particular detail that interested me is how close the shield volcanoes are with each other. The fact that Kohala is the oldest among the five hawaiian shield volcanoes really amazes my sister and I.


Ce-Jay Locquiao