HAWAII ERUPTION

I. Short Myth about the eruption

Many native Hawaiians have a strong religious belief concerning Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire.
According to legend, her spirit resides in the Halemaumau crater on the Kilauea volcano. 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 hydrovolcanic eruptions. 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.

II. What is Hawaii Eruption?

As the name implies hawaiian eruptions are common on Hawaiian volcanoes, but they are also the
major type of eruptive behavior at almost all basaltic shield volcanoes around the world. Hawaiian
eruptions have their names from Kilauea and Mauna Loa volcanoes on the Big Island of Hawaii, which
have produced spectacular lava fountains, but they also occur on other volcanoes, most notably on
Piton de la Fournaise volcano on La Réunion island (Indian Ocean, France) and on Etna and Vesuvius
volcanoes, both in Italy.

A hawaiian eruption involves the steady supply of fluid, relatively gas-poor magma to the vent. The
most common type of magma erupted during hawaiian eruptions is basalt. Remember from the
explanation of how gas behaves in magma, that as pressure decreases, gas bubbles form and then
expand. The fluid basaltic lava is thrown into the air in jets from a vent or line of vents (a fissure) at the
summit or on the flank of a volcano. The jets can last for hours or even days, a phenomenon known as
fire fountaining.

So...in a Hawaiian eruption there is magma moving from deep in the volcano towards the surface,
and as it does, bubbles are first nucleating and then expanding. The bubbles begin to nucleate at depths
of about 2-3 km, and as the magma rises the bubbles grow to comprise an ever-larger % of the magma
volume. At a few hundred meters below the surface the bubbles have expanded to the point that they
constitute about 75% of the total volume, and at this point the magma breaks apart. You can think of
this in a couple of ways: first is that at this depth the bubbles are all bursting; second is that at this 75%
volume point there is a change from bubbles surrounded by rising magma to blobs of magma
surrounded by expanding gas.

For this discussion we will assume that a vent has already been established, meaning that there is an
opening to the surface. It is pretty obvious that the easiest way for this expanding mixture of gas and
magma blebs to go is up out of the vent. This it does, forming a lava fountain. As you can see, however,
the actual base of the fountain (where there is a change from bubbles suspended in magma to blebs of
magma suspended in gas) is below the surface.

Because we are dealing with hot, low-viscosity magma, there is very little resistance to bubble
growth and the bubbles can pretty much expand at will. This means that when they finally do burst
(after they've achieved 75% of the total volume), there isn't a whole lot of pent-up pressure in them.
Thus even though a hawaiian lava fountain is spectacular, it isn't very violent (as eruptions go). One
result of this is that the blebs of magma that are thrown out (the pyroclasts) tend to be relatively large
(you'll see why this is important when we get to Plinian eruptions).

There is a range in heights of hawaiian lava fountains, and most of this range is due to variations in
the initial amount of gas available and the amount that may have escaped while the magma is migrating
through the volcano. The highest observed hawaiian fountains IN HAWAI`I were just over 500 m in
height (during the 1959 Kilauea Iki and 1969 Mauna Ulu eruptions). The record for the highest hawaiian
fountain elsewhere probably belongs to the 1986 eruption of Izu Oshima volcano in Japan, which
produced lava fountains about 1500 m high!! In most cases, however, hawaiian fountains are a few
meters high to a few hundred meters high.

The products of a hawaiian fountaining eruption depend a great deal on how high the fountains are.
If the fountains are more than about 50 m high, the pyroclasts have a chance to cool before they come
back to land, meaning they don't stick together. Instead they form loose piles of material with outer
slopes of about 33, called cinder cones. On the other hand, if the fountains are less than about 50
meters high, the pyroclasts are still fluid when they land and they can stick together. This results in much
steeper vent structures called spatter cones or spatter ramparts. In either case there is almost always
somewhere that the pyroclastic material is accumulating fast enough to form lava flows and these flows
usually move rapidly away from the vent and downslope to produce `a`a.

One of the important characteristics of a hawaiian fountain is that there is a constant supply of
magma up the conduit so that this formation of a spray of gas and magma blebs is also constant - there
are no discreet explosions. Keeping a hawaiian eruption going requires a balance between the supply of
gas-rich magma to the shallow part of the conduit. One way to think about this is that there is a
competition between the rate at which magma is supplied upwards and the rate at which the disruption
level (where bubbles become 75% of the volume) is trying to migrate downwards. If the two rates are
balanced, the "base" of the fountain remains at a constant depth.

III. How does Hawaii Eruption occur?

Hawaiian eruptions may occur along fissure vents, such as during the eruption of Mauna Loa in
1950, or at a central vent, such as during the 1959 eruption in Kīlauea Iki Crater, which created a lava
fountain 580 meters (1,900 ft) high and formed a 38-meter cone named Puʻu Puaʻi. In fissure-type
eruptions, lava spurts from a fissure on the volcano's rift zone and feeds lava streams that flow
downslope. In central-vent eruptions, a fountain of lava can spurt to a height of 300 meters or more
(heights of 1600 meters were reported for the 1986 eruption of Mount Mihara on Izu Ōshima, Japan).

Hawaiian eruptions usually start by the formation of a crack in the ground from which a curtain of
incandescent magma or several closely spaced magma fountains appear. The lava can overflow the
fissure and form ʻaʻā or pāhoehoe style of flows. When such an eruption from a central cone is
protracted, it can form lightly sloped shield volcanoes, for example Mauna Loa or Skjaldbreiður in
Iceland.

IV. Examples of Hawaii Eruption

 1. Kilauea Eruption

Kilauea is one of the world’s most active volcanoes. It is a shield-type volcano that makes up the
southeastern side of the Big Island of Hawaii. The volcano rises 4,190 feet (1,227 meters) above sea level
and is about 14 percent of the land area of the Big Island. The summit caldera contains a lava lake
known as Halema`uma`u that is said to be the home of the Hawaiian volcano goddess, Pele.

To the casual observer, Kilauea appears to be part of the larger volcano Mauna Loa, but
geological data indicates that it is a separate volcano with its own vent and conduit system. Kilauea has
had more than 60 recorded eruptions in the current cycle, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and
has been erupting on a continuous basis since 1983.

Reference:

https://geology.com/volcanoes/types-of-volcanic-eruptions/

https://www.livescience.com/27622-kilauea.html

https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/volc/eruptions.html

http://sci.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/Hawaiian.html

https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/photoglossary/hawaiianeruption.html

https://www.higp.hawaii.edu/~scott/hwn.htm

Baguio Seventh-day Adventist School

 “The school that leads to Jesus”
46 Bokawkan Road, Baguio City

DRRM: Types of eruption

HAWAIIN ERUPTION

SUBMITTTED TO:
Dary Fabito

SUBMITTED BY:
Krizelle Mae Barongan
Kyra Anne Segyep