About Susie Renner Expertise I have traveled the Hawaii Volcanoes National park many times. Seeing lava in the crater, to explosions of hot lava and gasses into the sea. A spectacular sight in the evening. I have hiked in, driven around and flown over this park and it`s always an exciting experience.
Experience I have traveled the Hawaii Volcanoes National park many times. Seeing lava in the crater, to explosions of hot lava and gasses into the sea. A spectacular sight in the evening. I have hiked in, driven around and flown over this park and it's always an exciting experience.
Question Hi! I don't know if you are the right person to ask, but I'd like to know some questions about volcanoes for my report in school. The questions are as following:
1.How do volcanoes become extinct?
2.How or in what way does lava flow through volcanoes?
3.How do volcanoes form islands?
Please help me or at least give me a lead. Thanks!
Answer Hi Alan,
I am not an expert but I can help a little.
1. Volcanoes become "extinct" after they haven't errupted in a certain number of years. That number I don't know 100's or 1000's I would bet. I also know "extinct" volcanoes have come back to life. So I'd personally never call one completly extinct, just dormat.
2. Lava flows out of a volcano when there is a pressure build up under ground or in an exsisting volcano. Maybe caused by a hot spot or where the earths plates move into or under one another. The high pressure and earths heat melt the rock and out comes lava. Hawaii Volcanoes are just soft lava flowing kind. Mt St Helens was a pyroclastic (BLOW UP) kind. That's why, because you can't predict an erruption, but you can walk right up to them in Hawaii and like the Cascades where Mt St Helens is, they blow up and out and kill people.
3. A Volcano forms an island when a new hot spot of molten rock starts pouring up from the ocean floor. The lava piles up and up until it breaks the surface of the water and becomes an island. Right now most of the activity on the Big Island of Hawaii is at the far south end. It's been flowing steadily (except for a week or 2 last year) since 1983. Pouring from the hot spot thru an underground lava tube into the ocean adding many more acres to the Big Island everyday. PLUS there is a hot spot in the ocean south of the Big Island that is making it's way to the surface. It already has a Hawaiian name, but I can't remember it right now. In about 100,000 years it will be the new Big Island of Hawaii.
Hope I helped some.
Susie
