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Posts treating: "Big Island"

Wednesday, 14 February 2024

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Discover the Wonders of the Hawaiian Islands with Geotripper and Modesto Junior College -May 30-June 11, 2024! 

Geotripper [2024-02-14 19:28:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (27 visits) info
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Are you looking for a bit of adventure? I invite you to join our Modesto Junior College Anthropology 190/Geology 190: Field Studies in the Hawaiian Islands from May 30 to June 11, 2024. This once-in-a-lifetime journey spans nine days on the Big Island of Hawai'i and four days on Kaua'i. There is still time to join us for 13 days exploring volcanoes, coral reefs, tropical

Eruption Begins in the Big Island's Puna District 

Geotripper [2018-05-04 09:14:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (140 visits) info
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Erupting vent of Pu'u O'o and the East Rift in 2009 The people of Hawai'i have a lot on their hands at the moment. A few months ago, someone pushed the wrong button, and the inhabitants thought for 45 minutes that they would be incinerated by North Korean bombs. Just two weeks ago, the island of Kaua'i was hit by an epic record-setting storm that dropped feet of rain and caused

A Flight Around the World's Highest Mountains: Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa 

Geotripper [2017-05-24 10:12:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (122 visits) info
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Mountains that make their own weather can be frustrating because...they make their own weather. High mountains in the path of consistent winds force air masses upwards, causing the water vapor within to condense, forming clouds and as often as not, rain. This is especially true around the tallest mountains on the planet. I'm not talking about Mt. Everest in the Himalayas. It's

The Hawai'i That Was: Watching the Destruction of the Islands in Real Time 

Geotripper [2016-08-24 08:30:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (141 visits) info
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The Big Island volcanoes of Mauna Kea (left) and Mauna Loa (right), as seen from the summit of Haleakala on Maui Geologists have at their fingertips the closest thing to a working time machine that exists on planet Earth. We can't travel to the past, of course, but we can decipher past happenings by working out the sequence of geological events. But with the Hawaiian Islands, we have

The Hawai'i That Was: Lapakahi, the Kind of Place Where the Rest of Them Lived 

Geotripper [2016-08-10 10:14:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (83 visits) info
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The stories are always of the chiefs, the generals, and the kings. General Washington won the Revolutionary War. General Grant won the Civil War. Caesar ruled the world. We rarely hear the stories of the peasants, the commoners, the lower castes. Hawai'i isn't much different. King Kamehameha I looms large in the history of the Hawaiian Islands, and justly so. Few kings have dominated

The Hawai'i That Was: Exploring Pololu Valley on an Unstable "Dead" Volcano 

Geotripper [2016-08-05 09:07:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (88 visits) info
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Do the signs add a hint of an element of danger to this hike? The stereotypical image of Hawai'i includes many things (most of which are seen in the opening credits of Hawaii Five-O), but one of them is surely the dramatic fluted cliffs clothed in tropical vegetation. It's not hard to understand why, since most tourists visit Oahu, and most of the mountains there are quite steep. The

The Hawai'i That Was: Mauna O Wakea, the Opening to the Heavens, and the Realm of Ice 

Geotripper [2016-07-04 10:45:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (129 visits) info
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It's hard for me as a person of European descent to imagine what the first Polynesians to arrive at the islands thought of Hawaii's highest mountain. Mauna Kea, the "White Mountain", or Mauna O Wakea, the mountain of the god Wakea, the "expanse of the sky", rises to a height of 13,802 feet (4,207 meters), just slightly higher than its more massive neighbor Mauna Loa (13,679 feet;

The Hawai'i That Was: How Can the Biggest Mountain in the World Stay So Hidden? 

Geotripper [2016-06-28 09:04:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (124 visits) info

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Mauna Loa from the Mauna Kea Road near the Onizuka Center The answer is easy: clouds. This whole post is a temper tantrum, a tantrum that resulted from the fact that we were on the Big Island of Hawai'i, the site of the biggest mountain on planet Earth, for nine days a few weeks ago. Despite repeated opportunities, my students never had a clear view of Mauna Loa, the volcano that covers

The Hawai'i That Was: Living on Uncertain Ground - The First Human Wave Arrives 

Geotripper [2016-06-27 08:47:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (179 visits) info

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The southeast coast of the Big Island of Hawai'i is a barren blasted land. One can blame it on the lack of rain, but though it is arid, rainfall is plentiful enough to support forests nearby. One only needs to look up the Holei Pali to know right away what the problem is: it's ground zero for the basalt flows emanating from the Kilauea shield complex. These slopes have been covered

The Hawai'i That Was: Pu'u O'o, the Volcano We Couldn't See 

Geotripper [2016-06-26 09:41:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (185 visits) info

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The Pu'u O'o cone from above Hilo Disclaimer: This is NOT happening right now! These pictures are from 2009. Pu'u O'o is the invisible volcano on the Big Island. It's been the center of eruptive activity for much of the last thirty years, but there are very few easily accessible localities from which it can be seen. One pretty much has to fly over it to see anything at all. We

The Hawai'i That Was: Walking a Lake of Fire in "the Little Source of Great Spewing" 

Geotripper [2016-06-25 08:59:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (167 visits) info

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Kilauea Iki eruption in 1959. The prevailing winds caused debris to pile up behind the fountain, forming the Pu'u Pau'i cinder cone. Source: US Geological Survey Kilauea is one of the five major shield volcanoes making up the Big Island of Hawai'i. As we found in the last post in this series on the "Hawai'i That Was", Kilauea is the most active of the island's volcanic centers, with an

The Hawai'i That Was: The Abode of the Gods and Creation at Kilauea 

Geotripper [2016-06-23 08:45:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (126 visits) info

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The ongoing eruptive activity at the summit caldera of Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawai'i. You aren’t hearing this from me (well, okay, you are), but sometimes teaching is just a little bit like carnival barking. You have to be entertaining about something that actually isn’t all that unusual or interesting. And sometimes you have to reveal just a little at a time to keep the interest

The Hawai'i That Was: Why Should We Care? 

Geotripper [2016-06-18 10:06:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (175 visits) info

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Lapakahi State Park on the Big Island is the remains of an ancient fishing village that was occupied for hundreds of years. Not a single plant in the picture is native to Hawai'i. In a lot of ways, a post like this is how one might wrap up a series. The problem is that I can't say exactly where we will be or what we will have discovered by the time I've determined that this blog series

The Hawai'i That Was: To know what was we need to know Hawai'i today 

Geotripper [2016-06-17 08:40:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (185 visits) info

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Na Mokupuni O Hawaii Nei-Kalama 1837 (Source: http://imagesofoldhawaii.com/simon-peter-kalama/) To understand the Hawai'i that was, we need to know the Hawai'i that is. There can be a bit of confusion among travelers who haven't done their research before buying tickets. I've heard plenty of stories of people who land in Honolulu and wonder where the flowing lava is at, and others who land

When You Say "He's Older Than the Hills" and You're Right....Pu'u Pua'i in Kilauea Iki 

Geotripper [2016-06-03 10:22:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (205 visits) info

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It's true! I am two years older than the mountain behind me. This is Pu'u Pua'i, a cinder cone that grew during the Kilauea Iki eruptions of 1959 in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island of Hawaii. It must have been a sight to see. At times during the eruption, basalt was fountaining to a height of 1,900 feet. The prevailing winds blew the cinders and lapilli to the

Monday's Minor Mystery Solved Pretty Quickly: Poles with no Shadows in Hawai'i 

Geotripper [2016-06-02 10:08:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (167 visits) info
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You can't mystify scientists of the Earth with questions of latitude. I had numerous answers pretty darn quick about why this stop sign reveals my location. The sign pole is casting no shadow! The only way that can happen is if the sun is directly overhead, and that can only happen if one is within 23 degrees of the equator, and only at noon. I have never thought to seek such a picture on

Pele is a Capricious Goddess (reprised)...Part Two 

Geotripper [2016-05-22 07:22:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (149 visits) info

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Continuing the story from the previous post, I had a second chance to see a volcano in action in 2004. I was the newly elected president of the Far West Section of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, and for my first conference, I had persuaded someone to sponsor a meeting in Hilo, Hawaii. The volcano on the Big Island at Pu'u O'o had continued to be active over the

Mauna Loa Aviation Code Raised To Yello 

Volcano Science And News Blog [2015-09-24 17:29:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (228 visits) info

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Mauna Loa has been slowly re-loading its vast magma chamber since it's last eruption ended in 1984. In the mid-2000's, inflation increased, stopped, started again, and now continues at a slow pace. I've been covering the goings-on at Mauna Loa and have suspected for a while it was getting ready for its next round, but as of yesterday, HVO has taken notice as well and chose to raise the aviation code (not the alert code) to Yellow (advisory).Mauna Loa has been experiencing tremor and seismicity [...]

Hawaii prepares for its first hurricane in 22 years 

Climate and Geohazards [2014-08-08 11:02:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (169 visits) info

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Pacific Hurricane Iselle is due to strike the Big Island of the Hawaii island chain sometime today. Forecasters initially thought that Iselle would reduce in intensity to a large tropical storm before it hit the island. However weather officials changed … Continue reading

Where are the Ten Most Incredible Places You've Ever Stood? My Number 6: I stood in a place no one else can ever stand, at Pu'u O'o 

Geotripper [2014-05-03 08:19:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (98 visits) info

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Yes, Hawai'i gets two spots on my top ten list of the most incredible places I've ever stood. A few days ago I talked about my wonderful adventure in the swamps of the Alaka'i Plateau on Kaua'i, but today we'll hear about the Big Island, and the rather incredible volcano there that has been erupting continuously now for thirty-one years, since 1983. The ongoing eruption of Kilauea and
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