Resource: Creating an Island Paradise
Media Type:
QuickTime Video
Length: 1m 13s
Size: 3.4 MB
Off the southeastern coast of the Big Island of Hawaii, an undersea volcano is building a future Hawaiian island. Loihi, the youngest volcano of the Hawaiian chain, shares the Hawaiian hot spot with its larger siblings Mauna Loa and Kilauea. Loihi is expected to breach the ocean’s surface in some 100,000 years. In this video segment from Nature, learn about the beginnings of a new volcanic island.
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Transcript (Rich Text Format Document)
Teachers' Domain, Creating an Island Paradise, published November 18, 2008, retrieved on ,
http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/nat08.earth.geol.tec.islpar/
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Volcanoes form when magma from beneath the Earth’s crust breaks through the surface and erupts. As the erupting lava cools, new islands are created. Every several thousand years, a new island emerges from the sea. It is immediately exposed to winds and rain that erode its surface, but seeds and spores, blown by the wind, become embedded in the newly-formed soil. In a relatively short period of time, the barren rock surface is transformed into a lush tropical island. Today, lava flows from active volcanoes can provide information about underground magma flow, yielding information about potential future eruptions. In spite of scientific advances, however, there is not yet a method for predicting volcanic eruptions with complete accuracy.
Source: Nature: "Violent Hawaii"
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Major corporate support for the Nature collection was provided by Canon U.S.A. and SC Johnson. Additional support was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the nation’s public television stations.




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