Question

HAWAIIAN ISLAND CHAIN

Answer 1

1."Ages of rocks from different Islands in the Hawaiian island chain show that the islands are progressively older to the northwest: Oahu, 3.4 to 2.2 Myr (millions of years); Molokai, 1.8 to 1.3 Myr; Maui, 1.3 to 0.8 Myr; and the Big Island (Hawaii), less than 0.7 and still growing. This trend is explained by the concept of a tectonic plate moving slowing over a hotspot."

2.If the hot-spot theory is correct, the next volcano in the Hawaiian chain should form east or south of the Island of Hawai'i. Abundant evidence indicates that such a new volcano exists at Lö'ihi, a seamount (or submarine peak) located about 20 miles off the south coast.

3.Island chains form along plate boundaries. They are parallel to each other. 4.

It is hypothesized that the Hawaiian Islands were, and still are forming, as a result of repeated volcanic eruptions that originate thousands of feet below the seafloor. The visible islands are the peaks of these volcanoes. Due to the movement of tectonic plates, which comprise the outer crust of the Earth’s surface, volcanoes are formed either where the plates meet or in the middle of the plate. In the case of the Hawaiian Island chain, it was formed by a hot spot in the middle of the Pacific Plate. As the plate moved over the “hot spot” lava flowed over several million years until the islands were formed as the tops of these volcanic mountains. Some of them rise over 30,000 feet above the seafloor. What we know as the Hawaiian Islands is only a small portion of the Hawaiian Ridge of the Emperor Seamount Chain. The chain is made up of over 80 large volcanoes. The Hawaiian Islands are a 1,500 mile long archipelago that reaches from Big Island of Hawaii in the southeast to the Kure Atoll in the northwest, which is comprised of 132 islands, atolls, shoals, and seamounts.