Customer Reviews

Kilauea : The Newest Land on Earth

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My son was writing a report on Kilauea, and this book helped him a lot. The pictures and illustrations were great.

In 1985, Big Island photographer Dorian Weisel obtained a special use permit from Hawaii Volcanoes National Park that allowed him to take his camera close to the continuous but ever-changing eruption of Kilauea. Weisel's photographs are, literally and figuratively, incandescent.
The most fascinating are views into lava tubes -- misshapen blast furnaces that could have been prototypes for the Western vision of hell, except that Mediterranean volcanoes don't let photographers get as close to the action as Hawaii's "shield" volcanoes do.
Weisel's pictures are nicely married to a short, clear history of Kilauea since the first non-Hawaiian visit, in 1832. Christina Heliker, a park geologist who gave up glaciers for volcanoes after the 1980 explosion of Mt. St. Helens, also explains in simple terms what makes Kilauea work.
The scale of Kilauea is inconceivable, even up close. For 24 years now. it has pumped 650,000 cubic yards of lava a day onto the island of Hawaii, yet this mighty effort has added only a thin covering of rock to a tiny district. The hotspot that feeds this, the world's busiest volcano, has been pumping out rock in more or less the same quantities continuously for 70 million years.
A fountain of liquid rock soaring 1,500 feet into the air is awe-inspiring, but that lasts just hours. Kilauea goes on for centuries, and below the ocean, the same unimaginable engine is also building Loihi, a new Hawaiian island expected to break the surface in about 10,000 years.
Though this book covers many of the personalities of Kilauea, Madame Pele always has something new. Since "Kilauea: The Newest Land on Earth" went to the printers in 1990, the lava has begun forming a dangerous, thin shelf over the sea, which collapses and creates a beach of black cinders, then reforms.
This is Madame Pele's idea of a tourist trap. Despite warnings from rangers, idiots will venture out onto the shelf, and from time to time one is swallowed up.