Deep drilling into a Hawaiian volcano

Abstract

Hawaiian volcanoes are the most comprehensively studied on Earth. Nevertheless, most of the eruptive history of each one is inaccessible because it is buried by younger lava flows or is exposed only below sea level. For those parts of Hawaiian volcanoes above sea level, erosion typically exposes only a few hundred meters of buried lavas (out of a total thickness of up to 10 km or more).Available samples of submarine lavas extend the time intervals of individual volcanoes that can be studied. However, the histories of individual Hawaiian volcanoes during most of their ~1-million-year passages across the zone of melt production are largely unknown.