Kīlauea Update, Friday, July 20, 2018. The Moon and who was ʻAilāʻau?

in 1969:  The Apollo program:  Apollo 11ʻs crew successfully makes the first manned landing on the Moon in the Sea of Tranquility.  Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to walk on the moon six and a half hours later.

I remember that day, partly because it was also Grampa Rapozo's birthday.  And today at 6a, I was washing last nights dishes.  I know...when I grew up, pau eat, had to wash wipe and put away the dishes.  But when I designed my house in 84, I made an eight foot wide three foot tall window over the kitchen counter so I could look outside when washing dishes.  And because itʻs cool up here at nearly 4,000 feet, no mo too many bugs.  Roaches are extremely rare, and though they sometimes travel up in packages from Hilo.  Kill um when you see um.  So far, ants too are rare, but gotta be vigilant.  No termites.  Alas no geckoes (used to love to hear them chirping at Puakō).  Sooooo....I can leave the dishes overnight without too much fear of feeding vermin.  And I get to check in on the sky and the wind and the clouds, and today

hapuu stipes vee

cool still morning air welcomes

rising of the sun

Itʻs pretty much oia mau nō (things as usual) both up here in the summit region, and at Puna ma kai (except for the oozing toward Pohoiki!).  Great KEcam pic at 6a of Kaluapele:

Yes, the M5.3 or so exploquakes continue.  The last several have happened every 35 hours or so:  33, 44, 32, 32, 38, 39... Yesterdays was at 433p, so the night was a restful one, both psychologically and physically.  And the main highway, between the 28 and 30 mile markers near the entrance to the Volcano Golf Course, continues to crack and twist.  That section is built on fill that is apparently being shaken and is settling during our numerous ʻōlaʻi.  

Go Slow!!!  25mph Speed Limit signs have been posted.  

I know most of us ignore speed limits, but this time the road is falling apart 

(mahalo to State and County crews for repair work), so drive with care:

be outside...pay attention    noho i waho...a maliu

And yes, Kaluapele continues to subside.  My gauge these days are the cracks to the left of the new pali on the floor.  Go look at the KEcam:

KEcam, view NE from HVO tower of Kaluapele

at Puna ma kai:

Yesterday, though the main ocean entry was mid-delta, pele continued to creep toward Pohoiki and Isaac Hale Park.  Thatʻs Hale (huh-leh) as in "house".  Not to be confused with Hale as in "Hale and Hearty", as some are.

Deep sigh...

So about ʻAilāʻau...Iʻve heard from folks that some think ʻAilāʻau is responsible for the current activity in Keahialaka.  Hereʻs something Westervelt wrote in 1916 in "Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes".  Maybe you have it?  The small book.  Or you can google if the text is too small to read.

ʻAilāʻau lived, as the story goes, in Kīlauea Iki.  Geologist Robin Holcomb, who mapped pele here in the 1970s, named a voluminous series of flows that issued from a vent at the east end of Kīlauea Iki, the ʻAilāʻau Flows.  First below is part (again) of the Neal & Lockwood map of the summit region:

Nāhuku (Thurston Lava Tube) is part of those flows, here in purple.  You can see, I hope, the concentric topographic contours (close where steep, farther apart where flat) nearly encircling Kīlauea Iki.  They mark the summit area of Holcombʻs ʻAilāʻau Shield.

Then part of the Edward W. Wolfe and Jean Morris compilation opus, the USGS "Geologic Map of the Island of Hawaiʻi", Map I-2524-A, printed in 1996:

Here, the ʻAilāʻau Flows are in white-lined pink, and keen eyes can see they originate at the east end of Kīlauea Iki.  While the bulk of those flows traveled northeast 40 miles or so to the Pacific, a small branch went south to ʻĀpua point in the park.  The flows to the north without the white lines belong to Maunaloa.

The ʻAilāʻau flows were active approximately from 1400 to 1475.  A lava tube named Kazumura extends nearly the entire length of the flow field,and has been mapped to just shy of the noticeably protruding Kaloli point, at the NW edge of the dense Hawaiian Paradise Park subdivision.  So yes, the vast majority of ALL the subdivisions in Puna (all those grey lines) are on flows just 500+ years old.

Then below, a closeup of the LERZ (Lower East Rift Zone):

And below, a Key to Ages. "Age ka" is Age in thousands of years.  So the p4y flows in the ahupuaʻa of Keahialaka, just SW of Pohoiki, are 200 to 400 years old, younger than those of ʻAilāʻau. Those are, if we believe the "stories", what Pelehonuamea made when she first arrived.  After ʻAilāʻau was pau with his work.  "Stories" in quotes, because I believe myths, legends, stories all relate actual events.

How you know?  How you know how old?  How you know when?  How you know???

Capable, diligent, exacting field geologists walk, hike, tramp, sometimes tumble, all over the place.  They are outside, paying attention, observing minute details of lava flow morphology, flow color, vegetation types, exposures, etc., in the field.  They look for subtle differences and clues.  They probe under the edges of flows, or between flows exposed on faults, the walls of craters or of gulches, and they look for charcoal.  When found, that charcoal is carefully collected and analyzed and C14 (an isotope of carbon) dates determined.  The charcoal likely formed when vegetation was burned by, and then preserved under, pele.  So the C14 date of the charcoal approximates the date of the overlying flow.  Technology has its limits, and so we see ranges of ages.  And as technologies improve, charcoal samples may get reanalyzed and dates may get refined.

And weʻll leave you with a bittersweet record of events as they have happened...

Big Island Video News 7a Update, 072018

memories aswirl

laughter kai wai cool and warm

as Pele travels

As always, with aloha,

BobbyC