How Volcanoes Work

Everyone who visits the islands know about the volcanoes that formed them. The powerful trembling and the awesome power behind them. A volcano can be described as a place on a planet where material from the inside of the core makes its way up to the surface. Volcanoes truly are one of the world’s most fascinating natural occurrences. From their pure natural power to their capability for mass destruction, it’s enough to send people into shock and awe. Its a fact that volcanoes can be extremely devastating, but how do they actually work, why do they explode, and where do they form?

Most volcanoes that form on large bodies of land occur at the location where two tectonic plates merge. One of the plates is forced to descend below the other one into the hot mantle of the Earth’s outer core. After this descent has happened, the temperature and pressure increases, causing a lot of the rocks in the tectonic plate to melt and form magma. The magma in this subduction zone forces its way to the surface and this is what forms volcanoes.

Alternatively, many volcanoes such as the ones in Hawaii are found in the oceans at divergent plate boundaries and form at mid-oceanic ridges. At these divergent zones, magma pours out of the earth’s surface, becoming basaltic lava. It usually then cools and turns into new oceanic crust. It is a slow, gradual process versus the explosive power of volcanoes on land. Instead of hot melting magma proceeding to explode in an eruption the ones on the islands tend to leak out and cool quickly. The frequency of eruption determines the status of a volcano.

Extinct volcanoes are those that have not exploded since people started studying them. Dormant volcanoes are inactive but could explode again. Intermittent volcanoes erupt regularly and active volcanoes erupt all the time. Here in Hawaii and on each individual island you can find at least one of these types of volcanoes. While just on the Big Island and off the coast you can find all of them: extinct, dormant, intermittent, and active. Just goes to show that the islands are a great place to view geothermal activity.

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