Lance Page has produced this study of the Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii. He writes:
“Many in Hawaii refer to the lava as “Pele”, the Hawaiian goddess of fire. After our incredible experiences at the volcano it’s not hard to see why so many islanders to this day see her as a living breathing thing. I wanted to capture her beauty and mysteriousness as well as her unimaginable power in the best way that I knew how. I wanted to just see it doing what it does. I shied away from any human interaction and turned the cameras to the fiery blood of the Earth.”
The youngest and most-active Hawaiian volcano, Kilauea is a “shield volcano”, a type built almost entirely of fluid lava flows.Tthe volcano is between 300,000 to 600,000 years old and rose above sea level about 100,000 years ago.
It, like all Hawaiian volcanos, lies in the middle of the Pacific Plate, not at its edges. Kilauea was formed as the Pacific plate moved over a “hot spot” – where magma rises upward until it erupts on the sea floor, at what is called a “hot spot.”
Originally published by Cosmos as World’s most active volcano puts on a show
Bill Condie
Bill Condie is a science journalist based in Adelaide, Australia.
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