The Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain is the Hawaiian Islands and the Emperor Seamounts: together they form a vast underwater mountain region of islands, seamounts, atolls, shallows, banks and reefs. The line goes southeast to northwest beneath the northern Pacific Ocean; and many of the underwater mountains are guyots.
Full Answer
What is the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain?
The Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain is a mostly undersea mountain range in the Pacific Ocean that reaches above sea level in Hawaii.
What is the relative location of the Emperor Seamounts?
/ 19.82056°N 155.46806°W / 19.82056; -155.46806 The Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain is a mostly undersea mountain range in the Pacific Ocean that reaches above sea level in Hawaii.
What is the Hawaiian plateau composed of?
It is composed of the Hawaiian ridge, consisting of the islands of the Hawaiian chain northwest to Kure Atoll, and the Emperor Seamounts: together they form a vast underwater mountain region of islands and intervening seamounts, atolls, shallows, banks and reefs along a line trending southeast to northwest beneath the northern Pacific Ocean.
What is the seamount chain?
The seamount chain, containing over 80 identified undersea volcanoes, stretches about 6,200 km (3,900 mi) from the Aleutian Trench in the far northwest Pacific to the Lōʻihi Seamount, the youngest volcano in the chain, which lies about 35 kilometres (22 mi) southeast of the Island of Hawaiʻi . The chain can be divided into three subsections.
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What type of feature are the Hawaiian Islands Emperor seamount chain?
The Hawaiian Islands were formed by volcanic activity. The Hawaiian Emperor seamount chain is a well-known example of a large seamount and island chain created by hot-spot volcanism. Each island or submerged seamount in the chain is successively older toward the northwest.
What are the Hawaiian Emperor chain of islands and underwater seamounts?
The Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain is the Hawaiian Islands and the Emperor Seamounts: together they form a vast underwater mountain region of islands, seamounts, atolls, shallows, banks and reefs. The line goes southeast to northwest beneath the northern Pacific Ocean; and many of the underwater mountains are guyots.
Where is the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain?
The Hawaiian Ridge-Emperor Seamounts chain extends some 6,000 km from the "Big Island" of Hawaii to the Aleutian Trench off Alaska. The Hawaiian Islands themselves are a very small part of the chain and are the youngest islands in the immense, mostly submarine mountain chain composed of more than 80 volcanoes.
How many islands make up the Hawaii Emperor seamount chain?
The Emperor Seamount Chain and the Hawaiian Ridge The part of the archipelago that is the Hawaiian Ridge is made up of 132 islands, atolls, reefs, shallow banks, shoals, and seamounts that stretch over 1,500 miles (~2500 km) from the island of Hawaii in the southeast to Kure Atoll in the northwest.
What part of the Hawaiian Island chain is the oldest?
Kure atoll, the northernmost coral atoll in the world, is a former volcano, and the oldest part of the Hawaiian Island Chain still above water.
How was the Hawaiian-Emperor island chain formed quizlet?
The combined processes of magma formation, eruption, and continuous movement of the Pacific Plate over the stationary hot spot have left the trail of volcanoes across the ocean floor that we now call the Hawaiian-Emperor Chain.
How many islands are in the Hawaiian chain?
The 8 largest are the most well known but there are 137 islands and 5 counties that, together, form the state of Hawaii. The 5 counties are Hawai'i, Honolulu, Kauai, Maui, and Kalawao.
Is Hawaii on a hot spot?
Today the Big Island of Hawaii sits over the hot spot and has the only active volcanoes in that island group. Konala, Hualaiai, Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa and Kilauea volcanoes have built the island over the last 500,000 years.
Is Hawaiian underwater mountain?
Mauna Kea only stands 13,796 feet above seal level, but the mountain extends about 19,700 feet below the Pacific Ocean. Over half of it is submerged. That puts the total height of Mauna Kea at about 33,500 feet — nearly a mile taller than Everest. Mauna Kea is actually an inactive volcano on the big island of Hawaii.
What are the 5 islands of Hawaii?
Kauai.Oahu.Molokai.Lanai.Maui.Hawaii.
What is a cluster of islands called?
An archipelago is an area that contains a chain or group of islands scattered in lakes, rivers, or the ocean.
Why is the Big Island so big?
The Big Island is formed by 6 different volcanoes - in order of oldest to youngest - Mahukona, Kohala, Mauna Kea, Hualalai, Mauna Loa, and Kilauea. The last three are still active. Mauna Kea, the tallest sea mountain in the world, is a deeply sacred site in the Hawaiian culture.
What does the Hawaiian island Emperor seamount chain indicate about past movement of the Pacific Plate?
The volcanoes in the Hawaiian Island-Emperor Seamount chain get progressively older as one heads northwestward from Hawaii. These age relationships suggest that the Pacific Plate has been steadily moving northwestward, while the underlying mantle plume has remained relatively stationary.
When was the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount chain formed?
to 50 million yearsA crash caused the bend This northward migration continued from 80 to 50 million years, at which time the Emperor Chain was formed by the northern drift of the Pacific over the mantle plume.
What caused the bend in the Emperor Seamount chain and the Hawaiian island chain?
The mechanism causing the unique, sharp bend in the spectacular Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain has been uncovered in a collaboration between the University of Sydney and Caltech. Rapid southward motion of the Hawaiian plume, followed by a sharp slowdown, causes the sharp bend in the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain.
How many Hawaiian Islands are underwater?
The Hawaiian Islands (Hawaiian: Mokupuni o Hawai'i) are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, and numerous smaller islets in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) from the island of Hawaiʻi in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll.
How are Hawaiian volcanoes produced?
Hawaiian volcanoes (known as shield volcanoes) are not produced by a subduction process (one tectonic plate diving beneath another), but instead the Hawaiian volcanoes are produced by a single stationary plume of lava known as the Hawa iian magmatic hot spot. This plume of lava rises up from deep within Earth’s mantle.
Why are Hawaiian volcanoes called shield volcanoes?
The volcanoes in the Hawaiian Islands are known as shield volcanoes because their broad and even lava flows form a shape similar to a warrior’s shield.
Which Hawaiian island is over a hot spot plume?
Kaua‘i used to be where the island of Hawai‘i is today, over the Hawaiian magmatic hot spot plume of erupting lava. Each of the Hawaiian Islandswas once over the hot spot lava plume.
How many plates are there in the Earth's crust?
Earth’s crust is divided up into 12 large tectonic plates along with many smaller tectonic plates. The Hawaiian Islands are on the Pacific Plate, the largest of Earth’s tectonic plates.
How thick are the tectonic plates?
These tectonic plates vary from 2 to 75 miles (3 to 121 km) thick. The plates are thicker under mountains, and thinner under oceans.
What causes tectonic plates to shift?
This causes the tectonic plates to shift over time, rearranging them on the surface of the Earth. The Pacific Plate is currently moving northwest at the rate of about 3½ inches (9 cm) per year.
Why is the Pacific Plate moving northwest?
The shift in the direction of movement of the massive Pacific Plate from north to northwest was likely due to movements of Earth’s other tectonic plates, particularly the Indian Plate, which collided with Asia resulting in the formation of the Himalayan Mountains.
How many sections are there in the Hawaiian Emperor chain?
The Hawaiian-Emperor chain can be divided into three sections ( Fig. 1 ). The oldest section is the Emperor Seamounts (>81-47 Ma) stretching from the northwestern Pacific Ocean near the Aleutian Islands to the bend in the Hawaiian-Emperor chain ( Jackson et al., 1972; Regelous et al., 2003 ).
How many volcanoes are there in the Northwest Hawaiian Ridge?
The Northwest Hawaiian Ridge (NWHR) includes 51 volcanoes spanning ∼42 m.y. between the bend in the Hawaiian-Emperor chain and the Hawaiian Islands where there is no high-precision isotopic data published on the rejuvenated-stage over ∼47% of the chain.
Is Hawaiian lava homogeneous?
The composition of Hawaiian rejuvenated lavas appears to be relatively isotopically homogeneous during the du ration they are observed along the Hawaiian-Emperor chain, but there are other instances when depleted compositions appear in Hawaiian lavas.
Does rejuvenated basalt come from melted Hawaiian plumes?
There are several lines of evidence that suggest that the depleted component in rejuvenated basalts does not originate from melting of previously melted Hawaiian plume components that have not been metasomatized subsequent to shield and postshield melting and prior to rejuvenated melting.
Overview
The Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain is a mostly undersea mountain range in the Pacific Ocean that reaches above sea level in Hawaii. It is composed of the Hawaiian ridge, consisting of the islands of the Hawaiian chain northwest to Kure Atoll, and the Emperor Seamounts: together they form a vast underwater mountain region of islands and intervening seamounts, atolls, shallows, banks …
Regions
The chain can be divided into three subsections. The first, the Hawaiian archipelago (also known as the Windward isles), consists of the islands comprising the U.S. state of Hawaii. As it is the closest to the hotspot, this volcanically active region is the youngest part of the chain, with ages ranging from 400,000 years to 5.1 million years. The island of Hawaiʻi is composed of five volcanoes, of which four (Kilauea, Mauna Loa, Hualalai, and Mauna Kea) are active. The island of
Formation
The oldest age for the Emperor Seamounts is 81 million years, and comes from Detroit Seamount. However, Meiji Guyot, located to the north of Detroit Seamount, is likely somewhat older.
In 1963, geologist John Tuzo Wilson hypothesized the origins of the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain, explaining that they were created by a hot…
Aging
The chain has been produced by the movement of the ocean crust over the Hawaiʻi hotspot, an upwelling of hot rock from the Earth's mantle. As the oceanic crust moves the volcanoes farther away from their source of magma, their eruptions become less frequent and less powerful until they eventually cease altogether. At that point erosion of the volcano and subsidence of the seafloor cause the volcano to gradually diminish. As the volcano sinks and erodes, it first becom…
See also
• Detroit Seamount
• Isostasy
• Kodiak–Bowie Seamount chain
• Meiji Seamount
• New England Seamounts
Further reading
• Tarduno, John A.; et al. (2003). "The Emperor Seamounts: Southward Motion of the Hawaiian Hotspot Plume in Earth's Mantle". Science. 301 (5636): 1064–1069. Bibcode:2003Sci...301.1064T. doi:10.1126/science.1086442. PMID 12881572. S2CID 15398800.
• Tarduno, John A.; et al. (2009). "The Bent Hawaiian-Emperor Hotspot Track: Inheriting the Mantle Wind". Science. 324 (5923): 50–53. Bibcode:2009Sci...324...50T. doi:10.1126/science.1161256. PMID 19342579. S2CID 23406…