Leanna McMahon

The eighth regular meeting of the 2025-26 season of the Fredonia Shakespeare Club was hosted at the home of Karin Cockram, who welcomed Club members to the meeting.

After a brief business meeting concluded, a paper by Leanna McMahon on Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii was presented.

One of the most interesting destinations on earth has been especially intriguing in recent months. Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii is home to two active volcanoes, Mauna Loa and Kilauea. Mauna Loa, when measured from its base on the sea floor, is taller than Mount Everest and it is also the largest volcano in the world when measured by volume.

But this year, its counterpart Kilauea has been the volcano drawing the attention of scientists and tourists alike. Since Dec. 23, 2024, when the current series of eruptions of Kilauea began, there have been some 38 episodes, with an especially dramatic event having taken place quite recently, on December 6 of this year. A quick online search will find you many thrilling videos of these events, with lava fountaining over 1,000 feet into the air, huge clouds of ash billowing into the sky, and rivers of lava flowing across Kilauea’s roughly three-mile-wide caldera. What is the force that powers these dramatic eruptions? The earth’s core is made up of molten minerals at temperatures close to that of the surface of the sun. The earth’s surface is covered by tectonic plates, like the pattern of a turtle’s back or a soccer ball.

Much of the earth’s volcanic activity takes place on the edges of these plates, where they collide with or pass along adjoining plates. This is the case in the well-known “Ring of Fire,” where volcanic activity occurs along the edges of the world’s largest tectonic plate, the Pacific Plate, which roughly covers the area of the Pacific Ocean.

Hawaii’s volcanoes are nowhere near the edge of the plate, but are instead the leading edge of the Hawaiian Emperor Seamount chain, a nearly 4,000-mile-long line of now mostly dormant or extinct volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean, a ridge running from the northwest to the southeast roughly along the center of the Pacific plate.

How has that ridge been created? Deep below Mauna Loa and Kilauea, far under the sea, a plume of molten minerals rises up from the earth’s core and pours into the Pacific.

As it enters the water the minerals cool and harden, gradually building up a mountain. Sometimes these mountains never reach the surface but sometimes they rise above to spend millennia as active volcanoes. However, as the Pacific plate moves them gradually away from the underground lava source, they become dormant and then extend and then, as more centuries pass, they gradually erode away and disappear beneath the surface of the sea, becoming what geologists call seamounts. In the early years of the twentieth century, geologist Thomas Jaggar visited Kilauea and decided that with its frequent but not overly dangerous eruptions, it would be an excellent place to study the behavior of volcanoes.

Under his direction, the Hawaii Volcano Observatory began operation in 1912, and it has been continuously monitoring volcanic activity ever since. At roughly the same time businessmen hoping for tourist dollars as well as journalists and conservationists began to lobby for the creation of a national park to protect and promote the volcanoes. In 1916 Congress passed a resolution creating Volcanoes National Park and it was signed by President Woodrow Wilson. The park is dedicated to “preserve for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations, the significant resources that reflect Hawaii’s geological, biological, and cultural heritage.

These resources demonstrate the powerful and awe-inspiring volcanic forces that create new land and the unique adaptations of plants, animals, and people to that land.” UNESCO, The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, designated Volcanoes National Park an International Biosphere reserve in 1980 to preserve and protect its unique ecosystems. In 1987 UNESCO also made Volcanoes National Park a World Heritage site because the area is “an outstanding example of ongoing geological processes that advance understanding of the earth’s evolution.”

If you find unique geological and biological forms fascinating and if you have the opportunity, consider a visit to one of the most beautiful, dramatic, and unusual places on our planet, Volcanoes National Park