Mr. Cleo: Honolulu's Future

Honolulu Hawaii is a beautiful place with many vast geological features. But now it is time to think of hat this beautiful place will be like in the near future! Now I will take you through space and time and give you a glimpse of Honolulu. Now gaze into my crystal ball…

Look closely, deeply focus, and I will take you there. 

1000 Years
Honululu has some awesome waterfalls that contribute to their beauty. But in a thousand years those waterfalls may or may not be there. The rainbow waterfall in Hawaii may not be there or be further pushed back. Waterfalls are commonly formed when a river is young. At these times the channel is often narrow and deep. When the river courses over resistant bedrock, erosion happens slowly, while downstream the erosion occurs more rapidly.

Visual explaining the process of waterfall formation. 

Rainbow Waterfall in Hawaii

As the watercourse increases its velocity at the edge of the waterfall, it plucks material from the riverbed. Whirlpools created in the turbulence as well as sand and stones carried by the watercourse increase the erosion capacity. This causes the waterfall to carve deeper into the bed and to recede upstream. Often over time, the waterfall will recede back to form a canyon or gorge downstream as it recedes upstream, and it will carve deeper into the ridge above it. The rate of retreat for a waterfall can be as
high as one and half meters per year. Often, the rock stratum just below the more resistant shelf will be of a softer type, meaning that undercutting due to splash back will occur here to form a shallow cave-like formation known as a rock shelter under and behind the waterfall. Eventually, the outcropping, more resistant cap rock will collapse under pressure to add blocks of rock to the base of the waterfall. These blocks of rock are then broken down into smaller boulders by attrition as they collide with each other, and they also erode the base of the waterfall by abrasion, creating a deep plunge pool or gorge.

Video explaining the formation of waterfalls for a better understanding of why waterfalls recede. 

10,000 Years
Sea levels have been rising all over the globe, but if they continue Honolulu and most of the Hawaiian islands are in trouble. By Sea level rising it will cause coastal flooding and ground water to rise as well. The freshwater body is less dense than the salt water and it floats on the salt water but as soon the sea level rises, the freshwater level will rise as well.

Video visual of what would happen if sea levels rise. 

Though average erosion rates are relatively low, perhaps a few inches per year, they range up to several feet per year and are highly variable from island to island however in 10 thousand years that will be a significant amount and Honolulu maybe underwater.


1,000,000 Years
In a million years I predict Nihoa, a little island not far from Honolulu will become an atoll. Corals begin to settle and grow around an oceanic island forming a fringing reef. It can take as long as 10,000 years for a fringing reef to form.

Picture showing the Atoll formation.

 Over the next 100,000 years, if conditions are favorable, the reef will continue to expand. As the reef expands, the interior island usually begins to subside and the fringing reef turns into a barrier reef. When the island completely subsides beneath the water leaving a ring of growing coral with an open lagoon in its center, it is called an atoll. The process of atoll formation may take as long as 30,000,000 years to occur.

Video showing and explaining how an atoll forms. 

Sources:
Notes
Casey Allen
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Atoll
http://www.worldwaterfalldatabase.com/
http://geography.howstuffworks.com/terms-and-associations/waterfall1.htm
http://www.epa.gov/climatestudents/impacts/signs/sea-level.html
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/coasts/sealevel/

Hurricanes

Honolulu is an awesome and beautiful place ,but things turn ugly once there are tropical storms like hurricane Iniki.Iniki was a hurricane that hit the islands of Hawaii in September 1992. 

Lets figure out how Hurrican Ikni formed. There had to be a strong Coriolis Effect, which is the rotation of the Earth that causes an interesting phenomena on free moving objects on the Earth. Objects in the Northern Hemisphere are deflected to the right, while objects in the Southern Hemisphere are deflected to the left. The Coriolis Effect thus tries to force winds to shift towards the right or left. A video explaining the effect below.

 Then there needs to be high sea surface temperature, which is the water temperature close to the ocean's surface at least 26 degrees Celsius.

Few changes in wind speed (wind shear) meaning, any change in wind speed or direction along a straight line. In the case of hurricanes, wind shear is important primarily in the vertical direction from the surface to the top of the troposphere. 

They need lots of water vapor which is why they form over the seas. And lastly some convergence to get the hurricane rolling. 

Convergence occurs when air moving from different directions collides. When convergence happens near the surface of the earth, such as when air spirals into the center of a low pressure cell, air is forced upward. 

 This all happened with hurricane Ikini but when the storm grew to a category 4, Hawaii was soon in trouble. So how do hurricanes grow? As evaporation and condensation continue, the air pressure at the surface of the ocean goes down. That lets more water vapor into the air. That vapor rises higher, where it condenses and releases still more energy. The cloud columns grow higher and larger. In this way, a hurricane is a storm that feeds itself. The more it grows, the more energy it releases. The more energy it releases, the more it grows.Below is a video of the storm and its effects. 

Sources:
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/%28Gh%29/guides/mtr/hurr/home.rxml

http://www.drgeorgepc.com/HurricaneIniki.html

http://helzhalfacre.com/iniki/

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/whur7.htm

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/%28Gh%29/guides/mtr/hurr/stages/ts.rxml

And my notes =]

Honolulu Hawaii Hydrology.

Water is so important to life, and all living organisms depend on it.

 

And each place on earth has a unique system of hydrology to follow after. Ground water is one of Honolulu’s most important natural resources. It is used for drinking water, irrigation, and domestic, commercial, and industrial needs. Ground water provides about 99 percent of Hawaii’s domestic water and about 50 percent of all freshwater used in the State. The most extensive and productive aquifers, permeable formation from which water may be extracted, in the Hawaiian islands are formed by volcanic rocks that erupted during the principal building stage of each volcano.

 

 Ground-water resources can be limited because of water-quality, environmental, or economic concerns. Water beneath the ground surface occurs in two principal zones: the unsaturated zone and the saturated zone. In the unsaturated zone, the pore spaces in rocks contain both air and water, whereas in the saturated zone, the pore spaces are filled with water. The upper surface of the saturated zone is referred to as the water table, which is the level that which water rises.

 

 

VIDEO: Better understanding of Groundwater .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQRvN6MUajE

 

 

In Hawaii, the major fresh groundwater systems are below the lowest water table, and are either freshwater-lens or dike-impounded systems. Where freshwater-lens and dike-impounded systems are adjacent, they form a single, hydrologically connected ground-water flow system.

 

 

 

The main factors limiting groundwater availability in the State of Hawaii are saltwater intrusion, the reduction of discharge to streams and the ocean, and lowering of water levels. When water is withdrawn from a freshwater lens, the freshwater lens shrinks and saltwater or brackish water will intrude upward and landward into parts of the aquifer that formerly contained freshwater. The degree of saltwater intrusion depends on several factors, which include the hydraulic properties of the rocks, recharge rate, pumping rate, and well location.

Resources:
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthgwaquifer.html
http://water.usgs.gov/ogw/unsaturated.html
http://hawaii.gov/dbedt/czm/initiative/wec/html/mountain/water/ground.htm
And my notes =]

Don't say YES, say VolcaNO!

-------------Don't say YES, say VolcaNO! --------

The islands of Hawaii weren’t actually magically just there like you would have thought right.

 

 The islands were created along tectonic plates where the oceanic plates dive under continental plates.  The intense heat and pressure melts the rock. Molten rock material, magma, can then ooze its way toward the surface where it accumulates at the surface to create a volcano.  Hotspots are another important aspect of the Hawaii’s creation.  They are places where a chamber of magma has accumulated at depth beneath the surface.

 

Honolulu is a beautiful place. But it is inhabited by a volcano that is very well known in Hawaii. This volcano is called the Diamond Head, and received its name from the British sailors in the 1800s. But enough about history let’s explore the geology of this volcano.  The Diamondhead volcano is a Cinder Cone volcano. These types of volcanoes are pretty common volcanoes; they are composed of layers of pyroclastic material built from rock fragments once lodged in the central vent of the volcano. It is a volcanic crater which was formed from a volcano crater is a circular depression around a volcanic vent.

 

 This is where the lava, ash and rock erupt out of a volcano. In most situations, the volcano crater is located at the top of the volcano. This is a situation where magma rises through water-saturated rocks and causes steam to build up under the surface. The pressure from all the steam causes the rock to explode outward and create a volcanic crater.

 

 

Aloha!

In 2002 a young 9 year old boy by the name of Aaron Williams (me), witnessed a movie that would change my life forever. I am actually talking about the ground breaking amazing riveting and thrilling movie called Lilo and Stitch.

 Yes that is right, Lilo and Stitch. Besides the great story of an alien creature and the strong bond he creates with his human counterpart, I was interested in where the story took place. Honolulu, Hawaii is the setting of this movie I began becoming invested of the movies surroundings. Although animated I decided to research what this “cartoon world” actually looked like. And my mind was blown. It was beautiful, the big seas, the mountains, the volcanoes, the culture it all captured my interest.

Since then I have always wanted to visit this place and bask in its glory. So I have decided to Blog about this heavenly place to find out more about the amazing aspects of its geographic features and to go in detail about how this place became so amazing. So I would like to thank Lilo and Stitch for giving me such insight on this amazing place. Oh and thanks to my mom for taking me to see the movie