Urbano Fra Paleo

Volcanic Risk Assesment and Spatial Planning Policies in the Island of Hawai’i

The eight Hawaiian islands form the southernmost part of the Hawaiian Ridge, a volcanic chain of seamounts and islands with a northwest-southeast orientation, formed in the last 30 million years from a hot-spot approximately located in the island of Hawai’i. The building rate of the volcanic structures is ca. 1.7 Ma in western parts of the island and 4 Ma in the eastern area; spatial intervals between these structures are about 45 and 30 km respectively (Clague 1996). These patterns reflect variations in plate movement over the hot-spot in the last 5 Ma.