{{Mtnbox start|Name=Hualālai|Photo=Hualalai from north.jpg|

 Caption=North face of Hualālai as seen from [[Waimea, Hawaii County, taller Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa mountains, and forms the backdrop to the town of Kailua-Kona. In fact, the town is built on the southwestern slope of this mountain, where most of the world famous Kona coffee is grown.  

Mauna Kea is a dormant volcano in the Hawaiian Islands, one of five volcanic peaks that together form the Island of Hawaii. ... Mauna Loa is an active shield volcano in the Hawaiian Islands, one of five volcanic peaks that together form the Island of Hawaii. ... Along the sea wall at Kailua-Kona Kailua-Kona is a census-designated place located in Hawai‘i County, Hawai‘i, in the North Kona District of the Island of Hawai‘i. ... Kona Coffee is the market name for a variety of coffee (Coffea arabica) cultivated on the slopes of Mount Hualalai and Mauna Loa in the North and South Kona Districts of the Big Island of Hawaii. ...

Structure

Hualālai is built from a well-defined rift zone that trends approximately N50°W across its summit and a less well-defined rift zone that trends northward from a point 3 mi east of the summit (Macdonald and Abbott, 1970). ks on the mountain surface are about 128,000 years before present (0.1 MYA). It is estmated that the volcano appeared above sea level some 300,000 years ago (0.3 MYA; USGS).

Over 100 cinder and spatter cones are arranged along the rift zones. There is no summit caldera, just a collapse crater (~ 0.3 mile across) at the top of a small lava shield. Much of the southern slope (above the town of Kailua-Kona) consists of lava flows covered by a layer of volcanic ash from 10 cm (a few inches) to a meter (3 ft) thick. Hualālai appears to have entered the late stage of the eruptive cycle of Hawaiian volcanoes (Macdonald and Abbott, 1970)—the post-shield stage (USGS). Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō, a cinder-and-spatter cone on Kilauea, Hawaii Volcanic cones are among the simplest volcano formations. ... Crater Lake, Oregon A caldera is a volcanic feature formed by the collapse of a volcano into itself. ... Perhaps the most conspicuous part of a volcano is the crater, a basin of a roughly circular form within which occurs a vent (or vents) from which magma erupts as gases, lava, and ejecta. ... Diamond Head, a well-known backdrop to Waikiki in Hawaii, is an ash cone that solidified into tuff Volcanic ash is the term for very fine rock and mineral particles less than 2 mm in diameter that are ejected from a volcanic vent. ...

Recent eruptions

Six different vents erupted lava between the late 1700s and 1801, two of which generated lava flows that poured into the sea along the west coast of the island. The Keahole Airport, located only 11 km (7 mi) north of Kailua-Kona, is built atop the smaller Huehue flow (1801) just north of Keahole Point (USGS, 1997). Kona International Airport is an airport at Keāhole on the Island of Hawai‘i, Hawai‘i. ...

Although Hualālai is not nearly as active as nearby Mauna Loa or Kīlauea, recent geologic mapping of the volcano shows that 80 percent of the mountain surface Mauna Loa is an active shield volcano in the Hawaiian Islands, one of five volcanic peaks that together form the Island of Hawaii. ... KÄ«lauea is an active volcano in the Hawaiian Islands, one of five shield volcanoes that together form the Island of Hawaii. ...

References

• Macdonald, G. A. and A. T. Abbott. 1970. Volcanoes in the Sea. Univ. of Hawai‘i Press. 441 pp.
• USGS website: Hualalai, Hawai‘i's Third Active Volcano

External link