My experiments with volcanoesJaggar, Thomas Augustus
Science
My experiments with volcanoes
Jaggar, Thomas Augustus
Geologists -- Biography; Volcanoes
We afterwards visited the bomb craters in the source region, to find
that there had been numerous hits on the lava tunnel and that the
cooling off had solidified the source lava back into the mountain
rift. The remainder of the eruption expended itself with internal
fountaining in the summit wells at the top end of the flank rift. From
the coincidence of the times of bombing and the slowing down of frontal
flow, there appeared no question that the smashing of the source tunnel
was effective and had saved Hilo. We had not anticipated that active
fountaining would be forced back to the summit well from the 9,000-foot
craterlet, but summit smoke continuing for two months verified that
this had happened. This showed the physical chemistry of bubbling slag
to be in delicate adjustment and a lava eruption once started to be
more sensitive to shock than anyone had dreamed. This conclusion was
reconfirmed by the bombing of the 1942 flow.
During this period, changes in Observatory personnel led to new
researches. Wingate, who succeeded Wilson as engineer, set up
triangulation monuments in Puna to test further motion on the Kapoho
rift of 1924. He also devised and set up three tilt instruments in
three cellars which were blasted out of the lava around Halemaumau
pit. Howard Powers came from Harvard as petrologist and collected and
mapped many rock specimens in Kona, on Hualalai, and in Olaa. He also
made curves of the tilt records for the first twenty years of the
Observatory. Hugh Waesche was transferred from the Park Service to the
position of geologist at the Observatory. A skilled radio amateur, he
took over seismological work. In 1938 he dealt with an important group
of earthquakes along the Chain of Craters east of Kilauea. These were
accompanied by faulting, which made cracks, chasms, and humps in the
road, and some new hot places. This indicated a reaction underground,
back toward Halemaumau from the submarine outflow of April 1924.
Finch from his headquarters at Lassen reported regularly in the
_Volcano Letter_, on hot spring temperatures and earthquakes.
He conducted two expeditions to Alaska, inspecting the seismographs
and making volcano explorations and maps on Akutan Island. Another
expedition was to Shishaldin Volcano, at the west end of the big
Aleutian island of Unimak during one of its eruptive spells.
Throughout this time and earlier H. T. Stearns represented the
Geological Survey and the Territory of Hawaii in publications on
geology and water supply on all the islands. The island of Hawaii was
made the subject of a splendid geological map in color by Stearns and
Gordon Macdonald, petrographer, with a book on the geological history
of Hawaii, profusely illustrated with photographs and diagrams. Their
book is practically a modern textbook on the geology of active lava
volcanoes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account