Have you ever wondered how the beautiful Hawaiian Islands transformed from barren volcanic rocks to magnificent green islands filled with forests, animals, and insects? It all happened through a complex process called Ecological Succession, in which organisms gradually populate land that was just created or has undergone a change or , such as the volcanic Hawaiian Islands. Ecological Succession is one of the forces shaping the Hawaiian Islands, and allowing them to thrive.
The Hawaiian Islands were created by lava flows of volcanoes. The Earth is made up of tectonic plates that move all the time. Sometimes, magma rises up in the middle of a plate until it erupts on the seafloor, forming a hot spot. This creates volcanoes, and those volcanoes grow until they rise above sea level, and create volcanic islands. This process is how all Hawaiian Islands were created. Even though the hot spot itself doesn’t move, the tectonic plate it is on does, and therefore the continuous shifting creates many small volcanic islands along the way. This fact is shown in an article by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, “as the plate moved over the hot spot, the string of islands that make up the Hawaiian Island chain were formed” (“How did the Hawaiian Islands form?”). The Hawaiian Islands archipelago contains a total of 132 islands, reefs, and seamounts stretching over 1,500 miles, caused by the movement of the Pacific Plate. This movement takes the plate to the northwest at a rate of 5-10 cm/yr, creating a big difference over time. The Hawaiian hot spot is currently located under the largest Hawaiian Island, Big Island, which was formed by a total of 5 volcanoes. One of those, Mauna Loa, is known as the largest active volcano on Earth. ...
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...lts in an increasing population of non-native species, which in turn might oppose a threat in the years to come to the number of the native specie populations of the islands. Zimmerman et al. described that the islands’ “forests seem to be balancing between two opposing factors”, meaning that the native and the non-native plants are competing for space in their common ecosystem (1).
The Hawaiian Volcanic Islands were first formed through volcanoes that arose from the Hawaiian hot spot on the seafloor of the Pacific Plate. Organisms then populated the area through a long process called Primary Ecological Succession, which turned the islands into beautiful and verdant ecosystems. Since disturbances, either man-caused or natural, are always affecting those ecosystems, Secondary Ecological Succession is in perpetuate use to enable the Hawaiian Islands to thrive.
In the beginning, Hawaii was unknown to any humans. Polynesians eventually came across its islands, and decided to make it their home. In the early days, each island was ruled by a chief, and many times the islands were in conflict with each other. Centuries like this passed, but then "in 1782, [Queen Lili'uokalani's] cousin Kamehameha set out to conquer and unite the islands". Thirteen years later, in 1795, Kamehameha finally fulfilled his vision of a unified Hawaiian state, and he became king. The nation was then to be ruled by Kamehameha's sons. (Guzzetti 10)
The territory finally became a state in 1959, just ahead of Hawaii. Now, Hawaii is an archipelago, a chain of islands, located in the Central Pacific. Unlike Alaska, annexing Hawaii was due to United States imperialism. Around the middle 1800s, American began to migrate to the islands of Hawaii to start businesses, especially with sugarcane and pineapple. At that time, the islands were ruled by Queen Liliuokalani in a monarchy.
The Big Island is a vital part of Hawaiian history and culture. In fact, people still believe that there is a Hawaiian god that still resides there and is among the living. Supposedly, there is a volcano goddess names Pele who lives in the Kilauea Volcano. Since 1983, she has provoked eruptions at the Kilauea Volcano.
Mauna Loa is located on a hot spot in the Pacific Ocean. It is not near a plate boundary, in fact it is 3,200 km from the nearest plate boundary, and is situated in the middle of the Pacific tectonic plate. This is actually a rarity, as 90% of volcanoes are along a tectonic plate boundary. A hot spot occurs where long, stationary vertical pools of magma rise up and towards the plate. Movement of the tectonic plates above the hot spot created Mauna Loa, along with the other Hawaiian volcanoes. The older Hawaiian Islands were once above this stationary hot spot, but have been carried northwest by the slowly moving Pacific plate. As the plate moves, it carries the previously formed, older, volcanoes with it, creating a trail of younger, new volcanoes behind. The islands are lined up along the Hawaiian Ridge-Emperor Seamounts chain, which is 3,750 miles and includes Kauai, Maui, Oahu and Hawai’i, from north to south, respectively. There are around 80 volcanoes in this chain; most of them underwater, consequently the term seamount refer to submarine volcanoes. Three volcanoes of Hawai’i, Mauna Loa, Kilauea and Loihi seamount, are all currently sharing the Hawaiian hot spot. Although, recent evidence has shown that all three volcanoes use have separate plumbing systems to expel the lava from the pool of magma deep below them. It has also been suggested that Loihi is slowly moving Mauna Loa from the center of the island, thus shifting directly over the hot spot. The closer to the hot spot a volcano is, the more active it will be. The Hawaiian hot spot has laid down layers of lava, building up enormous islands from the ocean floor.
A serious problem that affects Hawaii today is the decline of natural forests due to the importing of invasive species and widespread deforestation. Majority of Hawaii’s natural forest have depleted and what is left is either being used for housing and farming, or preserved by the state. Little has been done to combat this besides the 1% of State funding that’s being used to run preservation systems.
Global warming affects the ocean water level because of the raising temperatures; it causes the icebergs to melt which adds more water in the ocean. This poses a threat to Hawaii and other islands because Hawaii is made up of islands, which are small and surrounded by water. This leaves us at risk for many things with the reef and the people.
Through millions of years of evolution, well-balanced habitats have co-evolved to provide for the wide variety of species and their needs. Trees have adapted to weeds, weeds have adapted to the predation from herbivores, and so on up the food chain. Similar scenarios are seen throughout the world. Through the process of natural selection, specific species or broad species families will go extinct. However, these occurrences have largely been due to the natural flow and evolution of time. It wasn’t until recently that dominant species, such as humans, have taken the course of nature into their own hands.
Since moving to Hawaii approximately two months ago, one might assume that this would be the perfect place to study varying environmental influences and their impacts. Hawaii is one of the most inaccessible, yet populous places within the United States. Tourism is a main reason why so many people come to the islands. Tourism is the primary source of revenue for the Hawaiian economy. Normally when one thinks of Hawaii, they think of vacation spots and tourist destinations.
It has been in business since it was a grass shack in 1846. The desire to study the earth forms the park's main theme, coming close behind is biology. Thousands of unique organisms have gradually isolated Hawaiian islands. These are reminders of Polynesian pioneers who directed their great hulled canoes to Hawaii about 1,500 years ago. With the lava flowing at a rate of 800 to 1,300 gallons per second from vents on the east side zone of Kilauea, more than 500 acres of new land have been added to the island since 1938.
Basalt forms due to the partial melting of the layer of the mantle called the asthenosphere. The asthenosphere is the plastic zone of the mantle beneath the rigid lithosphere. Mantle plumes coming from the mesosphere can cause the asthenosphere to melt with heat or even if pressure decreases, which is called decompression melting (Richard 2011). The magma that forms from this melting is mafic magma that solidifies once it reaches the earth’s surface and cools quickly. The above process mainly occurs mainly during intraplate igneous activity which is the main explanation for volcanic activity that occurs a long distance away from a plate boundary. If the tectonic plate above the mantle plume is moving it can create a string of volcanic activity such as in Hawaii. See Fig 2.
Hawaii is the United States most recent and 50TH state. Hawaii joined the United States in 1959 and is located in the Pacific Ocean 2,100 miles southwest of the mainland United States. Hawaii is the only state in the United States that’s composed of islands and it is the only state not located on the continent of North America Hawaii is an island chain of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean that extends 1,523 miles long. There are an estimated 1.4 million people that reside in the state of Hawaii. The eight main islands in Hawaii including Niihau, Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Lānaʻi, Kahoolawe, Maui and the Island of Hawaii. The language that spoken in this state are mainly English and Hawaiian. There are multiple reasons why Hawaii is very diverse, from the cuisine to culture than other states in the United States.
By carelessly shifting around organisms, with their awesome genetic potential, we have caused major ecological disasters. Gone is the most important tree in the Northeast, the American Chestnut, our premier landscaping tree, the American Elm, and gone are huge tracts of productive fresh water marsh. Now these marshes contain only monocultures (only one species present) of purple loosestrife.
The Yasuni National Park possesses very diverse rainforest which significantly impact how the ecosystem functions; yet the the processes of disturbance and succession greatly affect them ("Yasuni National Park, Ecuador", "Ecuador Yasuni ITT Trust Fund" ). Just one hectare of the park contains more species of trees and bushes than all of North America ("Foreseeable Impacts of Oil Industry Activity in Yasuní")! There are a staggering 1762 species of trees and shrubs that have been identified in Yasuni, and approximately 400 of them are inherent to the region (“Foreseeable”). Hundreds of the plants in the previously untouchable zones have not even been classified or studied in depth (“Foreseeable”). The park is also paradise to a multitude of animal...
On the first level, when foreign, but previously non-invasive species is first introduced to a new area, the new species may play a role in a community that was previously unfulfilled; it may fill a vacant niche in the ecosystem. Originally this new species may be seen as a useful contributor to its new surroundings because it has only (temporarily) increased biodiversity in the area (Meinesz, 2003).