Activity 1.13 At Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
The Jaggar Museum has several displays on the layers of the Earth and plate tectonics. Use these displays to remind students that Hawaiian magmas are generated in the mantle and that the Hawaiian Islands are near the center of the Pacific Plate.
The Kilauea Iki lava lake provides useful analogs to plate tectonics. If you hike the Kilauea Iki trail, look for places where lava oozed up between spreading plates of rigid lava lake crust. At other places on the crater floor, plates have buckled against, or even subducted under, adjacent plates. Compare the movements of the plates of lava on the lake surface to lithosphere at tectonic boundaries on the Earth.
