on earthquakes, landslides and the ultimate tsunami
Sometime in the next 10-20,000 years, part of Hawai`i Island may crack with a quake and slide away, creating a 100' tsunami that could reach Honolulu in under 30 minutes.
We know this from the research of vulcanologists and earthquake watchers, and now you can see the results in a video simulation (via National Geographic).
So, yes, the Big Island is getting bigger (for the moment), adding almost 600 acres over the last 23 years, and could get even bigger as Lo`ihi grows.
Yet, it could also get smaller...in a landslide like the one depicted in this video.
There is some evidence that such a landslide created the Lihu`e Basin on Kaua`i.
Either way, the big earthquakes here last week remind us of a larger sort of sustainability issue for these islands...how to maintain a civilization on shifting plates and magma.
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