9714783 Nielsen Volcanoes in Hawaii are among the most active on Earth. However, due to their high rates of eruption and subsidence, direct documentation of their temporal evolution is lacking. This project will use samples from three deep (~2 km) drill cores in Kilauea Volcano's Lower East Rift Zone to study magmatic processes and plume evolution in the type oceanic hotspot. The goals of this project are: (1) to document the diversity of primitive magmas, preserved as melt inclusions, in the Kilauea plumbing system over more than 100 Ka of Kilauea's history, (2) to record the change in source compositions over time, (3) to determine volumetric proportions of magmatic components contributing to Kilauea lavas through time, and (4) to evaluate connectivity of the plumbing systems of Kilauea and Mauna Loa. This study, together with an ongoing deep drilling study at Mauna Kea, an older volcano on Hawaii, can provide a much longer time-series of Hawaiian plume evolution than would be possible by conventional field sampling. This will not only enhance our understanding of the evolution of the Hawaiian plume, but will provide a benchmark for studying other hotspot volcanoes.
