Talk:Mauna Loa

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Featured articleMauna Loa is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
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Article milestones
DateProcessResult
October 13, 2005Good article nomineeListed
October 23, 2005Good article reassessmentDelisted
October 27, 2005Good article nomineeListed
April 8, 2006Featured topic candidateNot promoted
June 17, 2006Peer reviewReviewed
July 11, 2006Featured article candidatePromoted
January 30, 2012Peer reviewReviewed
December 25, 2012Peer reviewReviewed
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older entries[edit]

Homework by the uninterested adolescent replaced.


In tracing the origin of the four paragraphs describing an old but historical eruption on Mauna Loa I see it was added anonymously underb "punctuation repair" I can find no reference in the text provided to what volcano is being described, and there was no eruption of Mauna Loa in 1840 (year that the Wilkes expedition climbed the mountain, I believe). So I'm deleting the text as probably plagerized or made up and not relevent to Mauna Loa.Marshman 00:15, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Delisted GA[edit]

There are no references. slambo 17:04, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Now there are. -- hike395 13:45, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Mauna Loa is an inactive volcano it can NEVER let me repeat NEVER erupt again some people say its still active but it is NOT because every 2 years it erupted and the last time it erupted was 1984 also people went down into the volcano ( this is called spalunking ) adn found NO magma there which means it can NEVER erupt again NEVER EVER NEVER FOR EVER NEVER EVER NEVER NEVER EVER FOR EVER NEVER erupt again dont listen to anyone else because it is inactive i repeat inactive because i am a spalunker and that is what we found today so it is inactive i repeat inactive uf you say its active you are a LIAR =[[so the correct info is it is inactive =]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] thank you for your time =]]]]]]]]]]]]] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.119.249.49 (talk) 19:28, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Goodness. Someone thinks they're more expert than...well, the actual experts. A note to "unsigned": If you took the time to do a little research, you'd find out that "inactive" does not equal "can never erupt again". And, quite frankly, that all caps and misspellings do little to enhance your message or credibility. Kindly cease wasting space with ranting. Farristry (talk) 20:19, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Conflict of Wiki articles...[edit]

In the article about Mauna Kea "Mauna Kea is also the tallest mountain in the world when measured from base to peak" whereas in this article it is saying that Mauna Loa is... I have been told many times, including from my Geography Teacher who seems to have a very good knowlege of volcanic features says that Mouna Loa is the highest [although I haven't posed the question to her I just remember her telling the class that Mauna Loa was the higher than Everest and that from its base it was the highest land feature...]

El.numbre 10:04, 16 March 2006 (UTC)el.numbreEl.numbre 10:04, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Mauna Loa is the world's largest volcano in terms of volume and mass, but is, as the article says, slightly shorter than Manua Kea. 71.131.239.160 05:16, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I recall reading "13,796 feet" above sea level for Mauna Kea, and a slightly lower height for Mauna Loa. So both go over twice as high as Denver (if Denver is a "mile high" place at 5280 feet above sea level).

Agent X 19:58, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Contradictory sentence[edit]

The inflation has been intermittent, sometimes stopping for several weeks, and although its rate has slowed at times it has not stopped and is likely to indicate an increased probability of an eruption in the next few years.

Well? Has it stopped or hasn't it? —Keenan Pepper 04:21, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Also, a citation for that "next few years" claim would be nice. —Keenan Pepper 04:21, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Keep English spellings consistent[edit]

The article is correctly using English spellings of Hawaiian words. It should stay that way. There is no need to use Hawaiian spellings. So I edited the few inconsistent uses of 'a'a, etc., by removing the apostrophes and macrons, as they do not belong in English spelling. Since the article has nothing at all to do with Hawaiian language, there is no conceivable relevance for the use of any Hawaiian spellings. The sole exception is the explanation that mauna loa means "long mountain" in Hawaiian. And that was correctly done, italicizing the Hawaiian forms (which happen to have no glottal stops or long vowels in the Hawaiian spellings). Two-word place names, like Mauna Loa, use uppercase for both word-initial letters. So I edited "Ho'okena mauka" to "Hookena Mauka". In Hawaiian, Uka would be expected rather than Mauka, as in Ho`okena Uka (like in Kalihi Kai, Kalihi Waena, Kalihi Uka). The form Hoopuloa (or even Ho`opuloa) looks a bit odd as a Hawaiian place name. Perhaps someone can double check that name. Agent X 19:58, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

The okina should not be typeset as an apostrophe in the first place, so it's a good thing you removed them. —Keenan Pepper 21:09, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I have no idea about the place names, but IME that sort of lava is usually called 'a'a, not aa;[1] in any event, 'a'a links somewhere sensible, unlike aa, which is a disambiguation page. Perhaps `a`a or ‘a‘a would be better? -- ALoan (Talk) 10:08, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure I think we should purge all Hawaiian spellings. As ALoan says, some are more common than anglicised versions, and it makes sense to use whatever is most commonly used. I don't feel terribly strongly about it though. Worldtraveller 11:08, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

1. In opposition, "to use whatever is most commonly used", rather than using proper, established, nativized (i.e., Anglicized) spellings of loanwords, does not make sense at all. Consider the English loanword sushi, from Japanese. The word is "most commonly used", in speaking, by native speakers of Japanese, and is "most commonly used", in writing, by native writers of Japanese. In the Japanese spoken form, the vowel "u" is normally devoiced (silent). In the Japanese written form, it's normally in kanji or hiragana, not in roman letters. So the most common use (the Japanese use) is different from the English use. But native speakers and native writers of English are not going to devoice the "u", nor write in kanji, simply because the English use of sushi is less frequent than the Japanese use of the word.

2. Consider the Hawaiian version of Wikipedia. According to the view that you expressed, Hawaiian-language articles should use English spellings whenever the English spelling is "more common than [hawaiianized] versions", right? So Hawaiian-language writers should write "Jesus Christ" instead of "Iesū Kristo", and "soap" instead of "kopa", and "dollar" instead of "kālā", etc., etc., right? Because English use of Jesus Christ, soap, dollar, is "more common" than Hawaiian use of Iesū Kristo, kopa, kālā, right?

3. I'm strongly advocating the position that the "default spelling" should be the native spelling, where native means the language in which the article is written. The native spelling for Hawaiian-language articles is Hawaiian (not English), and the native spelling for English-language articles is English (not Hawaiian). Therefore, this English Wikipedia article on Mauna Loa should use English spellings by default.

4. Returning to aa, ALoan is confusing the spoken form with the written form. Who does not understand that English spelling and English pronunciation most commonly do NOT match? It is inappropriate to expect writers of English, or any other language, to perform orthographic gymnastics to give birth to non-native, pseudo-IPA spellings inspired by an effort to imitate pronunciations. The English word through is pronounced [θɹu], but we do not spell it "θru", and we do not spell rough as "rəf". Likewise, aa is pronounced [ˡa.ʔa] or [ˡʔa.ʔa] in English, but it is spelled "aa" in English.

5. In Hawaiian, the word is pronounced [ʔa.ˡʔaː] and spelled "‘a‘ā". However, in the Hawaiian Dictionary (Pukui and Elbert 1986:389), on the very first page of the English-Hawaiian section, the second entry is "aa. ‘A‘ā. See saying, wāwae." The authors of the Hawaiian Dictionary correctly used the English spelling "aa" of the English word aa, in proper distinction from the Hawaiian spelling "‘a‘ā" of the Hawaiian word ‘a‘ā. (It's the same in the 1971 version of the dictionary. I don't have a copy of the 1957 version, but I bet it's the same there too. The established, correct English spelling has been "aa" for a long time already.)

Back to the "aa" issue. The ʻokina and kahakō are vital when the words are used. The words "aa", "aʻa", "ʻaʻā", "ʻaʻa", and "ʻāʻā" ALL have DIFFERENT meanings. The same is said of "kala" and "kālā". I'm curious as to what your dictionary says. Yours seems to be different from the rest of the Hawaiian dictionaries. --Kanaka maoli i puuwai 04:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

6. The point about links in Wikipedia for aa versus 'a'a only reflects lack of knowledge among the people who made the links.

7. Are you still against the well established English spelling "aa", even though it has been endorsed through usage by the authors of the Hawaiian Dictionary? Agent X 19:42, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... but "Hawaii" is not an English word. It's obviously borrowed straight out of a formerly foreign language. So if some people borrow it as "Hawaii" and others as "Hawai'i" (yes, with an apostrophe, because right or wrong that's how we borrowed it) both seem technically to be English words borrowed from another language. I am ambivalent because on one hand the apostrophes are a slight inconvenience and the okina template markup much more so, but on the other hand Hawaiian (Hmmm, "Hawai'ian"???) is a phonetic tool that tells you how to say a word and I'd hate to break it. The only solid opinion I have is that because this Wikipedia is written in English and any Hawaiian words we actually use in a sentence are technically borrowed into English, it almost never makes sense to use the okina template because it is not a part of the English typography. But perhaps there is a technical/searching motivation behind this? 70.15.116.59 (talk) 19:01, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
I shifted the word Hawaii back to the english spelling. Hawaii is an english word with a Hawaiian derivation. This is English-Wikipedia. Mistermistertee (talk) 16:45, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
It would appear that Wikipedia:WikiProject Hawaii/Manual of Style indicates otherwise. --Kralizec! (talk) 05:20, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Link to discussion of article at Wikipedia talk:Lead section[edit]

This article is being discussed here: Wikipedia_talk:Lead_section#How_to_reference_summary_style_sections_such_as_the_lead_section. Please add comments if you wish. Carcharoth 15:35, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Semi-protect?[edit]

Can we semi-protect this article for a couple of weeks? I just fixed multiple vandalisations that weren't caught by other editors --- it's a shame for a featured article to be so vandalised that garbage can persist for weeks and no one notice. hike395 05:16, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I just did. Yikes. Anyone let me know if you want it unprotected (and please put it on your watchlist if you do). Antandrus (talk) 05:33, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Atmospheric CO2[edit]

What exactly does this image have to do with the article? What does it mean that CO2 levels are rising? JHMM13(Disc) 17:21, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I think the point of the graph is just to show the kind of data collected by the asmospheric observatory on the mountain. What it means that CO2 levels are rising? see Global Warming. --Rocksanddirt 19:31, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Leftover ref[edit]

I noticed this in an HTML comment in the reference section:

  • Kaye, G. D., Using GIS to estimate the total volume of Mauna Loa Volcano, Hawaii, 98th Annual Meeting, Geological Society of America, (2002).

HTML comments are for wimps. Either it is in or out. You guys decide.--SallyForth123 03:54, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

In. I put this in years ago: it meant to stick to the volume estimate in the lede. hike395 04:35, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

1935 eruption[edit]

I added some info about this eruption, which actually saw the US Army Air Corps attempting to divert the flow of lava from Hilo with aerial bombs. Anynobody 07:57, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Why does magma go so far up?[edit]

As I understand it, Mauna Loa, Kilauea, and Loihi are related volcanoes, though with different magma reservoirs, and certainly fed by the same hotspot. But Mauna Loa is roughly 10,000 feet higher than Kilauea and 20,000 feet higher than Loihi, and even further above the ocean floor. Could someone explain for the article how it is that such a massively heavy column of molten stone in an earthquake-prone region can't find some way to deliver itself to a lower destination? 70.15.116.59 (talk) 18:50, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Often it does; see rift zone. -- Avenue (talk) 00:24, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

me[edit]

the mauna loa is the larg volcano ever —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.80.247.147 (talk) 23:23, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Tectonic Plates.[edit]

what tectonic plates were involved in this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.221.253.4 (talk) 23:14, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Mokuaweoweo[edit]

  • I see Mokuaweoweo redirect here. I was going to add an article about the Lieutenant Charles Wilkes expedition campsite, on the National Register of Historic Places. I could include some other info specific to the summit, and have a Mokuaweoweo article. This would follow the precedent of Halemaumau Crater, for example. Of course have appropriate cross links. There is some other summit-specific history such as the Ainapo Trail and Archibald Menzies etc. This article would remain focused on the volcanism. Do not want to ruin a featured article! Any discussion? Mahalo. W Nowicki (talk) 00:41, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Wow, that was quick. Wish I could do the research and write the article that fast, but it might take a few days. And of course might be tough to get a picture, without climbing 14,000 feet! W Nowicki (talk) 00:54, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
    • Take your time! (and don't forget about the DYK) :) As far as I can tell, there are many free images online. Is there a particular one you are looking for? Viriditas (talk) 00:58, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Yes, I found some good images from USGS (too many), and hope to move the summit article in place this afternoon. The Wilkes story was fascinating! W Nowicki (talk) 20:49, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Mokuaweoweo article should be there now - will link it up a few more places, and perhaps submit a Do You Know. W Nowicki (talk) 03:44, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Sigh, I was about to submit my DYK, but it looks like someone named User:Anthony Appleyard ignored this discussion and just merged it back into the main article! Why? Usually a registered historic place is supposed to have itss own article, but I thought merging it with other summit-related ones made sense. But this one was already large enough to be featured. W Nowicki (talk) 19:01, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
  • It looks like he outranks me, although it would have been nice for him to comment before undoing my work. I will go ahead and continue merging (the picture only needs to be included once, etc.). To clarify, only the Wilkes camp site is on the NRHP, not the entire summit. And there were most probably two other ascents between Menzies and Wilkes, so I will just say "Others". W Nowicki (talk) 02:38, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
    • No worries, we'll get this worked out. I'll contact him now. Viriditas (talk) 10:08, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
      • Ok, I see that the article is only 41 kB with the information merged. I had no idea it was so small. That might have been his justification for merging. Viriditas (talk) 10:11, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Sorry: I did not see this discussion; but I saw that there was duplicated information and content forking between pages Mauna Loa and Mokuaweoweo. I have put the redirect Mokuaweoweo in Category:Volcanic calderas of Hawaii. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 12:20, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

vandalism[edit]

What is it about this article that attracts so much vandalism? I watch a number of pages that I would expect to get a similar amount of hits but none gets nearly as much stupid vandalism as this. KarlM (talk) 07:00, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

File:Mauna Loa from the air.jpg to appear as POTD soon[edit]

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Mauna Loa from the air.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on October 13, 2011. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2011-10-13. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page so Wikipedia doesn't look bad. :) Thanks! howcheng {chat} 17:49, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Mauna Loa lava
A cinder cone and lava flows from various eruptions on the flank of Mauna Loa, the world's largest shield volcano in terms of volume and area covered, and one of five volcanoes that form the Island of Hawaiʻi in the U.S. state of Hawaii. Mauna Loa has probably been erupting for at least 700,000 years, and may have emerged above sea level about 400,000 years ago. Its magma comes from the Hawaii hotspot, which is the source of the Hawaiian Islands. The Mauna Loa Observatory and the Mauna Loa Solar Observatory are both located near the mountain's summit.Photo: Mila Zinkova


Edit request on 15 December 2011[edit]

AThis does not state how magma is formed, how many people died from the mauna loa and simple little facts like when it formed old dated rocks and more i am a scientist from a universitywho specilises in geology volcanos and tornados i can improve this answer


99.230.184.149 (talk) 23:39, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Not done: please be more specific about what needs to be changed. --Jnorton7558 (talk) 16:23, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
This is a spurious/frivolous request, all the things mentioned are answered in the first three paragraphs. KarlM (talk) 07:23, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Climate[edit]

The small section on climate is totally meaningless as is and should be either expanded or removed. It looks like some global warming scaremonger has inserted that piece of meaningless information so he could point to it as some sort of 'evidence' of global warming. It is in no way informative in its current state. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.106.157.135 (talk) 20:23, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

What on earth are you talking about? It's the average monthly temperatures from 1961-90, which incidentally is before warming really started to kick in. And it's informative for showing how cold it gets there at high elevations. KarlM (talk) 10:25, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
I think I see what the anon editor is talking about. Check out the graph here: [2] The high temperature of 85 degrees in February may be a problem with the data, not a real.temperature. I don't have a way to confirm or invalidate. —hike395 (talk) 09:26, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Sounds like you've never been there - normally the wind keeps it cool, but the intense sun gets the lava extremely hot, and if there's no wind (as often happens in the winter) it can heat up the air during the day. Also note that this only occurred twice, the other extreme temps were 60-70. The anon is also a warming denialist, check out their next edit. KarlM (talk) 20:30, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Revitalizing[edit]

I'm in the process of revitalizing this article. It's an old FA from 2006 that would get demoted in a flash today. There's definitely value in it, but it needs better organization, better language, more information (lots of it), and finally, a trip through the meat grinder, er, FAR. My plan of action for now is to bring it around to FAR when it's good and ready, but until then, comments would be appreciated! ResMar 04:30, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

It was also inexplicably the most vandalized article I have on my watchlist, until it was semi-protected a while ago, so that may have degraded it. Chunks that were good may have been taken out and never replaced when people weren't paying attention. I've never seen an article about a non-controversial topic get as much vandalism as this one. KarlM (talk) 05:18, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
The Blue and Humpback whales regularly copped alot of vandalism - and yes, was frustrating to find missing paragraphs and have to go and fetch them. This is the value of FAC as a quasi-stable version (at the time of gaining FA status) to check against. Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:41, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
Mmm? Didn't notice this before. Yeah, I guess. At this point I'm through to eruptive history, leaving, oh let's see, Hazards (what's there is a nice base), Monitoring (slightly less so), Ascents (to be significantly cut back, what is all of this cruft on this or that expedition?), and new sections on Ecosystem and Recreation. And it's already standing at ~70 references. In for the long haul on this one. ResMar 04:15, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

One thing not explained (so far as I can see) in the article is the estimate on the age at 700k to 1million years when you oldest rock is only 200k years old. Not disputing the age, just looking to see how that was calculated, presumably based on average rate of deposition and total volume of unexposed rock. EdwardLane (talk) 11:57, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

It's an estimate based on the volcano's known stratigraphy and Hawaiian growth patterns. ResMar 19:07, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Height[edit]

Why doesn't the article give the height above sea level? I propose in the first paragraph "although its peak, at 4170m above sea level, is about 120 feet (37 m) lower than that of its neighbor, Mauna Kea."

Article seems to be locks so I can't edit it. 155.198.206.91 (talk) 10:15, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

The elevation is prominently placed in the infobox. I'll add the elevation to the lead once I get around to improving the lead, which is typically the last task. ResMar 19:08, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Seafloor depression[edit]

I corrected the grossly wrong statement that was in there (before it said Mauna Loa depressed the sea floor by 5 miles, which is deeper than the entire ocean around it) to something that's approximately right by eyeballing ocean depths, but it would be helpful if someone could come up with a citation. I know this is a well known phenomenon but I can't find any myself. KarlM (talk) 00:16, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

To quote:
"Rising gradually to more than 4 km above sea level, Mauna Loa is the largest volcano on our planet. Its long submarine flanks descend to the sea floor an additional 5 km, and the sea floor in turn is depressed by Mauna Loa's great mass another 8 km." [3] "All large land masses (such as mountains) also push down upon the Earth's crust due to their enormous weight. So, directly beneath Mauna Loa, the sea floor on which it sits is depressed by and additional 26,000 ft (8000 m)." [4]
ResMar 19:00, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
Holy cow, what a poorly written and misleading paragraph. It's depressing (no pun intended) that that's on the SOEST web site. Note that these two close-by sentences contradict each other:
"When one considers that the flanks of Mauna Loa sit on sea floor that is about 16,400 ft (5,000 M) deep, the "height" of this volcano relative to neighboring land (the sea floor) is more like 30,080 ft (9,170 m)!...So, directly beneath Mauna Loa, the sea floor on which it sits is depressed by and additional 26,000 ft (8000 m)." [5]
My point is, the ordinary depth of the ocean floor (if there is no mountain sitting on top of it) is about 15,000 ft. Around Mauna Loa, it's about 16,500, which means ML is depressing the seafloor by 1500 ft. A reference is needed for specific depths though. How they came up with that nonsensical second sentence, I don't know; you can't depress the seafloor by 26,000 ft when it's only 15,000 ft deep to begin with! KarlM (talk) 04:28, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
You're underestimating two things: a) the pure, massive, lateral bulk of solid core rock that is Mauna Loa; and b) that it's not necessarily the entire volcano that subsides the level described in these writings, but only its most central pillar. Here are some more sources:
Extended content
"The massive central portion of the volcano has depressed the sea floor another 8,000 m (26,000 ft) in the shape of an inverted cone, reflecting the profile of the volcano above it. Thus, the total relief of Mauna Loa, from its true base to its summit, is about 17,170 m (56,000 ft)." How High is Mauna Loa?

"From the deep ocean floor to the summit of Mauna Kea is more than 8,000 meters - a pile of volcanic basalt more than 5 miles high erupted from the seafloor." FeMO2 Dive Cruise 2007

"Mauna Loa is a giant, active basaltic shield volcano which rises over 4 km above sea level, another 5 km above the north-central Pacific seafloor, and another 8 km above the isostatically depressed seafloor of the Pacific Plate, for a total volcanic height of 17 km." Mauna Loa: A Decade Volcano

"Indeed, Mauna Loa is so heavy that it has depressed the seafloor by almost five miles."Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, The U.S. Exploring Expedition

"The current summit of Mauna Loa stands about 56,000 feet (17,000 m) above the depressed sea floor." Volcanoes Are Monuments to Earth's Origin

"Its long submarine flanks descend to the sea floor an additional 5 km, and the sea floor in turn is depressed by Mauna Loa's great mass another 8 km." Volcano Hazards

And, finally: "Depression of the oceanic crust is about eight kilometers beneath Mauna Loa, as revealed by seismic experiments."

Geological Survey Professional Paper, Volume 1350, Issue 1
I do not believe this many independent specialists could make this error. Your logic seems to be that it's somehow impossible, but you're a specialist on Hawaiian flora, not geology. Until I see actual empirical evidence otherwise, I'm reverting. ResMar 02:07, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

─────── I think the article currently compares apples to oranges when comparing Mauna Loa to Everest. For the height of Mauna Loa, it uses the height from the root of the mountain somewhere in the lithosphere to the peak, while Everest is mean sea level to the peak. This doesn't seem right. Either the mountains should be compared to their non-rock bases (sea floor vs. base camp?) or both from their root (the asthenosphere level? that could be 250km down). A quick search did not reveal to me a reliable source for the depth of the asthenosphere below Mount Everest. —hike395 (talk) 14:06, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, what to compare to what, then? ResMar 19:02, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
I don't know (yet). I'm trying not to perform original research. Height above sea level and topographic prominence are well-established criteria for comparing mountains. Looking for other ones supported by reliable sources. —hike395 (talk) 04:01, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Can we qualify Everest's height as subaerial and leave it there for now? ResMar 05:08, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Instead of saying which is larger or more voluminous, I rewrote the sentence to provide Everest's elevation as a yardstick --- sidestepping awkward OR into which is truly bigger. —hike395 (talk) 05:37, 6 February 2013 (UTC)


───────Read the last reference.Geological Survey Professional Paper, Volume 1350, Issue 1 In particular, go back a few pages from where the link goes to, to Figure 2.6. The others presumably took it from this (they are neither independent nor specialists), and are not wrong in the underlying facts but consistently do a very poor job of translating it into common language. The crust is depressed, but not the seafloor; it's not seafloor when it's got a mountain sitting on top of it! Lava has filled in the depression to the point where little or no depression is noticeable on the seafloor. And as hike395 noted, there was mixing of different measures of height, as well as of km/mi and m/ft. I did some more rewriting to clarify Mauna Loa from seafloor to peak vs. Everest from sea level (which is the usual comparison), and mentioned the underground bulk afterward. See what you think. KarlM (talk) 09:16, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, the USGS source says crust, not sea floor. I agree that crust is clearer and less misleading. —hike395 (talk) 13:37, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Largest volcano on Earth[edit]

This article states that "Mauna Loa is the largest subaerial volcano in both mass and volume, and has historically been thought of as the largest volcano on Earth; however, the recently discovered submerged supervolcano Tamu Massif is many times larger." (bold added by me).This text is based on, and cites, the same source as the Tamu Massif article (which currently states that "Tamu Massif is the largest known volcano on Earth and comparable to the largest known in the solar system, measured by area.").

The source for these statements is an article New Giant Volcano Below Sea Is Largest in the World published on 5 September 2013 on the National Geographic website.

The media interest was triggered a paper by Sager et al. on the Nature Geoscience website, published on 5 September 2013 but corrected on 6 September 2013. The abstract of this Nature Geoscience article states "We suggest that the Tamu Massif could be the largest single volcano on Earth and that it is comparable in size to the largest volcano in the Solar System, Olympus Mons on Mars."

Sager et al. suggesting/claiming that "the Tamu Massif could be the largest single volcano on Earth" (bold added by me) and the media telling us that the Tamu Massif is the largest single volcano on Earth, are two different things.

Tamu Massif is larger than Mauna Loa but is Tamu Massif a single volcano? It could be, but we still cannot say for sure. The scientific jury is still out, because it has not even studied the two-day-old claim yet. The article by Sager et al. is more the start of the process of assessment than its end. Assessment by other scientists of evidence presented in the Sager et al. paper could show that Tamu Massif is not what has been claimed. Tamu Massif may not actually be the largest volcano on Earth, and Mauna Loa could still be the largest volcano on Earth. The media have prematurely reported the suggestions about Tamu Massif as fact. To repeat this in the Mauna Loa article and the Tamu Massif articles on Wikipedia is also premature. Until the findings are confirmed by other geologists, Mauna Loa being replaced by Tamu Massif as the largest volcano on Earth should be described in the Wikipedia articles as a suggestion/claim/possibilty, not a fact. It's too early for Wikipedia to treat Sager et al's claim as fact. I suggest that the Mauna Loa article in Wikipedia should be changed to reflect this uncertainty. GeoWriter (talk) 20:17, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Using the equation for a volume of an elliptic cone, Tamu Massif would have a volume of approx. 330,000 cubic kilometres (79,000 cu mi), which would be larger in volume than Mauna Loa by more than a factor of 4. So, if the Tamu Massif single volcano hypothesis holds up, the statement that Mauna Loa is the highest volume and mass volcano on Earth will also be false.
I would suggest keeping Mauna Loa as largest in the lede, but put a footnote in the article about Tamu Massif and the possibility of it being much larger. —hike395 (talk) 08:16, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
Highest subaerial mass and volume. I didn't look at any of the papers but the claim seems "legit". Looking at the abstract (I thought academic paywalls were falling out of fashion?) the language used is "We show that the Tamu Massif is a single, immense volcano, constructed from massive lava flows that emanated from the volcano centre to form a broad, shield-like shape..." You're right that the burden of proof is higher in science than in popular journalism, but the evidence seems solid enough that until proven otherwise I would like to keep the lead formatted the way it is. It is a bit of a scientific overthrow, though. It's not often do things that are measured in the millions of years old lose size competitions on our pale blue dot; goes to show how much more there is to discover about our ocean depths, I guess. ResMar 21:20, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
It is a bit sensationalist; as has been pointed out, while the data suggests that Tamu Massif is the largest, the sampling method used has multi-kilometer gaps in the data, which allows for the possibility of Tamu Massif being the product of multiple volcanoes. We aren't likely to get better data for quite some time. Titanium Dragon (talk) 00:17, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Removed the Tamu Massif bit from the lead and retained "historically considered..". The previous was rather irrelevant for the lead - maybe a note w/in the body once the Tamu info is verified/corroberated. Tamu is Jurassic whereas Mauna Loa remains active. Vsmith (talk) 16:17, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

the Mauna Loa magma chamber extends about 3 miles below sea level — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.199.196.130 (talk) 17:17, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

height[edit]

the Mauna Loa magma chamber extends about 3 miles below sea level and its a bit taller then mt.everast. its 60 miles long and 30 miles wide. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.199.196.130 (talk) 17:19, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Hiking the area can cause serious sickness. This should be included in the Hazaard's section...
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4244895/. SChalice 04:26, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

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