White Island. Photograph courtesy of and copyrighted by Christian Treber
White Island. Photograph courtesy of and copyrighted by
Christian Treber
White Island is the summit of two overlapping stratovolcanoes and one of New Zealand's most active volcanoes, with about 35 small to moderate, steam and tephra eruptions (VEI=2-3) since 1826. In 1914, a landslide killed eleven men at a sulfur works. Th e volcano was not erupting at the time. Luke (1959) describes Maori legends about White Island.
General features of White Island. Contour interval is 200 feet. Lss is the 1914 landslide. Simplified from Nairn and Cole (1975) after Duncan (1970).
Additional information is available from the Global Volcanism Program.
Clark, R.H., and Cole, J.W., 1986, White Island, in Smith, I.E.M., ed., Late Cenozoic Volcanism in New Zealand, Roy. Soc. New Zealand Bull., 23, p. 169-178.
Cole, J.W., Nairn, I.A. & Houghton, B.F. 1991. Volcanic hazards at White Island. Ministry of Civil Defence Information Service 3, 22p.
Duncan, A.R., 1970, The petrology and petrochemistry of andesite volcanoes in eastern Bay of Plenty, New Zealand: Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Victoria University of Wellington.
Hamilton, W.M., and Baumgart, I.L., 1959, White Island: Department of Scientific and Industrial Research Bulletin 127.
Luke, J., 1959, History, in White Island: Department of Scientific and Industrial Research Bulletin, 127, p. 14-24. Compiled by W.M. Hamilton and I.L. Baumgart.
McClelland, L., Simkin, T., Summers, M., Nielsen, E., and Stein, T.C., 1989, Global Volcanism 1975-1985: Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 655 p.
Rose, W.I., Chuan, R.L., Giggenbach, W.F., Kyle, P.R., and Symonds, R.B., 1986, Rates of sulfur dioxide and particle emissions from White Island volcano, New Zealand, and an estimate of the total flux of major gaseous species: Bulletin of Volcanology, v. 48, p. 181-188.
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