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New island forms in Tonga
- Visualizations by:
- Cindy Starr
- View full credits
This visualization shows the change in the island of Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apa between January 2015 and September 2017.
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.
Research results from NASA-funded science team led by James B. Garvin (NASA GSFC), Daniel A. Slayback (SSAI), Vicki Ferrini (Columbia) recently submitted for publication in the AGU's Geophysical Research Letters journal suggest the island's lifetime may be extended for another 25-30 years if geochemical fortification continues to protect key regions. The HTHH island is the first surtseyan eruption-based island to have persisted as "new land" for more than 6 months since Surtsey erupted near Iceland in 1963. Studies of the landscape evolution of pristine volcanic islands of this variety previously relied on a combination of aerial photography, field mapping, and laboratory sample analysis, but this new work enables an optimized approach via advanced satellite optical and radar imaging in combination with ship-based bathymetric mapping. Results of this work can be applied to understanding numerous small volcanic landforms on Mars whose formation may have been in shallow-water environments during epochs when persistent surface water was present.
Field photography and sampling of the HTHH island "system" by French sailors who served as citizen geoscientists for the NASA project greatly enhanced the project and validated several key interpretations.
(Special thanks to NASA Earth Sciences RRNES program, French sailors Damien Grouille and Cecile Sabau of the sailing vessel Colibri, and to the Schmidt Ocean Institute R/V Falkor).
This movie begins with the visualization above and concludes showing video footage and photographs taken by Damiaen Grouille and Cecile Sabau on June 4th and 5th, 2017.
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Research was largely supported by:
NASA Earth Science Division RRNES Program
(℅ Drs. Jack Kaye and Gerald Bawden)
and the Schmidt Ocean Institute
Visualizer
- Cindy Starr (GST) [Lead]
Scientists
- Daniel A. Slayback (SSAI)
- James Garvin (NASA, Chief Scientist Goddard)
- Vicki Ferrini (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University)
Producers
- Ellen T. Gray (NASA/HQ)
- LK Ward (KBRwyle)
- Samson K. Reiny (Wyle Information Systems)
Project support
- Eric Sokolowsky (GST)
- Joycelyn Thomson Jones (NASA/GSFC)
- Leann Johnson (GST)
Technical support
- Ian Jones (ADNET)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET)
Citizen scientists
- Cecile Sabau (None)
- Damien Grouille (None)
Papers
This visualization is based on the following papers:- https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/2017GL076621
Datasets used in this visualization
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) HiRISE (Collected with the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) sensor)
Pléiades-1A © 2015 CNES, Distribution Airbus DS
WorldView-2 © 2010 DigitalGlobe
WorldView-2 © 2015 DigitalGlobe
WorldView-2 © 2016 DigitalGlobe
WorldView-2 © 2017 DigitalGlobe
WorldView-3 © 2015 DigitalGlobe
WorldView-3 © 2016 DigitalGlobe
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.