Maui
The island of Maui is the second-largest of the Hawaiian Islands at 727.2 square miles (1883.5 km). Maui is part of the State of Hawaii and is the largest island in Maui County. Three other islands, Lanai, Kahoolawe, and Molokai belong to Maui County. Together, the four islands are known as Maui Nui. As of 2000, Maui has a resident population of 117,644, which is ranked third within the state behind the islands of Oahu and Hawaii.
Native Hawaiian tradition gives the origin of the island's name in the legend of Hawai'iloa, the Polynesian navigator attributed with discovery of the Hawaiian Islands. The story relates how he named the island of Maui after his son who in turn was named for the demigod Maui. According to legend, the demigod Maui raised all the Hawaiian Islands from the sea. The Island of Maui is also called the "Valley Isle" for the large fertile isthmus between its two volcanoes.
Geography
Maui has a wide variety of landscapes, all of which resulted from a unique combination of geology, topography, and climate. Each volcanic cone in the chain of the Hawaiian Islands is built of dark, iron-rich/quartz-poor rocks which, as highly fluid lava, poured out of thousands of vents over a period of millions of years. Several of the volcanoes were close enough to each other so that lava flows on their flanks overlapped one another, causing several volcanoes to merge into a single island known as a "volcanic doublet".
Maui is such an island, formed from two shield volcanoes that overlapped one another to form an isthmus between them. The older western volcano has been eroded considerably and is cut by numerous drainages, forming the peaks of the West Maui Mountains (called Mauna Kahalawai by Hawaiians). Pu'u Kukui is the highest of the peaks at 5,788 feet. The larger, younger volcano to the east, Haleakala, rises to more than 10,000 feet (3,050 m) above sea level, but measures five miles (8 km) from seafloor to summit. The eastern flanks of both volcanoes are cut by deeply incised valleys and steep-sided ravines that run downslope to the rocky, windswept shoreline. The valley-like Isthmus of Maui that separates the two volcanic masses was formed by recent lava flows and erosion of material from the steep slopes of the volcanoes. This prominent topographic feature is the reason why Maui is known as "The Valley Isle".
The last eruption (originating in Haleakala's Southwest Rift Zone) occurred around 1790; two of the resulting lava flows are located at Cape Kina'u between Ahihi Bay and La Perouse Bay on the southwest shore of East Maui, and at Makaluapuna Point on Honokahua Bay on the northwest shore of West Maui. Although considered to be dormant by volcanologists, Haleakala is certainly capable of further eruptions.
The island of Maui is one of the four main Hawaiian Islands that formed the much larger island, Maui Nui that submerged about 200,000 years ago, and is now about 500 m below sea level. The other three islands that made this prehistoric island are Lana'i, Moloka'i and Kaho'olawe.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Maui"