We have monitored a newly erupted volcanic island in the Kingdom of Tonga, unofficially known as Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai, by means of relatively frequent high spatial resolution (~50 cm) satellite observations. The new ~1.8 km island formed as a tuff cone over the course of a month-long hydromagmatic eruption in early 2015 in the Tonga-Kermadec volcanic arc. Such ash-dominated eruptions usually produce fragile subaerial landscapes that wash away rapidly due to marine erosion, as occurred nearby in 2009. Our measured rates of erosion are ~0.00256 km/year from derived digital topographic models. Preliminary measurements of the topographic expression of the primary tuff cone over ~30 months suggest a lifetime of ~19 years (and potentially up to 42 years). The ability to measure details of a young island's landscape evolution using satellite remote sensing has not previously been possible at these spatial and temporal resolutions.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6049963PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2017GL076621DOI Listing

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