View of rootless shield, located 2-3 km from Pu`u `O`o, Kilauea Volcano, Hawai`i

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Photograph by C. Heliker on October 21, 1999

View looking westward shows one of the largest rootless shields at the site of persistent breakouts of lava from along the tube system. The broad structure is about 20 m high (above the pre-September surface) and more than 500 m in diameter. In early October, the rootless shield was topped by a pond of lava about 175 m across.

Several rootless shields grew as lava repeatedly poured from the tube to feed hundreds of short pahoehoe flows. By the end of October 1999, the rootless shields merged together to form a broad, elongate ridge. The ridge is likely to divert future flows away from the axis of the pre-September episode 55 flow field.