El Hierro
Encyclopedia
El Hierro, nicknamed Isla del Meridiano (the "Meridian Island"), is the smallest and farthest south and west of the Canary Islands
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...
(an Autonomous Community
Autonomous communities of Spain
An autonomous community In other languages of Spain:*Catalan/Valencian .*Galician .*Basque . The second article of the constitution recognizes the rights of "nationalities and regions" to self-government and declares the "indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation".Political power in Spain is...
of Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
), in the Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
off the coast of Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, with a population of 10,162 (2003).
Name
The name El Hierro, although phonetically identical to the Spanish word for 'iron', is generally thought to be derived instead from one of several words in the Guanche languageGuanche language
Guanche is an extinct language that was spoken by the Guanches of the Canary Islands until the 16th or 17th century. It is only known today through a few sentences and individual words recorded by early travellers, supplemented by several placenames, as well as some words assimilated into the...
of the pre-Hispanic inhabitants, known as Bimbaches. Juan de Abreu Galindo (in a manuscript translated and published by George Glas
George Glas
George Glas was a Scottish seaman and merchant adventurer in West Africa.The son of John Glas, the divine, Glas was born at Dundee in 1725, and is said to have been brought up as a surgeon. He obtained command of a ship which traded between Brazil, the northwest coasts of Africa and the Canary...
in 1764) gives the native name of the island as Esero (or Eseró), meaning 'strong'. According to Abreu Galindo, the Bimbaches, not having iron originally, called the strong metal of the Spanish alternately by their own word for 'strong' and by its Spanish name, hierro, and from there transferred the alternation of names to their island.
Richard Henry Major
Richard Henry Major
Richard Henry Major was a geographer and map librarian who curated the map collection of the British Museum from 1844 until his retirement in 1880. During that time he published a number of books related to maps or documents of historical significance...
, however, in notes on his translation of Le Canarien, observes that the Guanche
Guanche language
Guanche is an extinct language that was spoken by the Guanches of the Canary Islands until the 16th or 17th century. It is only known today through a few sentences and individual words recorded by early travellers, supplemented by several placenames, as well as some words assimilated into the...
word hero or herro, meaning 'cistern', could easily have lapsed into hierro by a process of folk etymology. It is believed that the Bimbaches had to construct cisterns to save fresh rainwater. The Gran diccionario guanche gives the meaning of the Guanche word hero in Spanish as "fuente" ('spring [water source]').
The association with iron is evident in the names of the island in other languages as early as the 18th century: Portuguese Ferro, French l'île de Fer, and Latin Insula Ferri. Some sources, evidently persuaded by the meaning of Spanish hierro, imply that iron is abundant on the island, while others pointedly assert that it is not.
History
The ancient natives of the island, called Bimbaches, were conquered by Jean de BéthencourtJean de Béthencourt
Jean de Béthencourt was a French explorer who, in 1402, led an expedition to the Canary Islands, landing first on the north side of Lanzarote...
–more through the process of negotiation than by military action. Béthencourt had as his ally and negotiator Augeron, brother of the island's native monarch. Augeron had been captured years previously by the Europeans and now served as mediator between the Europeans and the Guanches. In return for control over the island, Béthencourt promised to respect the liberty of the natives, but he eventually broke his promise, selling many of the bimbaches into slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
. Many Frenchmen and Galicians subsequently settled on the island. There was a revolt of the natives against the harsh treatment of the governor Lázaro Vizcaíno, but it was suppressed.
Geography, flora and fauna
In 2000, El Hierro was designated by UNESCOUNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
as a Biosphere Reserve
Biosphere reserve
The Man and the Biosphere Programme of UNESCO was established in 1971 to promote interdisciplinary approaches to management, research and education in ecosystem conservation and sustainable use of natural resources.-Development:...
, with 60% of its territory protected to preserve its natural and cultural diversity.
Like the rest of the Canary Islands
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...
chain, El Hierro is sharply mountainous and volcanic, only one eruption has ever been recorded on the island from the Volcan de Lomo Negro vent in 1793. The eruption lasted a month.
El Hierro is a 278.5 km2 island, formed approx 1.2 million year ago after three successive eruptions, the island emerged from the ocean as a triangle of basalt
Basalt
Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...
ic dyke
Dyke
Dyke or dike may refer to:* A levee, a natural or artificial slope or wall to regulate water levels* A ditch, a water filled drainage trench* A regional term for a dry stone wall...
s topped with a volcanic cone more than 2,000 metres high. With continued activity resulting in the island expanding to have the largest number of volcano
Volcano
2. Bedrock3. Conduit 4. Base5. Sill6. Dike7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano8. Flank| 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano10. Throat11. Parasitic cone12. Lava flow13. Vent14. Crater15...
es in the Canaries (over 500 cones, another 300 covered by more recent deposits), together with approximately 70 caves and volcanic galleries, including the Don Justo cave whose collection of channels is over 6km in length. Landslides have reduced the size and height of the island.
The current highest point is situated in the middle of the island, in Malpaso, 1501 meters high.
Landslides and tsunami
There is evidence of at least three major landslides that have affected El Hierro in the last few hundred thousand years. The most recent of these was the 'El Golfo' landslide that occurred about 15 thousand years ago, involving collapse of the northern flank of the island. The landslide formed the El Golfo valley and created a debris avalanche with a volume of 150–180 km3. TurbiditeTurbidite
Turbidite geological formations have their origins in turbidity current deposits, which are deposits from a form of underwater avalanche that are responsible for distributing vast amounts of clastic sediment into the deep ocean.-The ideal turbidite sequence:...
deposits related to this landslide have been recognized in drill cores from the Agadir Basin to the north of the Canary Islands. Detailed analysis of these deposits suggests that the slope failure did not occur as a single event but a series of smaller failures over a period of hours or days. Local tsunami are likely to have been triggered by these landslides but no evidence has been found to confirm this.
2011 seismic activity
Main page: 2011 El Hierro eruption2011 El Hierro eruption
The 2011 El Hierro eruption is an on-going volcanic event just off the island of El Hierro, the smallest and farthest south and west of the Canary Islands , in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa...
The Instituto Vulcanológico de Canarias (Volcanological Institute of the Canary Islands) and National Geographic Institute
Instituto Geográfico Nacional (Spain)
The Instituto Geográfico Nacional , or National Geographic Institute is a Spanish government agency, dependent on the Spanish Ministry of Public Works...
’s seismic monitoring station located in Valverde
Valverde
Valverde is a province of the Dominican Republic. It was split from Santiago Province in 1958.-Municipalities and municipal districts:The province as of June 20, 2006 is divided into the following municipalities and municipal districts and the municipal Seat within them:* Santa Cruz de Mao, head...
detected increase seismic activity beginning on 17 July 2011. The seismic monitoring network was increased in density on July 21 to allow better detection and location of the seismic events. There was an earthquake swarm
Earthquake swarm
Earthquake swarms are events where a local area experiences sequences of many earthquakes striking in a relatively short period of time. The length of time used to define the swarm itself varies, but the United States Geological Survey points out that an event may be on the order of days, weeks, or...
with in excess of 400 minor tremors
Earthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...
between 20 July and 24 July; by
27 July a further 320 earthquakes had been recorded. On 25 August there were reports that some horizontal deformation had been detected, but that there was no unusual vertical deformation. At that time, the total number of tremors had exceeded 4000. By the end of September, the tremors had increased in frequency and intensity, with experts fearing landslides affecting the town of La Frontera
Frontera, Santa Cruz de Tenerife
La Frontera is the westernmost municipality in El Hierro, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and the Canary Islands, Spain. It is situated on the western coast of El Hierro. Until 2007, Frontera was one of the two municipalities in population that was larger than the island capital...
, and also a small possibility of a volcanic eruption through a new vent. Emergency services evacuated several families in the areas at most risk, and made plans to evacuate the island if necessary.
Between 4.15 and 4.20am on 10 October 2011 the earthquake swarm changed behaviour and produced a harmonic tremor
Harmonic tremor
Harmonic tremor describes a long-duration release of seismic energy, with distinct spectral lines, that often precedes or accompanies a volcanic eruption...
. Harmonic tremors are produced by magma
Magma
Magma is a mixture of molten rock, volatiles and solids that is found beneath the surface of the Earth, and is expected to exist on other terrestrial planets. Besides molten rock, magma may also contain suspended crystals and dissolved gas and sometimes also gas bubbles. Magma often collects in...
movements and can indicate that an eruption has begun. It is thought that a small submarine eruption may have begun, 7km south of La Restinga.
As of 7 November 2011 a confirmed surtseyan
Surtseyan eruption
A Surtseyan eruption is a type of volcanic eruption that takes place in shallow seas or lakes. It is named after the island of Surtsey off the southern coast of Iceland....
type of eruption phase has started at the fissure. The eruption is currently ongoing with vigorous phreatic bubbles emerging.
Flora and fauna
El Hierro is home to many unique species, such as the critically endangered El Hierro Giant LizardEl Hierro Giant Lizard
Gallotia simonyi is a species of lacertid that can be found on the island of El Hierro, one of the Canary Islands. The species was once present throughout much of the island and on the small offshore Roque Chico de Salmor, but is now confined to a few small areas of cliff with sparse vegetation...
(Gallotia simonyi), for which there is a captive breeding programme, allowing its reintroduction.
Tourism and transportation
Like all of the Canary Islands, El Hierro is a tourist destination. It is served by a small airport, El Hierro AirportEl Hierro Airport
-External links:* - * -...
at Valverde and a ferry terminal, both of which connect to Tenerife
Tenerife
Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of the seven Canary Islands, it is also the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 km² and 906,854 inhabitants, 43% of the total population of the Canary Islands. About five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, the...
.
Political organization
The island is part of the province of Santa Cruz de TenerifeSanta Cruz de Tenerife (province)
Province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife also Province of Santa Cruz is a province of Spain, consisting of the western part of the autonomous community of the Canary Islands. It consists of about half of the Atlantic archipelago, including the islands of Tenerife, La Gomera, El Hierro, and La Palma, and...
, and includes three municipalities:
- FronteraFrontera, Santa Cruz de TenerifeLa Frontera is the westernmost municipality in El Hierro, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and the Canary Islands, Spain. It is situated on the western coast of El Hierro. Until 2007, Frontera was one of the two municipalities in population that was larger than the island capital...
- ValverdeValverde, Santa Cruz de TenerifeValverde is a municipality in the Canary Islands in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. It is located on the north-east part of El Hierro . The town of the same name serves as the island's official capital...
- El Pinar
Valverde
Valverde, Santa Cruz de Tenerife
Valverde is a municipality in the Canary Islands in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. It is located on the north-east part of El Hierro . The town of the same name serves as the island's official capital...
is situated in the northeast and Frontera
Frontera, Santa Cruz de Tenerife
La Frontera is the westernmost municipality in El Hierro, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and the Canary Islands, Spain. It is situated on the western coast of El Hierro. Until 2007, Frontera was one of the two municipalities in population that was larger than the island capital...
in the southwest, both contain several villages.
The seat of the island government (cabildo insular) is in the town of Valverde, which houses approximately half of the island's population.
The "Meridian Island"
Prime Meridian
The Prime Meridian is the meridian at which the longitude is defined to be 0°.The Prime Meridian and its opposite the 180th meridian , which the International Date Line generally follows, form a great circle that divides the Earth into the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.An international...
in common use outside of the future British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
. Already in the 2nd century A.D., Ptolemy
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...
considered a definition of the zero meridian based on the western-most position of the known world, giving maps with only positive (eastern) longitudes. In the year 1634, France ruled by Louis XIII
Louis XIII of France
Louis XIII was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1610 to 1643.Louis was only eight years old when he succeeded his father. His mother, Marie de Medici, acted as regent during Louis' minority...
and Richelieu decided that Ferro's meridian should be used as the reference on maps, since this island was considered the most western position of the Old World
Old World
The Old World consists of those parts of the world known to classical antiquity and the European Middle Ages. It is used in the context of, and contrast with, the "New World" ....
. (Flores Island lies further west, but the Azores
Azores
The Archipelago of the Azores is composed of nine volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, and is located about west from Lisbon and about east from the east coast of North America. The islands, and their economic exclusion zone, form the Autonomous Region of the...
were not discovered by Europeans until early 15th century, and their identification as part of the Old World is uncertain.) It was thought to be exactly 20 degrees west of the Paris meridian
Paris Meridian
The Paris Meridian is a meridian line running through the Paris Observatory in Paris, France—now longitude 2°20′14.025″ east. It was a long-standing rival to Greenwich as the prime meridian of the world, as was the Meridian of Antwerp in Antwerp, Belgium....
, so indeed the exact position of Ferro was never considered. Old maps (outside of Anglo-America) often have a common grid with Paris degrees at the top and Ferro degrees offset by 20 at the bottom. Louis Feuillée
Louis Feuillée
Louis Éconches Feuillée was a French member of the Order of the Minims, explorer, astronomer, geographer, and botanist....
also worked on this problem in 1724.
It was later found that the actual island of El Hierro itself is in fact 20° 23' 9" west of Paris, but the Ferro meridian was still defined as 20 degrees west of Paris.
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an longitude adjustment of Theodor Albrecht (ca. 1890) the Ferro meridian is 17° 39' 46.02" west of the Greenwich meridian. But for the geodetic networks of Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, the value 17° 40' 00" was adopted in the 1920s, not only for practical reasons but also as it was discovered that the longitude of the Berlin (Rauenberg
Rauenberg (Berlin)
Rauenberg is a triangulation station located at Tempelhof, in the German city of Berlin.-The Monument:The inscription on the East side of the monument is as follows:...
) fundamental point was miscalculated by 13.39". For the geodetic networks of Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
and Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
, the value of Albrecht was used prior to the switch to the Greenwich prime meridian.
Energy
According to the Ministry for Industry, Tourism and Commerce, El Hierro will become the first island in the world to be energy self-sufficient. This will be achieved through a €54 million project combining a greater than 11 megawatt wind farmWind farm
A wind farm is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electric power. A large wind farm may consist of several hundred individual wind turbines, and cover an extended area of hundreds of square miles, but the land between the turbines may be used for agricultural or other...
and two hydroelectric projects.
The project, created by the local Gorona del Viento El Hierro consortium with financial aid from the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
, will construct five wind turbine
Wind turbine
A wind turbine is a device that converts kinetic energy from the wind into mechanical energy. If the mechanical energy is used to produce electricity, the device may be called a wind generator or wind charger. If the mechanical energy is used to drive machinery, such as for grinding grain or...
s capable of producing 11.5 megawatts of wind power
Wind power
Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form of energy, such as using wind turbines to make electricity, windmills for mechanical power, windpumps for water pumping or drainage, or sails to propel ships....
to supply electricity for approximately 11,000 residents, an additional number of tourists, and three water desalination
Desalination
Desalination, desalinization, or desalinisation refers to any of several processes that remove some amount of salt and other minerals from saline water...
facilities. The hybrid wind/pumped hydro storage system will store surplus wind power
Wind power
Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form of energy, such as using wind turbines to make electricity, windmills for mechanical power, windpumps for water pumping or drainage, or sails to propel ships....
by pumping water up 700 meters (approximately 2,300 feet) to fill the crater of an extinct volcano. When winds are calm or when demand exceeds supply, water will be released from the crater to generate 11.3 MW of electricity, filling an artificial basin created at the bottom of the extinct volcano. Water in the lower basin is then pumped back up again to the upper reservoir when there is excess wind power.
The closed-loop hybrid wind/hydro system, to be tested by the end of 2011, is expected to save approximately US$4M per year (calculated with January 2011 oil prices) currently spent on about 40,000 barrels of crude oil imported annually, and will make the island completely self-sufficient for electrical energy.
El Hierro in literature
The island of Hierro is mentioned in Umberto EcoUmberto Eco
Umberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
's novel "The Island of the Day Before
The Island of the Day Before
The Island of the Day Before is a 1994 novel by Umberto Eco.It is the story of a 17th century Italian nobleman who is the only survivor of a shipwreck during a fierce storm. He finds himself washed up on an abandoned ship in a harbour through which, he convinces himself, runs the International...
" ("L'isola del giorno prima", 1994), a novel about a 17th century Italian nobleman trapped on an island on the International Date Line
International Date Line
The International Date Line is a generally north-south imaginary line on the surface of the Earth, passing through the middle of the Pacific Ocean, that designates the place where each calendar day begins...
.
External links
- El Hierro - official tourism website of the Canary Islands
- 4D model of earthquake swarm July to September 2011
Scientific links
- Global Volcanism Program, Smithsonian Institute
- James M. Day, e.a.: Evidence for distinct proportions of subducted oceanic crust and lithosphere in HIMU-type mantle beneath El Hierro and La Palma, Canary Islands, 2010 (Science Direct, PDF)
- Martin J.R. Gee, e.a.: Landslides and evolution of El Hierro in the Canary Islands, Marine Geology 177 (2001), 271-93 (PDF)
- M. R. Gee, e.a.: Offshore continuation of volcanic rift zones, El Hierro, Canary Islands, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 105 (2001), 107 - 119 (PDF)
- F.G. MONTESINOS: New study of the local gravity field of El Hierro (Canary Islands), Física de la Tierra, 2005, 17, 113-127 (PDF)
- Longpre, M.; Troll, V.; Hansteen, T. H.; Anderson, E.: Ankaramitic Lavas and Clinopyroxene Megacrysts From the Tanganasoga Volcano, El Hierro Island (Canary Archipelago), American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #V51A-1662, Publication Date: 12/2009 (Abstract)
- N. A. Stroncik, e.a.: The magmatic plumbing system beneath El Hierro (Canary Islands): constraints from phenocrysts and naturally quenched basaltic glasses in submarine rocks, Contrib Mineral Petrol (2009) 157:593–607, DOI 10.1007/s00410-008-0354-5 (PDF)
- J. J. Hernandez, e.a.: Volcanic caves in El Hierro island, Canary Islands, Spain (PDF)
- J. de Nuez Pestana, e.a.: Geology and volcanology of La Palma and El Hierro, western Canaries , Estudios geológicos, Vol. 57 no.56, 175-273 (Abstract)
- Serie Sísmica de El Hierro, Grúpo de Investigación de Ingeniería Sísmica, Universidad de Madrid , act. 29.9.2011 (Spanish)