 It's one o'clock on a Monday afternoon, so you must be watching Think Tech Hawaii Research in Miminoa. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Marc, and every week we try and bring you an exciting guest from the University of Hawaii to explain some of the new research, either in planetary science or, as is the case today, earth science. And it's my great pleasure to introduce Warren McKenzie, who is a graduate student within the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics at UH Miminoa. And Warren, you have just returned from an exciting trip over the Christmas break to the Republic of Congo. So welcome. Much more exciting than I thought it would be. And this sounds like a fascinating thing for a graduate student to be engaged in. But right to the start of it, where is the Congo? So where are we? Congo is one of the largest countries in the world. So where I was in the Congo is kind of in the dead center of Africa, as opposed to one end on the coast. So right on the border with Rwanda, almost about three kilometers away from the border was where I was. And thanks to Google Earth, our first image, I think, will help the viewers actually understand where it is you went. So here we've got two images, a whole of East Africa on the left-hand side, and a more detailed map. And I guess the red dot is where you went. Well, mostly actually Goma, so right south of the red dot, kind of bisected by the border. But the red dot is definitely the fun part. And so a lot of questions like, why did you go there? How did you get there? I have a lifelong love of the interaction of humans and geology and particularly volcanoes and the challenges that people face, particularly in areas where geological hazards are secondary to some of the other problems that people face in their everyday life, or even tertiary in the case of the Congo. And I reached out originally to the Volcano Observatory about 10 months ago, asking if I could possibly come visit to No Response. And I have a friend who works in Kinshasa, and he was passing through Goma. And I said, can you just take a letter of intent from me and a copy of my resume and hand it to them? OK. So back up a bit. Yeah. So you're a volcano scientist, but we have volcanoes here in Hawaii. Why not study them instead? Well, I also study ones on Mars, so it's not particularly that much farther away to look at the Congo than Hawaii from Mars. Oh, good point, yes. And what exactly do you do when you study volcanoes? So a lot of what I work on is remote sensing work and satellite data from Mars, none of which translates particularly well to being on the ground in the Congo. OK. Like people like Casey Hannibal and Estelle Barney who are doing some remote sensing. So basically for new viewers to the show, remote sensing means that you collect data at a distance. Extreme distance, yeah. So satellite-based data from around Mars. Satellite-based data looking at the Earth. And going to Congo gives you new opportunities compared to studying them here in Hawaii. Congo gives you a different insight into people. Hawaii has its own unique problems when dealing with volcanoes and dealing with the hazards that volcanoes present to human populations. But for example, there's no heavily armed rebel groups in the foothills of Kilauea. I'm pleased to hear that. Good. Me too. Yeah. And so, you went there to study what volcano? I was primarily working with Nyuragongo and just in the park around Nyuragongo. Nyuragongo and I think we've got another picture. The second slide should show us. Here is one of the photographs which you took and it looks a little bit different from either monolure or Kilauea. It's much more steep-sided, is that true? Yeah. It tends to just have a very steep flank to it and getting up it. There's no switchbacks. It's just straight up to 14,000 feet. Does that mean it's made of different chemistry larvas or? It's still a Hawaiian-style eruption with similar compositions, but it's less prone to major flank eruptions like you see at Kilauea than it is. It looks quite similar to some volcanoes I've seen in the Galapagos, for example, which have small volume eruptions near the summit and big ones near the flanks. Would that be a fair comparison? You know, you're going to know far more about the Galapagos than I am. Okay. But your goal, in part, was to understand a bit more about how you're going to go erupts or to collect what kind of data were you, hopefully, thinking of? So I only had a week, so I wasn't even involved with much data collection beyond some gas analysis and some fissure extension measurements, looking at behavior of lava underground. Fissure extension measurements would mean what? So we were climbing down into these fissures that were responsible for feeding the 2002 eruption and they had bolts on each side, and then we would just take a series of measurements and see if it had expanded recently or contracted. All right, so by measuring how much expansion one of these fissures has, you're trying to see if the volcano is still growing? Or if there's a new potential eruption coming from the same rift zone that led to the 2002 eruption. Okay, so it was not erupting when you were there? The lava lake was extremely active. It was not erupting into the middle of Goma, which is very thankful for everybody there. But they actually did see extension. Recently in November, they had a big shift in the measurements. But it must be a fascinating experience to go to this part of the world, right? You brought along a number of images. Let's take a look at the third one, which I think, yeah. This is not volcano or mountain view on the big island. This is something completely different. So explain to the viewers what it is we're looking at here. So this is a shot that I had to be careful getting because right behind that truck is a couple of guys with machine guns and that bamboo post there, if you drive past it, I imagine they would be very excited to use them. So this is the marking line between what's military held, just past that as a UN base and just past that, you're in rebel territory. And the bamboo, that's supported on that vertical black and white post. Just like a traffic cone almost. Just like a traffic cone. So in addition to sort of just the less vibrant economy, you also have to deal with rebels. We did have to deal with rebels. That was kind of surprising to take that from an abstract, oh, I guess there are rebels to, oh, I guess the guy standing in front of me with a gun is a rebel. It was an adjustment of expectations and thinking I'm prepared for something too. Now I have to be prepared for something. All the fieldwork, which I have done, is in relatively benign areas. I mean, I can't imagine trying to deal with some of the logistics of personal safety from a rebel perspective as opposed to just hiking out in the world without anybody to support you. And the Volcano Observatory has done an amazing job working with the populations that live near the volcano, which includes everybody. They kind of, they're responsible for the safety of a city of over a million people and the rebels don't seem to particularly want to be responsible for interfering with that hazards monitoring. And at the same time, they make sure that everybody's informed, the information's all public. So it seems they largely get left alone. OK, so you were based out of the Goma Volcano Observatory. Yeah. And we've got a picture which sort of shows the frontage and a scientist at the bottom left who's working on his computer. How big a facility is this? Do they have the same kind of research that the Hawaii Volcano Observatory and the Big Island would conduct? It's actually a fairly large facility and it's fairly well placed. But it's obviously the equipment is a different concern because they're working a lot with old equipment. They don't have the money to buy state of the art research equipment. And then at the same time, you have the logistics problems of working in rebel territory. So a lot of it is just extensive engineering to keep equipment online and functioning and generating good scientific results years after something like or somewhere like HBO would have just kind of gone and said, well, we need new equipment now we can get. How many people work there? Ah, the core scientific staff seems to be around a dozen and change that I interacted with, but there's a solid 50 people working there in any other capacity as well. And some of them have PhDs in geology. Some have PhDs in geology. Some people really should have PhDs in geology for all the work and research they do. And if it's actually possible to go back to that photo. Yeah, I think it is. I should point out the SOAS sticker from the University of Hawaii that was not brought by the gut science. The gut science sticker on the laptop. It turns out that the GOMA Volcano Observatory has significant ties to UH almost by accident. Really? All individually come to Seasafe, which is a project on the Big Island. A center for study of active volcanoes. Yes. And then several of them have actually done courses at UH for a single semester. And it was kind of strange to be so far from home and so far removed. And there's Hawaii stickers everywhere and people have ties to Manoa. And how interesting know the faculty members. And it's like, oh, do you know so and so at UH? And it's like, oh, this is very comforting. Actually, it's great that we released host professional scientists as well as students to get further education on how to study active volcanoes. And are they doing the same kind of research that HVO would do in terms of gas studies or deformation? They are. But a lot of it comes with much different concerns than you would deal with in Hawaii. For example, the Big Rift Zone is in the middle of a shantytown. So you have to do your good. Well, it's where you can build if you're not that well off in GOMA. And they had to do some demonstrations. Not while I was there, but I got to see footage of them where they basically showed children what happens when they brought a goat into a depression and it was filled with carbon dioxide. They resuscitated the goat. It was fine. But it's it just passed out. So the carbon dioxide being released is right in the middle of human areas. And if you're a small child, it's really dangerous. Yeah, it sounds that obviously the CO2 issue isn't so important. But by ocean viewer states on the Southwest Rift Zone of Mauna Loa on the Big Island is similarly is a housing development along an active part of the volcano. So is volcanic hazard research one of the main things that GOMA observatories concerned? It's one of the things they're really concerned with that when the 2002 eruption happened, it actually ended up cutting the city in half. The lava flows were traveling at about 40 kilometers an hour, which even compared to a lot of what we see in Hawaii with the slow advancing lava is not quite the same. And then it's a steep slope and then it bisected the city. And one half of the city actually had to flee into Rwanda and become displaced refugees. And the other half had to flee deeper into the Congo. Although how long did the eruption last? Were they able to relocate or is this sort of a semi-permanent? It wasn't semi-permanent, but it was kind of compounded a little bit by the fact that the government was concerned with rebel groups moving in. So the order to evacuate was a bit delayed because they didn't want to suddenly have city taken over by armed rebels when everybody was gone. And so it's this just a lot of math going between the hazards, people and the government's concerns, which must put a lot of pressure on the GOMA volcanologists. Can we actually have the confidence to order an evacuation? Recognizing all the problems we had on the big island, you know, the Puna lava flows may have forced people to evacuate there, but certainly you don't have this level of risk and conflict going. Yeah. And at the same time, the Puna lava flows were much better monitored than we see in GOMA. And slower moving. And much slower moving. Yeah, you just walk up to them and kind of take your measurement. Whereas, you know, 40 kilometers an hour down slope in a shanty town that can bisect the city and create refugees or cause a civil war is just. It must have been fascinating to hear some of these conversations then, because as you've mentioned, you know, we don't have this kind of concern here in Hawaii and many of the other volcanoes which are around the world similarly lack this kind of social pressures. Yeah, it was just an unbelievable thing that I thought I was prepared for going in and there's no amount of reading it or reading about it that you can prepare yourself for standing in the shanty town, talking to people who have to live with this every day. They've turned one of the rifts on like one of the active rifts into a boulevard between the shanty. Well, we're getting near the break time one. But when we return, I'd like to see some more examples of what exactly the place looked like and also try and figure out. Yeah. What's background does a student need in order to get permission to go into the Congo? So let me just remind the viewers you are watching think tech Hawaii research in Manoa. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark. And my guest today is Juan Mackenzie, who is a graduate student within the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology at UH. And we're talking about his recent field trip to Congo where he was studying nirangongo volcano. And we'll be back in about a minute's time. I'm going to the game and it's going to be great. Early arriving for a little tailgate. I usually drink, but won't be drinking today because I'm the designated driver and that's OK. It's nice to be the guy that keeps his friends in line, keeps them from drinking too much so we can have a great time. A little responsibility can go a long way because it's all about having fun on game day. And welcome back to think tech Hawaii's research in Manoa. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark. And my guest today is Juan Mackenzie, who is a graduate student within the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology at UH Manoa. And we're discussing Juan's recent trip to Republic of Congo where he was studying one of the active volcanoes called nirangongo. Now, Juan, let's get to some of the other pictures which you took because I doubt very much if people really know what that setting is like. So what is it we're looking at here? This is actually my office view. Your office? This is my office view. And if the weather was a little less hazy, there'd be a great view of nirangongo in the background. But right at the base of Guama Volcano Observatory is this just a big football pitch. So that's a bunch of schools locally playing football kind of at all hours of the day. Right at the base of Guama Volcano. Compared even to Honolulu or Hilo, for example, all seems to be low-rise. The buildings seem to be quite different. That must have been a bit of a culture shock for you. Yeah, I've spent time in Africa before I've spent time in developing countries before. And Congo was a new planet. Congo has its own architecture, its own way of doing simple things like traffic lights. Instead of having traffic lights, they have robotic police that wave around red and green lights into the traffic. Strange. Let's take a look at another slide as well. Now, this looks a bit more scientific. I can at least see in this black and white image. You've got some old lava flows in the foreground. So this is actually the site of the 2002 eruption. And this is the shantytown I was mentioning earlier. So this is all fairly recent in the grand scheme of things for Nuregongo. And this is where we were doing the CO2 measurements. And is this the rift zone? Yeah, I'm pretty much standing on top of the rift itself to take this photo. So this is even more extreme than ocean viewer states on the Big Island, where here you've got a lot of people with relatively poorly constructed housing. Right in the middle of an active rift zone to a part of the volcano, which is starting to split apart. And that's where they're still seeing active activity. And the next slide, I think, you actually were measuring some of this. Oh, this is interesting. This was not a measurement. This is hopefully running away. But what is it we're seeing? This was right outside the seismic station. We turned around the corner, driving away from looking at the seismic station. And we ran right into these guys who were with the Congolese Army. And this was my one exception to my rule of taking pictures of local forces with guns because that's a rocket launcher on one shoulder and a belt-fed machine gun on the other. And a seismic station is actually a geophysics technique. We had Niels Grobe come in recently to talk on the show about geophysics. But here, aren't you scared? You know, I didn't know if I would be, and I discovered that my reaction to seeing heavily armed people was smiling and waving since this came up several times. Protecting yourself? I was like, hi, well, what are you going to do? I'm not going to win an argument with somebody with a rocket launcher. Right, right, sure. But he saluted. And was this a relatively common sight? Heavily armed, yes, rocket launcher, no. So that was the only time I had to run in with a full-on RPG in the Congo. Let's take a look at another one. And so this looks a much more friendly group. Who are the two gentlemen next to you? So we have one of the head geochemists to my left. With his thumbs up is my friend, Moni, who was largely driving me and is responsible for all of the hazards, communications in Goma. And this does look much more friendly, doesn't it? It does. You're going to tell me something to make me worried. We didn't realize that when that photo was taken about 20 feet behind us was a man in a full black trench coat with an AK-47 waiting to see who we were when we came back up. Not a good thing. I said to my friend with his thumbs up there, I just said, gun. He said, rebel. But the background in that particular image, it looks kind of like rainforest here in Hawaii. Are they the kind of working conditions that the volcanologists at Goma have to do working all the time? So that was where a feeder for the 2002 eruption was. That was a continuation of the same fissure system that hadn't actively erupted but had split. So that's where we were doing the extensional measurements I was talking about. And one of the big things that was up there is that's where the rebels are. Like I said, it wasn't as abstract as I thought it was. And that was much more dense jungle. Whereas a lot of the work was done in kind of open clearings or in urban areas. So that was one of the only actual jungle settings we had for work. Oh, OK. Now, I'm sure many of the viewers are saying, how does this young man get to the point where he can be invited to go to Central Africa to study volcanoes? Can you tell us a little bit about your background, please? So I have degrees in political science and linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin. And I have a Geoscience's degree from here at UH. And so I've kind of always had an interest in disadvantaged communities and lesser-served communities, and particularly with the geology background from a hazards perspective. A lot of places that baseball canic hazards don't have adequate international support to actively monitor those hazards. OK, and what's your basic skill set? So you sounded quite eclectic, your background. So right now, you're a volcanologist? I primarily consider myself a volcanologist with a passing interest and degree in political science and linguistics in general. So have other students on this show, like Estelle at Boney, who are doing remote sensing studies of gases. We had Niels Grobe on a few weeks ago. Who's the geophysicist? Where would you fit into the spectrum of people who study volcanoes? I'm probably much more of a geochemist. I'm much more used to looking at the elemental makeup of different rocks and volcanoes and looking at the history of volcanoes. Which means you'll take a rock sample into the lab, maybe make a thin section, and I'll put it into an imocraprobe or that sort of thing. OK, to learn what? What's the whole point? To learn the behavior of the volcano, to learn why it's erupting the way it is, to learn what it might do in the future if you can understand that from the samples you're taking. But obviously, I work with Martian samples and a little further away data. Right, right, right. And you're just about to finish your master's degree. So how does this prepare you? What do you think your career path would be? Are you going to return to some of the more political sciences kinds of things, or are you going to focus on volcano studies? I love volcanoes too much. I enjoyed political science for when I did it, but my heart's in volcanoes. And I want to keep working towards a PhD, and I want to stay in academia, and I want to keep working with volcanoes. Even if I'm working on Mars primarily, which is one thing I really would like to continue doing, there's still that side human element that doesn't require a full life's worth of research to do any good. OK, all right. Well, let's just take a look at one or two of the other images. This one seems to be similar. Is that correct where we've got? So one of the things that was really shocking to me in GOMA is you spend all of your life hearing about medicines out frontiers, the UN forces that come in, the anti-landmine organizations working on demining UNICEF, and you cross the border into GOMA, and there they all are. And so I was kind of desperate to get a picture of some UN guys because I don't want to take pictures of people with guns, but the UN are probably not going to start a huge incident, which I was slightly wrong about. But no, that was a soldier who was just kind of waiting for his CO at breakfast, and it was a good shot as I took it. And you're in this in front. Is it personally safe? I said, yes, I'd be lying. I said, yes, you'd be lying. And this is a setup, I think. It wasn't particularly, the whole trip had some eventful moments. So I was in one of the most dangerous countries in the world and one of the more dangerous places. I was perfectly safe the entire time I was there, even my run-in with that rebel. He just asked if we were volcanologists and was like, OK, fine, have a nice day. But yes, my trip to the airport was a little rougher. And I think we will see the last but one slide in the deck will actually show what you're talking about. So this looks horrible, even if this was here on Oahu, somewhere in Central Africa. Explain what we're seeing here. So this is about halfway between Goma and Kigali in Rwanda, so the capital of Rwanda. And that car is not meant to be upside down. It just decided to do that when a motorcycle cut us off. And I had glass go through my head and arm. I ended up missing my flight because I was in a Congolese hospital. One person in the car. And here we see, dear viewer, this is, well, in a few weeks ago, you can obviously tell that he has recovered fairly well. Yeah, I walked away pretty unscathed. You can see our guardian angels back there. We actually had a bus full of university students from Alabama was the first thing that I was able to flag down, which is extremely unlikely in a country that doesn't have much English spoken. Does you have to go to a hospital? Oh, yeah, I was. Isn't that disconcerting in terms of, you know? Their medical capabilities as good as they are here? The reasons I use the term guardian angels was because one of them lived there and actually knew which one was the best hospital. So we drove past two other hospitals on the way to the one hospital, which apparently had sufficient standards to be OK. Did you have a blood transfusion? I didn't need it. I lost a fair bit of blood, but thankfully it stopped. That would have blown me. That would have blown you. It was also three hours before the missile alert in Hawaii. So I was on the phone with my wife when suddenly I got stopped because there was another crisis on the other side of the world. And so it was a bit of a stressful day. And so your right arm seems to be mending well? Yeah, they were at Queens. They were completely happy with the work that was done in Rwanda. So I've got a few battle scars to show for it. But for an overturned vehicle in the middle of Africa, it could have been much worse. Now, would you go back again? I absolutely would. I would probably take the roads in Rwanda a little slower. But the Congolese people were wonderful. The Congolese scientists were just some of those dedicated people I've ever met in my life working with incredibly difficult conditions and very little way of scientific equipment and doing some really good and impactful research. And so the research potential on Nurengongo, and I guess there's Naimua Gio, which is an adjacent volcano as well, similarly very interesting. And there's just so much to be done and so much in the way of actually helping protect this population of a million. But in the meantime, you have massive armed conflict potentially brewing over at any moment. And you mentioned earlier that scientists from the volcano observatory come to Hawaii. Do you know if they've got any more plans to send people here? My friend who is actually driving the car is looking at doing a seasave and coming over. And he's their emergency manager. So he's responsible for in the Congo, emergency manager also involves hand painting every single one of the hazard signs for a city of a million people in multiple languages. So he works hard. Quite a challenge. Yeah. Well, at last, while the show's coming to an end, it sounds as if you're trying to get back there again. So hopefully, if you are successful, you'll be safe, first of all. But then if you come back, it'd be great to have you back on the show again to give us an update on what the volcano is. So thank you once again for being on the show. And reminding the viewers, you have been watching Think Tech Hawaii research in Manoa. I've been your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark. And my guest today has been Warren McKenzie, who is a graduate student within the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology. So thanks for watching. And join us in two weeks time, given President's Day next week, when we'll have another guest to introduce you to. So bye for now.