 It's one o'clock on a Monday afternoon, so you must be watching Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manoa. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Marc, and every week we try and bring you some exciting science from the university. And today we've got a special show because my good friend Scott Rowland is in town, and he's going to be helping me discuss some of the ongoing eruption at Kilauea Volcano. And so welcome back, Scott. I know you've been on the show a while ago, and we're going to be talking about something we both know a little bit about scientifically. You're a volcanologist in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Manoa, and I understand that several of the faculty in the department have really been highly involved in some of the eruptions. Well, certainly one of them, Dr. Bruce Halton, is on the monitoring crew over on Kilauea now, so he's working very closely with the US Geological Survey, as are a couple of his students, and at least three graduates of our department are on the staff at the Volcano Observatory. And I guess for the viewing public, we should point out that neither you nor I are actually involved in either the day-to-day monitoring. We are interested volcanologists who are observing this fascinating eruption from a science point of view, but obviously we're concerned about the fate of the local residents and all the disruptions which are going on at the volcano right now. That's correct. So we are not involved in the official monitoring at all, and as you mentioned, this would be a wonderful scientific opportunity, if not for the fact that people are losing their homes. And the disruption potentially long-term, both to people's housing and if there's problems perhaps with the volcanic gas and some big earthquakes out there. Sure. And again, we will learn a lot about Kilauea Volcano, and we'll certainly learn a lot about responses and integration between researchers and civil defense, but it's happening in real time. And again, it's affecting people in a negative manner. And despite what the national media say, nothing's happening here on Oahu, so you and I at the Minoa campus, we're watching affidavit perhaps through the Hawaii Volcano's website or listening to some of the media briefings as well. That's right. I mean, despite having to monitor the lava flows and worry about explosions up at the summit, the USGS has done a fine job of posting photographs, posting updated flow maps, vent maps, and so on. And so those of us who are interested to try and know what's going on are relying on those. And plus, there are people on social media posting videos and photos and things such as that. So we're piecing it together based from afar. A lot of information. Right. Well, if we go to the first slide, let's try and set the context for the viewers. And I think what we're going to see, this is down in the lower right, we've got a map of the entire Big Island, and the larger image is that little area in the eastern side. So, Scott, you've done a lot of work on Kilauea over the years. What we're seeing here is a map of what? We're looking at the point of the district, presumably the eruptions where the red lava flows are showing. But is this atypical for Kilauea's volcanic activity, or are we seeing something that is sort of fairly common? I think from a geologic point of view, we're seeing something that's relatively common. And back on that map, you can see a bunch of purple lava flows. And those are various flows that have erupted in that part of Kilauea since the early 1800s. And you can see some 1955 flows, a 1960 flow, a big 1840 flow, and then a little bit of lava from 2014, which is the lava that threatened Pahoa. So, this part of the lower east drift zone is not as active as the summit, which we're a little bit more familiar with. And it's not as active as who are all in the middle east drift zone. But certainly, as you can see from that map, it's a place where eruptions do take place. So as the illustration shows, running sort of from bottom left to top right is this feature called the east drift zone of Kilauea. And we've had similar types of eruptions in this locality in 1840 and in the 50s and that sort of thing. That's correct. And depending on the scale of your map, the east drift zone may just look like a simple line, but as you start looking closer and closer and zooming in, you can see that it's actually multiple parallel lines of fissures. And it is more or less a ridge, but it's a ridge with a bit of a shallow valley down the middle of it. And if what you're worried about is hazards from a particular lava flow, where specifically on that ridge the lava flow emanates from can have a big effect on whether it flows to the north or the south or down the rip zone itself. And it's those kinds of details that are, details at that scale that are really difficult to forecast. Even though we've got some historical precedent where we know the general characteristics of, I guess, there's a series of fissures which have been out now, sincerely, may, for example. It's one side of the east rift zone or the other, which is a topographic ridge. That's correct. So if it's on one side, the flows might tend to go in one direction, on the other side the ridge it goes in the other direction. That's correct. In fact, it's even more complicated. It's a ridge with a very shallow valley down the middle of it. And so if, in certain parts of it, if the eruption is right in the middle of the rift zone, the flows are going to go down the rift zone as opposed to south or north until they find an opening to get out. OK. So states of defense and HVO are doing a really good job already just trying to alert the general public that there are these uncertainties on what's going to happen, but the general characteristics seem to be fairly well understood. I think so. It's like many scientific things. The general idea is understood pretty well. The closer you look at little details of what's going to happen, the more difficult it is to come up with a specific forecast of exactly when, exactly where, and that kind of thing. Well, let's take a look at some of the excellent images that have already been taken and again point out that neither you nor I have actually been at the eruption site. So explain to the viewers what we're looking at here, Scott. These are photographs that are put online for the public by the US Geological Surveys Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. And one of the things that they've monitored a number of times so far is the evolution of an eruptive vent. The first thing that people in Laelania states noticed was a lot of earthquakes. And those started probably Tuesday or Wednesday of not last week, but the week before. And then on Thursday of that same week, they started noticing ground cracks. And the cracks were probably going throughout the entire area, but they were much easier to see where they crossed roads. And so cracks on a road were one of the first signs. So on the left-hand side, the main fifth image of a road, not only with big cracks, but it looks like there's some sagging in the front. That's correct. And the cracks form because the ground is being pulled apart. And the reason the ground is being pulled apart is that magma is intruding into the ground below. It has to accommodate itself. And so the ground basically gets pushed to the sides. And that forms these cracks and some down-dropping. And then back in the context of the East Rift Zone, would the cracks be parallel to the East Rift Zone? So far, these have all been parallel to the East Rift Zone. That's correct. So someone in the field, like the geologist on the right-hand side, who's looking at one of these, I guess it's a fissure that stopped erupting, you can get some idea of what trends to look for on the ground if you're actually on the side. That's right. And it'll be interesting to go back and presumably someone was paying attention or they will be able to put together a time series of where the cracks opened up first and second and third and so on and get a sense for what's going on. And I should point out that many cracks do not become eruptive vents. So there are many more cracks than there are vents. Right. All right. And the cracks don't start forming close to the summit and then form further and further away. They can jump. Their location can jump. I believe that's correct. Certainly those cracks that have become vents, the order that the vents have opened up has not been particularly regular. And for the viewers, roughly how deep might some of these cracks be? They're not going all the way down to miles down beneath the surface. That's correct. I don't know that people have been able to look down them very far. Not because they're scary, but just because it gets dark down there and they're not particularly wide. And so you just can't see down very far. Well, over the last 10 days or so, we've seen this fascinating evolution in the eruption. So if we go to the next slide, we've been observing day and nighttime. You mentioned Professor Bruce Houghton, who's in your department at Manoa, who was also the state volcanologist, two really nice photographs. Again, if it wasn't for the fact that people are living in this area, a geologist like yourself must find this to be very interesting, but our hearts go out to the people who are actually living through this. That's right. What do you see in these two images? The photo on the left, the nighttime image, is one of these fissures. And I believe this is either number eight or number nine, which opened up Saturday night of that first week of all of this. And that's sort of the beginning part of that fissure and its activity. And then on the photo on the right is a daytime image from a helicopter showing many hours later, a considerable pad of lava has developed along the fissure and lava flows have migrated, have advanced away from that fissure. And this is vent number eight. And this was the flow, the flow from vent number eight is the one that destroyed by far the most tomes in that neighborhood. But I've been intrigued that most of the lava flows which have been forming are relatively short. I think back to like the royal garden flows in the mid-80s and the flows which destroyed Kalapano in the early 90s. These ones don't go that far. I think that's true. Why might that be? Well, the obvious answer is just not much has erupted out of any one of them. One of these fissures except for number eight and for number 17, which I believe is still erupting right now, have lasted more than a few hours. And so there's not much time to accumulate lava on the surface which can then flow away. Any time one of these vents persists for a few hours or more, then enough material accumulates and it starts to flow away. And so far within Laelani Estates, only vent number eight produced sufficient lava to make a particularly long lava flow. And in that last image, we also saw not only an active lava flow, but there seemed to be an awful lot of gas coming off. Can you just talk a little bit about the gas? Well, certainly the effect of this eruption or the factor of this eruption that's affected the most people has been sulfur dioxide gas, which comes out of these eruptive vents. And to some extent, I think it comes out of some of the non eruptive cracks, although most of them just are cracks without much coming out of them. But certainly prior to fountaining occurring at a vent and certainly during and after fountaining, there's been a huge amount of sulfur dioxide. And the sulfur dioxide is intimately mixed with the molten rock underground. That's correct. When at depth in the magma chamber and when the magmas first produced, the sulfur dioxide is, we would say dissolved in the magma, just the way before you open a soda, there's carbon dioxide in the soda. And when the pressure is released, the gas molecules become gas bubbles and they float to the top and escape. And this is sulfur dioxide, and it's a very acid gas, so you don't want to be breathing it. So presumably the more lava you get erupted on the surface, the more gas you would experience. I think that's probably a pretty reasonable thing to think about, correct? Right. Well, we're getting near the mid-show break, Scott, but when we come back, I know this eruptions had a whole series of other interesting scientific phenomena. So I'd like to return to those. When we come back, but let me just remind the viewers, you are watching Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manoa. I'm your host. And today we're talking to Dr. Scott Rowland from the Geology and Geophysics Department about the ongoing activity at Kilauea Volcano, and we'll be back in a minute. So see you then. She's sad. All the better to see you with my dear. That's so old. What are you doing? Okay. Poor... Research says reading from birth accelerates the baby's brain development. And you're doing that now? Oh, yeah. Yeah. This is the starting line. Push. When this is over, you're dead. It allowed 15 minutes, every child, every parent, every day. Hi everyone. I'm Andrea Gabrieli. The host for Young Talent's Making Way here on Think Tech Hawaii. We talk every Tuesday at 11 a.m. about things that matter to tech, matter to science to the people of Hawaii with some extraordinary guests, the students of our schools who are participating in science fair. So Young Talent's Making Way every Tuesday at 11 a.m. only on Think Tech Hawaii, mahalo. And welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manoa. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Marca. My guest today is Dr. Scott Rowland, who is a member of the Geology and Geophysics Department at UH Manoa. Scott, we're talking about the ongoing activity at Kilauea Volcano. I know we've got lots more slides, so let's see if we can move ahead a little bit with some of the illustrations. We can skip through some of this one and that one. But I wanted to just show, for example, this one I find fascinating. Trying to get some idea of the scale of activity. Here we're seeing an intersection of the roads. Sure. This is in Leilani Estates. In Leilani Estates. One of those lava flows. I believe this is probably that flow from Fissure number eight. Fissure eight, slide said seven, but whatever. And you can see on both roads. Oh, sure. And in the rainforest behind us as well. That's right, and that really puts a human aspect to this. It's not this esoteric science thing. That's somebody's subdivision. That's right. People's homes are not surviving that, so it really brings it on. And I was here on the radio today. There's a lot of concern not only about pets, but also livestock. Sure. There are thousands of cattle in this area, which have to be rescued and fed and housed somewhere as well. Let's go on to the next slide. Because it's not only at Leilani Estates things have been happening. What is it we're looking at here? We're looking at here a photograph, again, from the USGS of Buol on the left, the vent that's been active on the Middle East Drift Zone since January of 1983. And prior to two weeks ago, the lava level in Pu'au'ol had risen to quite a high level. And the concern had nothing to do with Leilani Estates or the summit. The concern was that the last two times lava had risen high in Pu'au'ol, new flows had broken out of the flanks and fed flows down slope. And the big concern was that people would go hiking out there to try and see this and be in danger. And instead of breaking out the flanks, apparently what happened is the lava in Pu'au'ol drained out the bottom and got itself into the rift zone. And the right-hand image shows the crater after the lava. After that collapse took place. And so there's no lava visible in Pu'au'ol now at all. In fact, there are more recent photos on the USGS website. And I think they estimate the crater to be 350 meters deep, which is 1,000 feet. Pretty incredible. Yeah, right, right. And just for context, Pu'au'ol is sort of halfway between the summit and the Leilani Estates of options. That's correct. But also on the USGS rift zone. That's correct. So it's all interconnected underground. All right, let's look at the next slide, because these are amazing images. And moving back up to the summit, what do we see? Sure. So not too long after the lava lake in Pu'au'ol drained away, the lava lake up inside Halimo'umu'u also started to drain, although relatively slowly. It had been overflowing only three weeks ago. And it started to drain again shortly after Pu'au'ol drained away and just kept on draining. And in fact, it is now not visible even from the air. And this is what one would see if you visited the Janken Museum on the Rimmer-Killow aircord era. This looks like the standard overlook view. That's correct. And so because the lava lake at Halimamo'u at the summit has drained and Pu'au'ol has also drained, it's lava lake, and we've got newer options. This really tells researchers that the plumbing system, the underground pathways, are interconnected. They are interconnected, but they're incredibly complex. And the rate at which the two are draining is different exactly how they're connected is not particularly understood. But certainly, again, it's a good example of the general picture is relatively well understood. But the details are not. If our colleagues at HVO get a break after the end of this eruptive phase, it's going to be a fascinating story to try and infer something about the underground pathway. Certainly. That's certainly true. And there's another slide, I think, following which will show us what have we got here? Well, the concern, this is a picture of the summer area looking out over Halimamo'u. That's correct. And in fact, on the lower right of that photo, you can see the edge of the visitor viewing area right out in front of Jagger Museum. Prior to just maybe a week or so ago, that would have had a whole bunch of tourists watching the activity. And one of the concerns with the drop in level of the lava lake inside Halimamo'u is that, eventually, the level of the lava will drop so far down that it may start interacting with the shallow water table underneath Kilauea Caldera. And if that were to happen, then there's the possibility of relatively strong steam explosions. That's not what's going on here in this photograph, although it was interpreted as such by many people. That's not what happened. What this shows is the result of a landslide into, at the time, the very deep lake within Halimamo'u. And there was a lot of dust thrown up from the landslide. When the rocks impacted the lake, it disrupted the surface, released a lot of gas, and small bits of magma. And so all of that came wafting up out of the crater. So this is more a product of the fact the lava lake level has dropped. It's not necessarily indicating we're going to see big explosions like Kilauea's had in the historic time. That's correct. And in fact, these landslides into the lava lake had been occurring all through the time that the lava lake existed. And they would produce a pretty dramatic plume each time it happened. That's correct. The big explosive eruption is not what was shown in that image. Although, ironically, that occurred half an hour after the Volcano Observatory released a press statement saying there is a concern about larger explosions. But this is why probably the Volcano National Park is currently closed, because there is this potential concern about a big explosion. That's correct. And I think the next slide will show the backdrop will have the old lava lake. But the next slide, I think, gives some idea of what the next one from here. This is an interesting to me. I found this one interesting when we were talking before the show. We're seeing here a stereo model, I think, of the actual plumbing system where the shallow lava lake used to be. This is Halimamo crater. That's correct. It's a 3D graphic produced by what were collected as thermal images. And they were stitched together. And it's actually a grab from a video. So if you go to the USGS website, one Volcano Observatory website, there's a video of this. And they do a fly around, spinning it around, and looking from different angles. And at this point, it says 295 meters, 970 feet. And that was May 8. It's probably lower than that still. Although I don't think they've upgraded this. I heard that the lava lake level was dropping about six meters an hour. So that would be 20 feet an hour. So it was really sinking very rapidly. That's right. And also, you could tell from that graphic that it sort of narrows with depth. And so if the amount that's flowing out of the magma chamber is constant, if the lake gets narrower, it's going to drop at a greater rate. Yeah, so it's a cone. It's wider than the surface. And then it's narrow at the bottom. So you to accommodate the extra volume. And they've also produced a similar image for Huo'o now. That's also on the USGS website. So that's worth looking at. These will be fascinating things again after the eruptions have stopped for us to go back and take a look at because we don't see the same kind of phenomena, I guess, what Mono'ulu back in the early 70s was the last big collapse event. That's right. So at Mono'ulu, which again is out on the Middle East Drift Zone as well, there is a big crater. And there were records of its formation, its building, and its collapse. We didn't have all the fancy video gear and things such as that. But there were still very good descriptions by the USGS. But it will be a really good exercise to compare the two. Yeah, so what kind of measurements are the scientists making either from the USGS or the few people who are invited to lend assistance there? What kind of data are they collecting? Well, they're collecting data on a whole variety of things, from the propagation of earthquakes to the deformation of the ground to how fast cracks open up, how long it takes from a crack to start showing some steam till magma actually starts erupting out of it. And the rate at which Halema O'Lava Lake dropped just about anything you can think of is telling you something about the processes that are going on in the volcano. And eventually, as you said, putting all of these together will really help us understand how Kilauea works. Now, it's coming up to summer break, you're a university professor. There's kind of interesting things going on in three different places. There's Lailania States, there's Kilauea and up at the summit called it. Where would you go? I mean, I'm not saying that you'll be doing fieldwork there, but what to you, your mind is the more interesting? Well, I've always been kind of a lava flow guy, so I think I would prefer to be down at the Lower East Rift Zone looking at those lava flows that are erupting out of the fissures. That would be my choice if I was allowed to. What would you look for if you are standing in front of one of those advancing lava flows, like the ones we saw in the Lailania States? Do you measure the temperature, the effectiveness of the flows? I think all of those things, you would be measuring the temperature, you would look at which parts of the lava flow are moving a little faster or a little slower, how are they interacting with the topography, either big hills or even small little bumps, just to try and understand what eventually controls. Obviously, its gravity tells you where a flow is going to go downhill, but the small details, which might be important from a hazards point of view, you know, understanding those I think is sort of the next step in the lava flow advance science. And we saw that there's a lot of gas coming out from the same fissures that the lava flows erupt from. Is that the sort of thing that's important? Because I know Mike Garcia in your department is a meteorologist, he studies the chemistry of the rocks. Is that telling us something? Oh, certainly, I mean, the big question that people have had ever since lava started erupting in Laelani Estates is, what percentage of that lava was stored in the rip zone as opposed to it's coming down from Puguo, and as I understand it, they're still arguing. They're chemical fingerprints for the earlier options from like 55 and 60, so you can tell if it's a new slug of lava. That's correct, the geochemists can tell. And they're not all agreeing with all the details, but that's an important question to know because if you start getting the more fresh Puguo-type lava, then perhaps there will be... So this really emphasizes the role that the Geology and Geophysics Department has played. I recognize that several of the HVO scientists are even your former graduates, right? That's correct. And so the role of the University of Hawaii in providing technical leadership and assistance in these kind of crises really seems to be quite important. Yeah, we have trained some of their frontline employees in our classes and in their dissertations and theses. So yes, that was our role. And we just hope that people like Bruce Houghton, who's on your faculty and out there, stay safe. That's right. And also obviously that people living in Laelani Estates, their lives can be put back together again fairly soon. I hope so, too. Well, Scott, I'm afraid we're at the end of the show. For sure, after the summer break, we're going to be coming to you again and giving us an update. But thank you very much for being on the program again. So let me just remind the viewers, you have been watching Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Mana. I've been your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark, and my guest today has been Scott Rowland from the Geology and Geophysics Department. And just a bit of news. I'm off on vacation next week. So I won't be introducing the show for about six weeks, but I will look forward to joining you again sometime in July. And so till then, goodbye for now.