 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. It's Monday, and you know what that means, research in Manoa. I'm Jay Fidel here on Think Tech. This is our premier scientific show, and we have an old friend come back, that's Andrea Gabrieli from HIGP. Nice to see you, Jay. Nice to be here. Yeah, nice to see you. Now, Andrea is born in Cincinnati, wasn't it? Oh, that is quite, that's close, that's close, close enough. Are there many Italian restaurants in Cincinnati? Oh, yes, born in Italy, but where they have plenty of volcanic activity in Italy, and that is a connection there. And he's a research assistant at HIGP, the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, working under Robert Wright, who is the director of that institute right now. Yeah, that's fine, that's fine. And he's working on sensors in geology and the like, and that takes him on trips to see geological phenomenon. Hawaii is a wonderful place for this kind of research. And recently, you went on a trip to a lake. What tell us about the lake? Could I sail on the lake, Andrea? Of course, but just once, and only for a moment. Only for a moment. So we're talking about a lava lake on the summit of Kilauea Volcano. That's the lava lake that's within the crater, which is within Hale Maomao. And so we went there on a permit with the USGS and the National Park Service to collect data and study the gases and the dynamics of this stunning phenomenon. Lava lakes are extremely rare. There are only five lakes, active lakes, on the Earth. Because you need to have a combination of various things to actually gather a molten pool of rocks and so have a lava lake. The danger is too, aren't they? Oh, yeah, absolutely. You try to sail on a lake like that, and only once for a few minutes, and it's finished. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in fact, this is why we had to go through the USGS and the National Park Service granted as a permission to actually go there. Because we remember, again, the floor of the Kilauea is closed. Due to ongoing volcanic hazards, and particularly the gases that are released that are extremely toxic. Yeah, yeah, so it's not just that you could be burned up. It's the gases that could hurt your respiratory system. Absolutely, absolutely. And that's actually even the source of the fog that sometimes we experience even here on Oajo when the winds are from the south. Well, I want to examine exactly what you did and learned in the lake. But to make it relevant for us, I want to take a quote that you sent me. This is a quote by the British poet William Wadsworth. And it stands for the proposition of a lake carries you into recesses of knowledge, especially if you're doing a PhD on sensors and geological phenomena, recesses of knowledge otherwise impenetrable. And just to put it in perspective, Alexa, who is William Wadsworth? William Wadsworth was a major English romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the romantic age in English literature with their joint publication lyrical ballads. Thank you, Alexa. Seems to be right. Seems to be right. And so why is a lake, a lava lake, the kind of lake that he's talking about in terms of the fact that it could give you the recesses of knowledge that were otherwise impenetrable? Let's see what a lava lake is. Let's take a glimpse. Let's peek into the earth interior. And I think we have our first video, and we can have a glimpse of what a lava lake is. Oh, here it is. A lava lake, as you can see here, is a pool of molten material that comes back in a cycle. And we can see the surface of the lake is divided into pieces, plates, if you like. And we can see the red boundaries of these plates. We can see two surfaces of spattering at the end of the lake. And this lake is actually, we're looking at the summit of Kilauea volcano. And this is the largest lake in the world now, because this one recently overtook the width of the Niagara-Gongolava Lake in Africa on the African Rift and became the largest 300 meters in diameter, more than 300 meters in diameter. So that helps in terms of understanding. You were at the top of the rim of the lake. We were at the rim, that's right. And you looked down, how far below you is the floor of the lake? The floor of Halemao-Mao was about 100 meters below us. And then, but the lake was at, when we were looking at, when we were there at the end of July, the lake was about 30 meters below the floor of Halemao-Mao. So that's the, the two levels, the floor, and then below that. That's right. So let's see our next picture. And we can see, that's right. Here it is. This is a, I'm telling you, it looks like a jacuzzi. It's kind of an overbuilt jacuzzi. If you want, it's like a sink. It's a sinkhole. It's a sinker, because it's a pool of material, which is connected to a tube, to a conduit, down below, which goes to the magma chamber. And like a sink, if you like, it goes up and down, the level goes up and down. It recently overflowed about a year ago. And the only difference with the sink is the temperature. This is about 1,000 degrees C. So it's a little bit hotter than the water that comes out our sinks. And also it goes the other way. So it doesn't flow from the top, but it comes up from the bottom. So it bubbles. And particularly, you can see the source of this material on the right-hand side. You can see the red material coming out. And then you see there is like a track. There is like the material is being carried away from that source, away from it. You can see there is sort of a pathway. The color is different, sort of silver. And then the material sinks as it becomes colder and denser. So this is a cycle. It goes up and down, up and down. And it's sort of like a convection. It's like a boiling soup of potatoes in a cold winter. Here in Hawaii, we have cold winters. No, I'm just kidding. But anyway, yeah, that's really what it is. It's a convective mechanism that brings the material up and then downwards, upwelling regions and down. So when it's warm, when it's hot, in the red area, but the glowing area, it's going to rise. As it cools, it's going to go back down into the pot. It's going to sink. That's right. So if I look down sort of as a silo, I see this lake as a silo of material. I mean, how far would it, and not that we would swim here, but how far would it go in this molten form? Does it go to the center of the Earth? Where does it go? Well, as I said, this is connected to a conduit that then goes down to the magma chamber. But when this vent, this lake, started to form back in March 2008, the lava lake was not there. There was a violent explosive eruption at the summit of Kilouea. And then what happened was that slowly the eruption began to fill this feature, this vent, and fill it and then form the lava lake. When this was beginning, the depth of this vent, this cavity, was 200, 300 meters. So that's some sort of gives you an idea of what we're looking at within. And lava lakes are particularly important from a scientific point of view, because for example, the movement of the plates on the surface, which sinks and rise, can be compared with what really happens on the surface of the Earth by looking at the plate tectonics. For example, the subduction. Subduction. They have that a lot in Washington. And they have it in Hollywood, too. In the morning paper, it was a case of a fellow who lost his job over subduction. Subduction over company. Never mind. Here we're talking about rocks sinking. If you think about what is happening, for example, on the Cascade Range in Washington and Oregon states, that's really the wonderful plate going underneath the North American plate. And that's create volcanic, that's create volcanism. Does it also create earthquakes? Earthquakes, as well, associated with the rising of magma. It's different from the San Andreas fault, for example. That's a different mechanism. It's not related to you. Is it the San Andreas fault? Yeah, it was my ancestor. No, this is really, it's a fault in California. That creates earthquakes. But that's a different mechanism. Here we're talking about sliding plates. There we're talking about subduction. But a lava lake, as our friend William Wordsworth at the beginning was sort of reminding us, although he was talking about something else. A lava lake can give us an idea about the mechanisms that really happen within the Earth, and really try and give us an understanding of what phenomena that we can't really think of. So can you give a moment about your research, your science here? You're taking readings. You're getting data. What readings? What data are you getting when you stand at the rim of this lake? And what conclusions do you draw from that data? Let's bring, I think we have a picture that shows us standing on the rim of the lake. So we can actually see what we were doing. Oh, there it is, yeah. So on the right, we have my supervisor again, Robert Wright, and Casey Hannibal, who is my friend and co-worker. And then we can see Iniello, Matt Patrick, who is one of the geologists at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory who came with us. We're pointing down at the lake imaging spectrometers to try and detect the gases that are released by this volcano, and particularly what we're trying to do, Casey is doing it in the mid-wave infrared. I am doing it in the thermal infrared, so different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. What we're trying to do is detect carbon dioxide. Now, as you know, there is a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So it's particularly difficult to separate, to identify the carbon dioxide which is released by the volcano and can tell us what is happening to the magma chamber down below from the atmospheric carbon dioxide. So how do you do that? That's right. We're testing these kind of sensors. We're testing this kind of sensor on detecting these gases to see if we can actually detect these gases. Because volcanologists have used sulfur dioxide for a while now to interfere about what is happening in the magma chamber. But sulfur dioxide is sort of easy because there is not a lot of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere. So you can immediately identify the volcanic one. But carbon dioxide is the most tricky. But why are volcanologists interested in carbon dioxide? Why is it better? It's more difficult, but why is it better? Yeah, well, you know, this is a really perfect time. It's what I call a cliffhanger, literally. Don't jump. Don't jump. We're going to find out the answer to that question right after we come back. And right now, we're going to have a break with Andrea Gabrielli of the HIGP research team that was at the Lava Lake in Mauna Kea. I'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. My friend, mother, what big eyes you have. She's sad. All the better to see you with my dear. What are you doing? OK. Research says reading from birth accelerates the baby's brain development. And you're doing that now? Oh, yeah. This is the starting line. Posh. And this is over. You're dead. Read aloud 15 minutes. Every child, every parent, every day. I'm Ethan Allen, host of a likable science on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 PM, I hope you'll join me for a likable science. We'll dig into science, dig into the meat of science, dig into the joy and delight of science. We'll discover why science is indeed fun, why science is interesting, why people should care about science, and care about the research that's being done out there. It's all great. It's all entertaining. It's all educational. So I hope to join me for a likable science. OK, we're back. We're live with Andrea Gabrielli of HIGP, the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology. He's a research assistant there. And he's studying sensors in geological formations. And I was only joking when I said Manakea. It was Kilauea, where you were. That's right, Kilauea volcano. Kilauea volcano. Yeah, a really spectacular place. And really, I mean, you could get up there. I can't get up there. But maybe I'll go with you next time if I can breathe all right. Did you have trouble breathing up there? Well, luckily we didn't. But only because we were wearing respirator with HEPA, particle pre-filters, to actually prevent the sulfur dioxide to get into our lungs and everything. It really injure you. So you were talking about exactly how you discern the kind of carbon monoxide that's in the air in general and the kind of carbon monoxide that's coming out of the carbon dioxide. Pardon me, it was a test. The carbon dioxide that's in the air generally in the carbon dioxide that's coming out of the lake in the volcano. So how do you do that? We use this thermal light perspective imaging sensor. But this is still a test. We went there actually to test our abilities with these sensors to measure this carbon dioxide. But we stopped before the break with the famous question that the suspense. And we were saying why are volcanologists interested in carbon dioxide? The reason is because carbon dioxide starts to be exalted, starts to be released, be separated from the silicate melt that is rising. When the melt, the magma, is still really deep in the volcano. So basically, this is the reason why. It could give us warnings, early warnings, about what is happening in the volcano. Whereas sulfur dioxide is easier to be detected. However, it is released by the rising magma. When the magma is already really close to the surface. So just to give you an example, there is a volcano in Alaska and Mount Redoubt. And scientists were monitoring. That's near Juneau. That's near Juneau. Is that the one that blew up in the 50s, I think it was? I think Mount Redoubt is more recent eruption. But anyway, the volcano, before it blew up, it began to exolve carbon dioxide a couple of months before the eruption happened. Whereas it started to release sulfur dioxide a few days before the eruption. This is why volcanologists are really interested in carbon dioxide. Because it could give us warnings. And this is very important when trying to warn the populations living nearby, active volcanoes, and to try and prevent death and future death from natural disasters. So you have to have a device that can read this remotely, because you can't be standing there all the time. We don't want to go too close. You don't want to be close, right? And it has to send you a message to say there's too much in the air here. Absolutely. So it takes some action to warn people. So the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory is interested in what we're doing in this possibility. Because we haven't really detected carbon dioxide yet. We're still testing it. But the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory in the USTS was interested in our sensors, in the sensors that Paul Lucy, Robert Wright, have developed. Because they could give us these kind of warnings. And that's exactly the reason why they granted us a permit, as well as the National Park Service. But lava lakes can really give us lots of information about the gases and the activities. But let's maybe watch one more video to see the activity of lava lakes. So I think we have the second video I think about. I think there it is, yeah. So here we were standing on the rim. And this is a much less serene view than the other one. We can see a huge spattering fountain here and waves in the molten material. This fountain, this spattering source throws material up to even 10 feet into the air. So what we are looking at is actually the top of the spatter. That's the top of the, yeah. We were looking at it from above. We were standing on the rim, looking down, looking down. So if you were down at the same level, you would see it jumping 10 feet in the air. But you wouldn't see it for too long because you would be burned to a crisp. Absolutely. And I think, let's see one more picture so we can talk about more the dangers of this active lake. Let's see the bird picture. This is the bird picture. This is a video. And you can see there is a bird flying over the surface of the lake. It's hard to see if it's up in the upper right-hand corner. Yeah, we can see the white spot. Maybe let's watch again what you think. So we can really see. And then we can make some comments. Yeah, let's see that one more time. Yeah. So the thing about the bird is that the bird is in the fog, in the fog, if you will. In the sulfur dioxide gases. And the bird doesn't do well at that. The bird is not any better able to handle it than we are. Not really. The bird is a coiaquea bird, one of these long, white-tailed, tropic birds, about two feet, the wingspan. So they're large seabirds that nest on the walls of Hale Maomao. They fly to the ocean during the day. And they feed on fishing. And they come back. They nest there because there are no predators. However, usually the adults fly high above the thermals generated by the lava lake. Fly on the thermal, yeah. On the thermals, way above the thermals. However, we think this one was a juvenile that got inexperienced, got too close, and was blinded and intoxicated by the hot gases rising from the lake. And it was forced to land, as we could see in the movie. It was forced to land on the surface of the lake and was roasted. What a tragedy. Did you see him land? You couldn't see him, though. The smoke was too dense. The smoke was dense. But we could actually see the bird burning whenever. So it was a horrible scene. But this really tells us about the dangers and about 2,000 tons per day of sulfur dioxide are released by that crater alone. Then there is Pu'u'u'u'u, that's the other vent on the southwest rift zone, southeast rift zone. But that's another vent. Only Halema'u'u'u puts out 2,000 tons per day of sulfur dioxide. And there is an interesting story. We were standing while this poor bird met his destiny. We were talking to Matt Patrick, who is one of the geologists there at the HBO. And he was telling us that he was reading some papers about by Thomas Jagger, who is the founder of HBO. And he was talking about these birds that fall into the lake sometime. But he was mentioning that after Jagger, nobody really witnessed these birds. Because it's really usually the crater, the caldera floor is closed, and people aren't allowed to go there. There was a special permission that was granted to us. But so we saw this after Thomas Jagger. So that was an interesting thing, although very sad. But again, reminds us of the dangers of this gas. Yeah. So when you get the data, what's the form of the data? And how do you interpolate the data and come to scientific conclusions so that you can, I guess, get a system going to know when you're reaching danger levels? So these sensors gather image. And for every pixel, every spot in the image, we can gather spectral information. So what it means, basically, is that there is a source of light, in this case, it's infrared light, coming to the sensor. Now, the source of the light, in this case, is the lava lake. The gas within absorbs part of the light at specific wavelengths. Now, what we look in these sensors is the depth, the missing light, if you want, at specific wavelengths. And the depth of these features, how much light is missing, if you want, gives us the amount of gases that is in there. So by looking at the depth of these absorption emission features in the spectra, so the missing light, we can tell how much gas is in the plume and then try to infer what is happening. So now, when you look at one pixel, if you don't have a high resolution, that pixel could include a number of gases, couldn't it? So are we saying that one pixel is one kind of gas? I mean, you can only identify one kind of gas. Or can we identify multiple gases in the one pixel? For one pixel, basically, we get a spectrum from 8 to 14 microns. And each gas absorbs light at specific wavelengths. So sulfur dioxide, for example, absorbs most of the light at 8.6 microns. So we look at that particular wavelength, and we say, OK, this is sulfur dioxide. Other gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide is a nice feature at 14 microns. So basically, for each pixel, we can retrieve a spectrum. And the spectrum tells us stories about different gases. So we can look at various gases released from the volcano. And again, most common gases are carbon dioxide, which is the one we talked about. Sulfur dioxide also mentioned. And also, don't forget water vapor, because volcanoes are also a great source of water vapor coming from beneath the mantle. What is H2O? H2O, water vapor, just water. How about just oxygen? Can you see that, too? Is there any oxygen coming out of the lake? Well, no, there's no oxygen coming out of the lake. But oxygen in the infrared part of the spectrum, oxygen is not particularly active. So it doesn't even absorb and emit light. So you don't care about it? No. But if we remember William Wordsworth and his romantic lakes in the Northwestern part of England, those lakes really emit oxygen. Because the vegetation, the algae that are in there can release oxygen. Interesting, yeah. We'll see we. So it comes back to him. It comes back to William Wordsworth. So when you look at all the pixels, you're putting it in a spreadsheet or database somewhere and evaluating the relative density of this kind of gas versus that kind of gas. So if I give you a lot, for example, of sulfur dioxide and not so much of carbon dioxide, what is that going to tell me? I'm looking for proportions, right? I'm looking for relative presence, right? Absolutely. And again, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide are exalted, released from the magma, at different depths. So if you find more of this or more of that, it basically tells you, you don't really are 100% sure because then you have to put it in perspective and even consider earthquakes or deformation or other geological and geophysical factors to actually effectively monitor volcanoes. However, it gives you an insight of what is happening in the magma chamber within the plumbing system of the volcano. And really, when you put it in perspective with other geophysical measurements and everything, it basically foster our knowledge so we can really try and predict volcanic eruptions and try to enthear what is happening below. One last question, Andrea. So you're working on trying to identify what's there? What kind of gases are coming out? But do you have a model to compare it against her? What kind of gases would be coming out with a prospective eruption happening? In other words, do you have a profile that you look at to make the comparison? This is more a geological, that's the ultimate goal that all the volcanologists have. Yes, by looking at what we call solubility laws, we can infer where the magma is and try and understand what is happening. But my research at HIGP is mostly on building, retrieving algorithm to actually gather this information and also to develop sensors that can be used, in this particular case, we were pointing at the lava lake, but in the past we were also looking at the sky and so trying and look at these gases against the cold background of the sky and also monitor, for example, air pollution and fog. So here we're talking about gases but these imaging spectrometers in the thermal infrared hyperspectral sensors can really give us even a lot of other informations about gases and pollution as well. But in terms of volcanoes and lava lake, it really gives an insight to peek into the earth interior and try and understand what is happening below. Thank you, Andrea. Andrea Gabrielli, a research assistant at HIGP, the Hawaiian Institute of Geophysics and Planetology in the southwest at UH Manoa. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jay. Aloha. Aloha. Okay.