Raising Islands--Hawai'i science and environment

Tracking the great Japan tsunami debris field: wood blocks and satellites

2012-01-26T16:17:00.005-10:00

In order to better understand the flow of marine debris from the Japan tsunami last year, a team of researchers is using...marine debris.

That is, they have deposited near the leading edge of the debris field a series of satellite-reporting buoys and hundreds of wooden blocks imprinted with a website address and phone number, where beachcombers and boaters who find them can report their location.

(Image: One of the wooden blocks. If you find one, please report where you located it. The address to use is hilodrifter@gmail.com. Credit: IPRC.)

The preliminary data from the program is indicating that the debris currently is flowing west-to-east somewhat north of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and thus far has not started coming ashore. More on that at the end of this report.

The marine debris survey is designed to help better understand the likely impacts of the millions of tons of material that was washed into the sea by the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

“One thing is certain: the debris is hazardous to navigation, marine life, and when washed ashore, to coastlines,” said a press release from the International Pacific Research Center at the University of Hawai`i.

Researchers thus far have largely depended on already deployed floaters and computer current and wind models to make estimates of the debris field’s location. They’ve been helped by reports from a few ships that have transited the field.

The models suggested that debris could be arriving in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands this winter, hitting Midway Atoll and the islands of the Papahānaumokuākea National Marine Monument. Ship reports as early as September showed the debris field just 250 miles northwest of Midway.

Teams from the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa and at Hilo, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Ocean Recovery Alliance, developed a plan to deploy a drifter array across the front of the debris field. They developed 11 satellite-tracked buoys that are designed to mimic the motion of different kinds of debris, and put them in the water between Midway and the debris field. The satellite signals from the buoys will help researchers understand how the field is moving in the local currents of the region.

In a decidedly lower-tech program, they also deployed 400 wooden blocks in the water, each branded with information on how people finding them can respond.

“If boaters, fishermen and beachgoers find these blocks and contact the scientists by the information on the blocks, they will also increase understanding of the motion of debris and currents in this remote region,” the release said.

It added: “Among the most important results of the expedition was the recognition that tsunami debris has recently not advanced towards Midway, but instead has been flowing eastward well to the north of the atolls.

“Analysis of the ocean-current field shows why: For the past weeks, the general flow around all Hawaiian Islands has been from the southwest, producing a front located 300-400 miles northwest of the Midway. This front and associated northeastward jet keep the tsunami debris north of the islands...at least for the time being.”

Learn more about the debris tracking project here. http://www.oceanrecov.org/tsunami-debris/about.html

The researchers on the project are Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner of IPRC, Doug Woodring of Ocean Recovery, Luc a Centurioni of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Hank Carson of the University of Hawai`i at Hilo.

Mauna Kea: in Kamehameha's time, it was always white

2012-01-19T09:26:00.004-10:00

It’s news when the first winter snow falls on Mauna Kea—news because it’s not always snowy up there.

But an intriguing new book on the volcano’s sister mountain, Mauna Loa, suggested that as little as 200 years ago, it WAS always snowy up there.

(Image: Winter snow on Mauna Kea, February 1971. Credit: Donald A. Swanson, USGS.)

Mauna Loa and the Mauna Loa Observatory get credit for being major players in the understanding of climate change, but Mauna Kea may also have a role to play.

During the lifetime of Kamehameha I, according to one of Kamehameha’s confidants, Mauna Kea was perpetually covered with snow. In this period before the Industrial Revolution and the dumping of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels into the atmosphere, this little bit of Hawaiian anecdotal history would suggest the climate was, indeed, cooler.

The book, by Forrest M. Mims III, is Hawai`i’s Mauna Loa Observatory: Fifty Years of Monitoring the Atmosphere, just published by the University of Hawai`i Press. Mims, a prolific technology writer, is the co-founder of the firm that developed the Altair 8800, the first kit microcomputer. Bill Gates helped write the software that ran it; Steve Jobs cut his teeth on it as Apple was being developed.

Mims writes a detailed history of the mountain and of the observatory that made it famous in climate circles. It was there, up on the shoulder of Mauna Loa, that Charles David Keeling began in 1958 taking measurements of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The record of those continuing measurements, known as the Keeling Curve, show the steady and continuing buildup of CO2, largely the result of humanity’s burning of fossil fuels.

Keeling was just one of many brilliant scientists who used the unique site for atmospheric and other research, and the book covers all of them in a readable way that puts meat on the bones of one of Hawai`i’s premier scientific research sites—one of worldwide importance.

But a little piece of information early in the book is both interesting and telling. In the early 1800s, when explorer-scientists were still bleeding from lava cuts, puking from elevation sickness and generally risking their lives to climb these mountains, one of the researchers in the Islands was the Scottish botanist James Macrae, who arrived in 1825 with Lord Byron on the HMS Blonde.

Macrae never climbed the mountains, but reports, almost as an afterthought, a conversation with old-timer John Young: “During the 26 years that Mr. Young has been on the island, he has never seen Mouna Kaah (Mauna Kea) free from snow, but has not seen snow on Mouna Roah (Mauna Loa) in summer, and on this he bases his theory of the greater height of Mouna Kaah.”

John Young was left on Hawai`i by the British ship Eleanora in 1790. An exceedingly important Western advisor to Kamehameha, Young was known to Hawaiians as Olohana. He built ships for the king, and commanded the king’s cannons during war. He later became Kamehameha’s governor of Hawai`i Island.

Macrae was on the Big Island in May, and reported in his diary that he clearly saw snow on Mauna Kea. While Macrae was more interested in the snow as an indication of elevation, Mims recognized that the report was “an intriguing observation about the climate of Hawai’i two centuries ago.”

The late 1700s and early 1800s were the tail end of a climate period commonly known as the Little Ice Age. And the perpetual snow also accounts, of course, for the name: Mauna Kea, White Mountain.

For more on Mauna Kea, see the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory page on the mountain.

For more on Mims’ book, see this University of Hawai`i Press site.

The publisher writes: “Hawai‘i’s Mauna Loa Observatory should be read by atmospheric science students to gain an appreciation for the enormous effort required to generate high quality data. Much more than a strict scientific biography of Mauna Loa, this work will also be appreciated by anyone interested in a highly accessible history of the human side of atmospheric observations at a remote, high-altitude observatory.”

Global food crisis: How Hawai`i responds

2012-01-12T09:28:00.004-10:00

The possibility of a global food shortage is just one of the arguments in favor of locally produced food.

Several new data points suggest that such shortages are looming. How does one respond? Support local farmers. Grow your own garden. And pay attention to what it takes to feed you.

(Image: Locally grown jabong, a cousin to oranges and grapefruits, known to science as Citrus grandis.)

There are multiple benefits of addressing the local food issue, not the least being that you know what you’re eating and what’s gone into it. More on that later.

First, some food shortage data points.

The Consumer Price Index indicates that the cost of food is rising faster than the rest of the economy. (So is energy which, of course, is needed to ship food to us.) And this isn’t just an inflationary trend at restaurants. The cost of food eaten at home has gone up much faster than food eaten out.

Here’s now the Bureau of Labor Statistics folks phrased it: “The index for food at home has risen 5.9 percent over the past year with all six major grocery store food groups up at least 4.4 percent.”

Not counting food and energy, the 12- month general inflationary number was half that, at 2.2 percent. (These numbers are for November 2011, the most recent ones available. December’s numbers are due out in a couple of days.)

Why are the numbers going up? Perhaps because we’re not keeping up with demand. In 2011, the world produced record grain crops, and still, worldwide supplies of grains fell. Supply has failed to match demand in seven of the last 12 years.

Global grain stores, according to that source, are at 75 days. In the 80s and 90s, they averaged nearer 100 days.

“In 2006, stocks bottomed out at 62 days, setting the stage for the 2007—08 food price spike when international grain prices doubled or tripled in a short amount of time.” wrote Janet Larsen of IPS/Earth Policy Institute, in an article this week.

There’s plenty of apocalyptic prediction out there. Even as staid a publication as Scientific American in 2009 asked, “Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?”

In some parts of the world, the crisis is already underway.

So what does that mean in terms of Hawai`i? There’s the likelihood that feeding ourselves will be much more expensive, and the possibility that some foods won’t be available or at least won’t be affordable for some of us.

There are multiple initiatives in the Islands that provide responses. The Slow Food movement is one. It supports diverse, locally produced foods.

Foodcapes Hawai`i talks about edible landscapes and growing at least some of your food at home.

Food security is a focus of Hawaii Homegrown Food Abundance, and its website is a nice tutorial on why it’s important and how to go about growing it. The site has a bunch of useful links.

The state is replete with organizations like Mālama Kaua`i, which supports food sustainability and works for “relocalizing our food, energy, goods an services.”

One nice challenge: eat a meal now and then that includes only locally grown food, and none that comes from off your island.

A solution to honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder? Doubt it.

2012-01-05T08:07:00.003-10:00

The world’s honeybees are suffering from a disastrous ailment—millions of bees are suddenly failing to return to their hives. Some beekeepers have lost more than half their hives.

Hawai`i beekeepers are also suffering with an array of intractable threats to their bee colonies.

Dozens of researchers have “solved” the problem. Don’t believe them. Nobody yet knows for sure what’s causing the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder. And, one tip—don’t trust the headlines that suggest someone does.

The latest culprit in CCD is a parasitic fly, whose larvae get into bees and confuse them—causing them to lose their way home. Some headlines are categorical. Here’s one: Parasitic Fly to Blame for Honeybee Population Decline.

Maybe. But then there was the report that Colony Collapse bees have different genetic makeups from regular bees.

And perhaps it’s a new class of nicotine-based pesticides, which is outlined in the movie, “Nicotine Bees.”

The neonicotinoid pesticide theory has this intriguing bit: When Italy banned the nicotinoid pesticides, its bees reportedly started to recover:

“In 2009, Italy's neonicotinoid-free corn sowing resulted in no cases of widespread bee mortality in apiaries around the crops. This had not happened since 1999. The European Research Center, Youris, reported that Moreno Greatti, from the University of Udine stated, `Bee hives have not suffered depopulation and mortality coinciding with maize sowing this year. Beekeepers from Northern Italy and all over the country are unanimous in recognizing that the suspension of neonicotinoid- and fipronil-coated maize seeds.’” That’s from TreeHugger.

Some suggest CCD is the result of poor management by beekeepers, but that wouldn’t explain why unmanaged wild bee hives have gone virtually extinct in many parts of the world.

Some folks blame cell phones—a theory that apparently originated from a German study of whether cordless phones could impact bee learning. The author of the study itself says there’s no connection to colony collapse disorder: "If the Americans are looking for an explanation for colony collapse disorder, perhaps they should look at herbicides, pesticides and they should especially think about genetically modified drops," said Stefan Kimmel, who co-authored the German study, in a New York Times report.

Kimmel emailed Associated Press to further assert that there is “no link between our tiny little study and the CCD-phenomenon ... anything else said or written is a lie."

Then there are the predations by varroa mites, nosema disease, tracheal mites or even a combination of all of these things.

A University of Florida Extension Service scientific report has a pretty evenhanded review of the problem.

The upshot right now is that there’s a lot of research going on, there are tons of theories, and there are no definitive answers.

And if anyone claims to have one, be suspicious.

No joy in recent reports on climate future for Hawai`i

2012-01-04T15:14:00.004-10:00

There is no current scenario that looks good for Hawai`i when you study climate and energy.

A quick start-of-the-year review of the most recent research on energy use, climate change, and sea levels makes one long for the days when we still had the opportunity to do something about what’s coming.

The International Energy Agency’s recent global energy report said this:

“`If we don’t change direction soon, we’ll end up where we’re heading’... There are few signs that the urgently needed change in direction in global energy trends is underway.”

Oil prices bounced around in the $30 range from the late 1980s to the late 90s, and then began an inexorable climb. Prices broke through the $40s in the first third of the century’s opening decade, the $60s in the second third, and around the $80s late in the decade, with a burst to near $150 a couple of years ago.

It was bouncing around $100 in recent months.

Why has it been rising? Could it be because world energy demand is climbing just as inexorably?

World primary energy demand was about 9,000 Mtoe in 1990. (Mtoe: That’s million tonnes of oil equivalent.) The demand passed 10,000 Mtoe by 2000, passed 11,000 Mtoe before 2005 and was more than 12,000 Mtoe by 2010. And it’s still apparently rising. That’s all from the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook 2010.

The IEA just released their 2011 outlook. It views things as worse, not better.

It’s worse in part because even at $100 a barrel, fossil fuels in many countries are subsidized, so in comparison to its real cost, it’s still cheap. What do you do? The 2010 IEA World Energy Outlook said this: “Getting the prices right, by phasing-out fossil-fuel subsidies, is the single most effective measure to cut energy demand.”

But in 2010, according to the executive summary of the 2011 report, “Subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption of fossil fuels jumped to over $400 billion.”

What does all this mean, besides high-cost energy, international restiveness, and economic malaise? Of course, because high oil and coal consumption dump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it means that climate change, already evident around the globe, gets worse.

A few years ago, folks were talking about maybe enacting strict policies that might keep global temperature rise to 2 degrees Centigrade. Virtually nobody did what was needed.

“The door to 2°C is closing,” the 2011 IEA report says. And without significant new policies around the globe, it’s on track to 6°C, it says.

What’s that mean for the Islands? For the bad news check out the University of Hawai`i Coastal Geology program’s sea level website.

It means that within the lifetimes of many of us, ocean levels will be significantly higher—feet higher—than they are now. The impact:

“Most of the buildings will probably still be inhabited and residents will have to time their movement between the tides, just as they do today in Mapunapuna. Back up in the McCully and Makiki areas residents won't see any seawater, they will see the wetlands of the 19th century reemerging as the water table rises above ground level in some areas (not all areas). Under these conditions, when it rains, we will have a real problem. The runoff will raise the water table, the storm drains will be full of seawater except at the very lowest state of the tide, and standing pools of water will accumulate throughout the region without a place to drain. Travel will be limited and many lands will turn to wetlands, there may be some areas of permanently standing water,” writes the Hawai`i sea level site author, Chip Fletcher.

And his scenarios envision warming of significantly less than 6 degrees. It's hard to imagine how bad it could be if sea level rise goes significantly higher--and there are scenarios that predict that.

And as for a classic Hawaiian day at the beach? It’s likely that public policy will protect onshore development before it protects beaches, he argues.

“Beaches will be mostly gone and we'll have built large seawalls lining most of our shores,” Fletcher wrote.

The impacts of all that, to the tourism economy, property values, groundwater, to our coastal transportation systems, including harbors, low-lying airports and the rest, are impressive to consider.

And the impacts on our natural resources, including changes in rainfall patterns, the loss of green sea turtle nesting sites, the loss of monk seal pupping and haulout beaches--they make some of our current planning and regulation initiatives seem ill-considered and short-sighted.

Solar power: a fringe electric source no more

2011-12-19T13:15:00.003-10:00

Solar power, which was once laughed off as a fringe electricity source for true believers who lived far off the grid, is running rampant through renewable energy discussions.

Used to be, it was horrendously expensive—appropriate for satellites and mountain cabins that needed little more than lighting.

It was only in the 1970s that solar photovolaic cells dropped in price from $100 a watt to $20 a watt.

That still meant that an average Hawai`i home using 500 kilowatt-hours monthly needed more than $80,000 in $20/watt panels ($20,000/kW) alone. Here’s how we came to that: 500kW/30days/5hours/.8efficiency x 1000 (to convert kW to watts) x $20. With installation, costs were approaching the century mark.

By 2005, panels were down to $3-$4 a watt. And in 2009, First Solar announced it could manufacture photovoltaic cells at less than $1 a watt. And if you buy enough of them, the retail price for quality panels today is about $1.25.

You can get the very cheapest panels in bulk even now at $1, and the consulting firm Ernst & Young predicts retail prices generally at $1 within two years. New science is promising even better results.

And the prices are still falling.

This means extreme disruption in the solar business. Deciding when to buy and install is like trying to catch a falling knife. It might be way cheaper next month. Do you buy now or wait...and if the latter for how long?

More than one solar firm has gotten into trouble with a business plan based on building $3/watt panels, when global prices suddenly drop to $1.50.

“Research and development spending is high and this is driving the development of different photovoltaic technologies to lower cost points and higher efficiencies. In the foreseeable future, photovoltaic electricity will become cheaper than grid electricity in an increasing number of markets, creating further demand,” said Ernst & Young in this report.

Not long ago, the biggest chunk of your solar installation cost was the panels. The racks, wiring and inverters (to change panel DC power to grid AC) were the smaller portion. Now, that has been turned upside down. An installer recently told me that with $1.25/Watt panels, he was putting in large systems at about $3/Watt complete. (Home systems, being smaller, have higher per-watt installation costs—maybe their total is around $5/Watt—and it could be more depending on site issues.)

Let’s say you put 2 kilowatts of solar on your roof for $10,000, take state and federal tax credits totaling 65 percent, your cost is $3,500. You’re producing 240 or so kilowatt-hours a month at 5 hours of useful sunshine a day and 80 percent efficiency (including passing clouds, wire losses and such—the dirty truth is that you never achieve useful AC electricity anywhere near your system’s rated capacity.)

At $.35 per kilowatt-hour, you’d pay the utility $84 for that power. That pays back the $3,500 in less than four years. If you produce more than you need, utilities in Hawai`i through various programs will buy the power for roughly $.20 per kilowatt-hour. The payback is longer if you’re selling power rather than displacing your own usage. If you do a good job of shifting load to sunlight hours, you save more money.

It’s still challenging to make a case for going entirely off-grid—since battery prices have not yet taken the same dive that photovoltaic panels have taken. But there may be specialized situations—remote locations, significant daytime loads and so forth—in which the economics work out.

But one of the interesting features of the current situation is that with high oil prices, utilities in many cases are buying solar power from developers at slightly cheaper than their cost of diesel-fired power. The Kaua`i Island Utility Cooperative is setting up a subsidiary to produce its own power, and company CEO David Bissell figures he can make it for significantly less than oil-fired power.

And that, as Ernst & Young suggested above, can do something about Hawai`i’s outsize power bills—even if oil prices remain stable at current levels.

Japan tsunami debris field approaches Hawai`i

2011-12-13T09:18:00.004-10:00

The Japanese tsunami of March 11, 2011, dumped millions of tons of debris into the ocean, setting it adrift on the surface of the North Pacific—and some will be in Hawai`i soon.

(Image: Computer model of the Japan tsunami debris field on Dec. 13, 2011. Credit: IPRC/SOEST, University of Hawai`i.)

Some of that material should get to the Hawaiian Islands via a fairly direct southern route, while some will sweep across the northern Pacific, down the West Coast, and back to Hawai'i.

The first pulse of that stuff should arrive in the Hawaiian archipelago from the west this winter, and a second major pulse could arrive on the trades from the northeast in three or four years, according to Nikolai Maximenko, oceanographer with the University of Hawai`i's International Pacific Research Center.

The federal government's best guess for when it hits our beaches in the main islands is 2014 to 2015, said Carey Morishige, Pacific Islands Regional Coordinator of NOAA's Marine Debris Program.

And with respect to radioactivity from Japan's nuclear powerplant disasters, the residual radiation might be detectable with extremely sensitive laboratory equipment, but should be no health hazard to anyone in the Hawaiian Islands, said radiochemist Henrieta Dulaiova, of the University of Hawai`i's Department of Geology and Geophysics.

They spoke Dec. 10, 2011, at a Kaua`i conference sponsored by the Surfrider Foundation.

An estimated 20-25 million tons of debris was estimated by the Japanese government to have been created when the tsunami hit Japan's shores. Of that, Maximenko said, a third to a quarter was pulled into the ocean. And a lot of that material likely sank. More has dispersed widely, and it's likely that a large amount of what's left will be trapped in the massive Eastern Pacific gyre known as the Great Garbage Patch.

A 15-year progression of how the debris is likely to move can be found here.

You can see it catching the fringes of the Main Hawaiian Islands, and settling in the Garbage Patch.

Maximenko said the first of the remaining debris could be arriving at the western end of the Hawaiian archipelago any day now. A Russian sail training ship spotted debris 250 miles from Midway Atoll in September. The material spotted included lumber, household appliances like refrigerators and televisions, washbasins, boots and other stuff. They even picked up an empty Japanese fishing boat, drifting amid the debris.

Maximenko said the debris should move inexorably down the chain, first Kure and Midway, then the nearer islands of the Papahanaumokuakea refuge, and then Kaua`i.

“From the times of arrival and composition, we hope to learn much,” Maximenko said. His model for how the debris may be moving can be found here.

A number of frequently asked questions are answered at this NOAA marine debris site. Basic information about marine debris is here.

Surfrider and the NOAA marine debris program will be monitoring the coastlines and setting up programs to deal with the arrival of Japan tsunami debris. RaisingIslands invites folks with information on the subject to add to the comment selection on this post.

Hawaiian volcano science: why Kilauea sits on Mauna Loa, but is a sister of Mauna Kea

2011-12-07T06:34:00.004-10:00

A pair of important new papers on Hawaiian volcanoes shed light on several intriguing geology questions, including why the islands haven't formed in a single line.

Study of the chemical composition of lavas suggests that there are two parallel lines of Island volcanics, which researchers call the Loa trend and the Kea trend. They get their names from their biggest mountains, Mauna Loa being of one line and Mauna Kea the other.

(Image: Much of the work discussed in these papers involves study of the chemistry of lavas. Here, the robot arm on the JASON2 submarine, operating 10,000 feet below sea level, collects a lava sample from Mauna Loa. Credit: University of Hawai`i.)

One paper in June in the journal Nature Geoscience, was written by Maxim Ballmer and Garrett Ito of the University of Hawai`i School of Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology, Jeroen van Hunen of Durham University in the UK and Paul Tackley of the Swiss Institute of Geophysics in Zurich. It is entitled, “Spatial and temporal variability in Hawaiian hotspot volcanism inducted by small-scale convection.”

The other paper, published in Nature Geoscience in November, is by Dominique Weis, Mark Jellinek and James Scoates of the University of British Columbia, Michael Garcia of the University of Hawai`i's Department of Geology and Geophysicsand Michael Rhodes of the University of Massachusetts. It is entitled “Role of the deep mantle in generating the compositional asymmetry of the Hawaiian mantle plume.” You can find the University of Hawai`i's press release on this paper here.

The traditional theory about how the Hawaiian archipelago was formed involves a molten “hot spot” which pushes magma up from the Earth's mantle, popping periodically through the ocean floor as the Pacific tectonic plate grinds slowly to the northwest.

But there are problems with that theory, including the parallel lines of volcanoes, as well as what's called the rejuvenated stage or secondary volcanism—which involves why features like Diamond Head and Punchbowl develop a couple of million years after most of the islands' mass has been erupted.

Ballmer and his associates proposed a new model, in which asymmetric melting in the mantle, uneven heat transfer, and a washboard model of the underside of the Earth's crust help explain what's seen on the surface.

It suggests that the rising plume of magma divides in two, feeding the Loa line and the Kea line separately, which explains why Loa lavas tend to be chemically different from Kea lavas. In part that's because the magma feeding the Kea side is hotter, they say.

“Lavas with these distinct characteristics have erupted in parallel along the Kea and Loa trends for at least 5 million years,” writes the Weis team. They argue that the differences in the composition of the lavas may be because the different sides of the magma plume are remelting different kinds of rock as they rise toward the surface.

The Kea line includes Kilauea, Mauna Kea, Kohala, Haleakala, West Maui and both sides of Moloka`i. The longer Loa line includes Lo`ihi, Hualalai, Kaho`olawe, Lana`i, Ko`olau, West Ka`ena and Kaua`i.

Mauna Loa is so darn big that while its caldera is on the Loa line, its slopes extend all the way to the Kea line, which is why Kea-fed Kilauea appears to lie on the slope of Mauna Loa.

Issue two: Why isn't the Hawaiian archipelago one long continuous ridge rather than a series of islands separated by deep channels? Perhaps because of the washboard effect on the bottom of the crust. The volcanoes are able to pour out large amounts of lava where the crust is thin, but not where it's thick.

Issue three: Ballmer and his associates argue that secondary volcanism is associated with a melting zone under older islands that drags nearly 200 miles downstream of the main hot spot activity. That explains why small eruptions at cinder cones like Diamond Head occurred a few hundred thousand years ago, far from the main activity at that time at Hawai`i Island.

A side note: A few decades ago, one of the fun questions for volcano freaks who chase eruptions was this: Is it technically possible for Mauna Loa and Kilauea to erupt at the same time. The theory then was that each was fed by the same plume, so maybe only one could erupt at a time.

But in 1984, Mauna Loa erupted during a Kilauea eruption, setting the question to rest. Now there's a good theory on why that's possible. One is a Loa and one is a Kea.

Pacific climate phases occasionally "lock" into phase

2011-10-26T17:09:00.003-10:00

Like waves on an ocean, different climate cycles will occasionally synchronize—but two Pacific cycles not only briefly synchronize but then “lock” into phase.

This locking synchronization was described in the September issue of Physical Review Letters by Karl Stein, a University of Hawai`i at Mānoa PhD student, and Axel Timmermann and Niklas Schneider, professors at the UH Mānoa International Pacific Research Center and the Department of Oceanography.

Two of the known cycles in the equatorial Pacific are the seasonal variation in temperatures and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which operates on a cycle ranging from 2 to 7 years in length.

The scientists identified patterns in which these difference cycles occasionally fall into synchronization and seem to lock there for a period of time, while at other times, they simply cross paths and fail to synchronize.

It suggests that in Niño and in the tropical Eastern Pacific annual cycle, there is some feedback going on, such that once they coincide, they somehow remain in synch for a period of time, rather than continuing on their own cycles.

The next question is why that happens and what it means.

“The newly discovered sporadic phase-locking behavior of El Niño and the annual cycle will have significant impacts on current understanding of the seasonal predictability of large El Niño events. The scientists are eager to test how well state-of-the art climate models reproduce the nonlinear interaction between these two dominant modes of climate variability,” the authors said in a press release.

They said this kind of phase locking was first described in 1673 by the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens. It is the kind of thing that infrequently happens, for example, when an applauding audience suddenly starts to clap in unison and continues doing so for a period of time.

Citation: Karl Stein, Axel Timmermann, and Niklas Schneider, 2011: Phase Synchronization of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation with the Annual Cycle, Phys. Rev. Lett., 107, issue 12.

The research was supported by the Office of Science (BER) of the U.S. Department of Energy, and by NASA, NOAA, and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology which sponsor research at the International Pacific Research Center.

Russian ship finds UHawai`i-projected tsunami debris field

2011-10-15T09:08:00.006-10:00

It’s cool when your computer-based model runs into real world testing, and ends up right.

And a new University of Hawai`i program tracking the debris from this year’s Japan tsunami has experienced that kind of cool. http://manoa.hawaii.edu/news/article.php?aId=4733

(Image: The Russian sail training ship STS Pallada. Credit: Pallada.)

At the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s International Pacific Research Center, senior researcher Nikolai Maximenko and scientific computer programmer Jan Hafner have been using computers to track the likely route of the massive pulse of debris from the March 11 tsunami, as it travels on the morth Pacific currents.

They sent the results of their computer modeling to the Russian sail training ship Pallada, which was crossing from Honolulu to Vladivostok. The sailors kept an eye out, and sure enough, when they sailed a distance past Midway, heading northwest, they came across a complex field of tsunami-caused debris.

Pallada information and education mate Natalia Borodina reported on Sept. 27 that stuff that matches what they would have expected to find. They tested for radiation from the damaged Japanese nuclear plant, but did not identify raised levels of radiation.

“We keep sighting everyday things like wooden boards, plastic bottles, buoys from fishing nets (small and big ones), an object resembling wash basin, drums, boots, other wastes. All these objects are floating by the ship,” she emailed.

They even came across a Japanese fishing boat, a 20-footer whose wheelhouse bears inscriptions indicating it came from Fukushima Prefecture, which suffered severe damage from the tsunami. The boat was brought on board the Pallada.

(Image: Adrift Japanese fishing boat hoisted aboard STS Pallada. Credit: Pallada)

The debris was within the debris field predicted by the models of Maximenko and Hafner.

The researchers project that the debris may hit Midway and other parts of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands this winter, and could reach the main Hawaiian Islands later.

Two major new climate research efforts at UHawai`i

2011-10-15T08:58:00.001-10:00

Hawai’i is increasingly active in the science of the Pacific, with island-based researchers contributing to global research efforts.

Two new federally funded research efforts have just landed in Hawai`i.

Recently, the University of Hawai`i announced that NOAA has committed up to $95 million for a five-year program to study coastal and marine resources in connection with changes to the environment.

It will run through UH’s Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research (JIMAR), to be headed by oceanographer Mark Merrifield. It will be one of 18 such cooperative institutes across the country.

Among the specific projects: “assessment of local fish stocks, monitoring and ecosystem-based management policies for coral reef ecosystems including the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, development of remediation strategies for endangered Monk Seal populations, monitoring of global sea level rise and local sea level impacts, modeling of volcanic smoke and haze (VOG), improved forecasts of hurricane intensities, projections of ENSO variability and impacts on Pacific island states, and provision of water level observations for tsunami warning.”

Meanwhile, the Interior Department announced that it will fund the development at UH of the Pacific Islands Climate Science Center, one ofseveral such climate centers across the U.S. This one will be a joint project of University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, the University of Hawai'i at Hilo, and the University of Guam.

Again, its goal will be to help our nation cope with climate change and “other landscape-style stressors impacting the nation’s natural and cultural resources.”

“The new climate center will serve as a resource for federal agencies and other stakeholders in providing the necessary science input into policy decisions. It will also support research and graduate student training on a variety of environmental concerns with a primary scientific focus on understanding the effects of climate change and variability on island ecosystems,” said Kevin Hamilton, the director of the UH’s International Pacific Research Center, who iwill head the new Pacific Islands Climate Center.

The university expects initial funding to be in the neighborhood of $3 million over 5 years, and anticipates the Department of Interior will station several federal scientists in Hawai`i to work with the project.

Energy and just getting along

2011-09-18T09:53:00.004-10:00

No single energy technology will solve the world’s issues with renewable energy.

That’s a key message of the Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit and Expo, which was held Sept. 13-15 at the Honolulu Convention Center.

It’s not a new message, certainly, but it’s apparently one a lot of folks still need to learn.

“We need technology-agnostic approaches...There is no one-size-fits-all,” said Chris Myers, vice president for international business development and energy markets for Lockheed Martin.

And yet, the rifts were obvious. Wind versus geothermal. Ocean thermal versus solar.

And there were even battles within sectors. This wind generator versus that one. Utility-scale photovoltaic versus distributed rooftop photovoltaic.

Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz said the state’s initiative to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels requires those divisions be set aside.

“We have the most aggressive public policy in clean energy in the nation,” he said. And then he added: “If we’re going to get to 70 percent clean energy, we need everything and everyone.”

Sempra Generation’s Mitch Dmohowski, whose firm plans large-scale solar, said cost should be one deciding factor.

“At the end of the day, renewables have to make sense from a cost basis,” he said.

Technological capability is another key determinant of what works, said T.J. Glauthier , former deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy. There may be lots of interesting energy technologies, but the ones that will make a difference are the ones that can be taken to scale, he said.

And ultimately, one message of the sessions was that it’s not just about supply. There’s efficiency. And conservation. Michael Trovato of Johnson Controls said energy retrofits can yield major savings.

Specific programs can help get people to invest, even when they lack the resources to do so independently. The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Energy Right program helps people put in heat pumps by guaranteeing bank loans, which can be paid off through the electric bill. Here’s how the city of Aloca, Tennessee, does it.

And a big issue is simply managing energy more appropriately. On this point, a smarter grid is key, said Glauthier. He argued that a smart grid is long overdue: “It is the last major part of our economy to be computerized.”

Rising seas top threat to Northwestern Hawaiian Islands

2011-09-10T08:41:00.004-10:00

When researchers looked into the most significant threats to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, the top threat was a slam dunk: rising seas.

That’s because most of the islands of the northwestern end of the Hawaiian archipelago are low, sand and coral islands. A foot of sea level rise could erase entirely much of the dry land.

(Image: A map ranking human impacts in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. From

http://www.hawaii.edu/himb/nwhi)

And with that, the stunning repercussions for wildlife: Something like 90 percent of all the Hawaiian green sea turtles nest on the sandbars of French Frigate Shoals; entire species of seabirds and a few land birds rely on these specks of land for nesting habitat; Hawaiian monk seals, already threatened, would lose their haulouts and pupping places.

This threat research is documented at a new website, which documents research being done in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Those islands, which lie beyond Kaua`i and Ni`ihau, are managed as the Papahānaumokuākea National Marine Monument.

“Those interested in the exciting and dynamic research coming out of HIMB now have an easy to use forum and site to access information,” said Robert Toonen, principal investigator for the HIMB Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Research Partnership.

The website has gone “live” this week.

Just one of the pieces of research on it involves the mapping of cumulative impacts of human activity. The team talked to 25 experts about the various threats, and ranked them.

We used a novel index of ‘ecological vulnerability’ that accounts for five ways a human activity can adversely impact a coral reef: the area and frequency of impact, the number of species impacted, the biomass lost and the recovery time following the impact,” the site says.

From the biggest threat to the least problematic, here’s how the ranking went:

Sea level rise, sea temperature rise, marine debris, alien species establishment, increasing ultraviolet radiation, ghost fishing, sea water acidification, ship groundings, coastal engineering, land-based runoff, ship waste input, pelagic long-lining and net fishing, anchor damage, lobster trap fishery, research wildlife sacrifice, sport fishing, trampling damage, vessel strikes, diver impacts, research manipulations, bottom fishing, indigenous fishing, aquarium collecting, and non-fishing non-diving recreation.

The report said that while the islands are protected from many direct human impacts, global threats put them at serious risk.

Warming seas, invading king crabs, bad news for life that evolved without them

2011-09-07T14:59:00.003-10:00

Good news for crab lovers, bad news for less robust critters like sea lilies, brittle stars, asteroids and sea urchins.

(Image: The invasive king crab, Neolithodes yaldwyni, from the Antarctic shelf waters. It’s similar looking and is related, but is a different genus and species from the Alaskan or red king crab, Paralithodes camtschaticus. Photo courtesy University of Hawai’i.)

University of Hawai’i oceanography professor Craig Smith is part of a team that found that king crabs have invaded across the West Antarctica continental shelf and now inhabit the Palmer Deep along the west Antarctic Pensinsula. Their paper on the subject is here.

And lots of creatures that should be there, aren’t.

“This is a very interesting discovery for several reasons,” Smith said

“First, it provides evidence that king crabs can now disperse across the Antarctic shelf, and reproduce in at least some Antarctic shelf waters. It also suggests that these predatory king crabs will cause a major reduction on seafloor biodiversity as they invade Antarctic habitats because they appear to be eating all the echinoderms in the Palmer Deep.”

Smith recently joined researchers from Duke University, Ghent University, Hamilton College and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Antarctica. They used a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to inspect the seafloor life in the area. They found that a king crab species called Neolithodes yaldwyni is dramatically altering the ecosystem.

The result is the demise of a whole ecosystem that had developed in the absence of crushing predators like big crabs. Echinoderms like the stars and urchins are common in most of the Antarctic ocean, but they’re not now found in the parts of the Palmer Deep where the king crabs are found.

The researchers believe the rapid pace of ocean warming has allowed the crabs to move into the new habitat, where they dig into oceanfloor sediments and feed on seafloor animals there.

Smith and the team said they believe the continued warming will allow the king crabs to further expand their range within as little as 20 years at the expense of the native creatures that compose Antarctica’s unique seafloor animal life. The team hopes to use genetic tests to track the continuing colonization of the crabs.

Their research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Special Research Fund of Ghent University.

The University of Hawai’i release on the issue is here.

More images and story here.

Nihoa to repopulate Laysan's millerbird habitat.

2011-09-02T11:54:00.004-10:00

One of the mantras of conservation is that a tiny population in a single location is inherently at risk.

That’s why conservation agencies are working this week to establish a population on Laysan Island of the Nihoa millerbird.

(Image: Nihoa millerbird, which will help create a new population of millerbirds on Laysan. Credit: Robby Kohley via U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.)

This has been done before with another single-island species from Nihoa, the Nihoa finch, which now has a backup population on Pearl and Hermes Atoll. And it’s been done with the Laysan duck or teal, which now also exists on Midway Atoll.

The new transfer is a joint effort of the U .S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the American Bird Conservancy, with the help off the group Pacific Rim Conservation. All the islands are within the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, which covers the islands, reefs, seamounts and atolls of the remote northwestern end of the Hawaiian archipelago.

A team working from the motor vessel Searcher is on Nihoa this week, seeking to collect 24 millerbirds for the transfer. Millerbirds have previously existed on Laysan, but not for nearly a century. The birds will be taken aboard the ship, which will power to the northwest to Laysan, a 650-mile voyage.

The two islands had different varieties of the the millerbird. The one on Laysan was Acrocephalus familiaris familiaris and the one on Nihoa is Acrocephalus familiaris kingi. They were very similar. Laysan’s millerbird went extinct during a period when introduced rabbits destroyed virtually all green vegetation on Laysan Island. The rabbits were eventually eradicated, and some of the original vegetation is back now.

The insect-eaters are active gray-brown birds that forage among low shrubbery on Nihoa. What are the risks for them? Nihoa is a tiny rock island, and fire, rats, disease-carrying mosquitoes, storm or any number of threats could wipe them out. Even rabbits.

The world expert on millerbirds is University of Hawai’i zoologist Sheila Conant, who studied them extensively in the 1980s and has watched the population whipsaw from as many as 800 birds to as few as 30. She is a strong proponent of translocation.

“For thousands of years, the Nihoa Millerbird miraculously survived low numbers, catastrophes including a severe brush fire in the late 1800s, and, most importantly, existence on a single tiny island.

"These threats are as serious today as they have ever been, and are compounded by the potential for non-native predators and diseases to be introduced to Nihoa. This translocation could more than double the total number of birds by establishing a second population on another island, and provide insurance for the species,” Conant said.

Read more about the millerbirds at the American Bird Conservancy site.

For more on the translocation project, see here.

Digital data can replace dog-eared notebooks in forestry

2011-08-14T09:56:00.001-10:00

There are big steps, but often to get to the big steps, there need to be a lot of little steps.

These don't get much attention, but they're important.

A group of forest researchers in Hawai`i recently challenged the old paradigm of marching into the woods to measure forest productivity with little more than a dog-eared notebook, a pencil, and some measuring tools.

Their goal: to see whether the digital age could be brought to forestry fieldwork.

Their conclusion, yes, it can, and it can save significant amounts of time, but you need to take precautions against downpours, dropped equipment, system crashes and dead batteries.

The researchers are Faith Inman-Narahari and Lawren Sack of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at University of California Los Angeles ,Christian Giardina and Susan Cordell of the Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry of the USDA Forest Service in Hilo, and Rebecca Ostertag of the Department of Biology at the University of Hawai`i at Hilo. The published their findings in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, under the title “Digital data collection in forest dynamics plots.”

With the caveats that you use tough field computers, that you pay attention to battery life issues, and back up your data on drives that don't die with battery failure, they said going digital makes sense.

“Use of digital methods resulted in an average 11-8% reduction in total effort due to reduced secondary data entry time,” they wrote.

That means you save all the time transferring data from those dog-eared notebooks to your computer, since the information is already in digital form.

This all may seem obvious, but most researchers continue to use paper notebooks, the authors say, because of those issues of data loss.

“Electronic data collection holds great promise for enhancing ecological research capacity, yet researchers may be reluctant to adopt digital methods for many reasons including concerns of losing large amounts of data, the money and time needed to buy and implement a new system, the weather-resistance of electronic devices, and the lack of familiarity with digital options,” they wrote.

In fact, the advent of waterproof, shock-resistant computers with all-day batteries should be able to resolve many of those issues, and the time savings may outweigh the financial cost off the equipment.

Want to keep your brainpower? Exercise, Hawai`i!

2011-07-19T10:53:00.003-10:00

Hawai`i has among the most active citizens in the nation, but there's way more to do, according to a cluster of recent scientific and research reports.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports all four counties in the Islands have among the lowest rates of physical inactivity in the nation.

Is there a benefit to that exercise? The CDC study says it's good for reduced diabetes risk, but new studies indicate it's also significant for a healthy brain.

Regular physical activity is linked to lower loss of cognitive function in older adults, according to two studies in Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA/Archives journal.

There has long been an association between exercise and good mental function, but much of the previous research has been based on self-reported data and thus questionable. The newest information addresses those shortfalls and still comes to a similar result.

In a French study, researchers followed a group of nearly 3,000 women with risk factors for heart disease, part of the Women's Antioxidant Cardiovascular Study. They found increased exercise resulted in reduced brainpower loss. The lead researcher was Marie-Noël Vercambre, of Foundation of Public Health, Mutuelle Generale de l'Education Nationale, Paris.

Briefly, the report found that something equivalent to a half-hour walk daily was associated with a statistically reduced risk of cognitive function loss.

"Various biologic mechanisms may explain the positive relation between physical activity and cognitive health," said Vercambre's group, in a press release from the Archives of Internal Medicine, of the Journal of the American Medical Association. "If confirmed in future studies, physical activity recommendations could yield substantial public health benefits given the growing number of older persons with vascular conditions and their high risk of cognitive impairment."

A second report looked at 197 participants averaging nearly 75 years of age in the Health, Aging and Body Composition study in Canada. Researchers were led by Laura E. Middleton, of the Heart and Stroke Foundation Centre for Stroke Recovery, Sunnybrook Research Institute, Toronto.

Interestingly, these researchers subtracted the individuals' resting metabolic rate from their total energy expenditure. They found that the participants who had the highest net energy expenditure tended to have the lowest cognitive loss.

"The mechanisms by which physical activity is related to late-life cognition are likely to be multifactorial,” Middleton's group said. "We are optimistic that even low-intensity activity of daily living may be protective against incident cognitive impairment."

Find the studies here: Arch Intern Med. Published July 19, 2011. doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2011.282; doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2011.277.

In an Alzheimer's study, exercise was listed as one of the keys to reducing the likelihood of suffering from the disease. A report in the journal Lancet said the key risk factors internationally for Alzheimer's disease are, in this order: low education, smoking, physical inactivity, depression, hypertension in midlife, diabetes and mid-life obesity. They are associated with half of all cases of Alzheirmer's.

Mental health researcher Deborah Barnes, of the San Francisco VA Medical Center, analyzed data from a massive pool of patients internationally—hundreds of thousands.

Among Americans, physical activity rises to the top as the biggest single modifiable risk factor listed in the study.

"What's exciting is that this suggests that some very simple lifestyle changes, such as increasing physical activity and quitting smoking, could have a tremendous impact on preventing Alzheimer's and other dementias in the United States and worldwide," said Barnes, who is also an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco.

She had one caution about the research: "We are assuming that when you change the risk factor, then you change the risk," Barnes said. "What we need to do now is figure out whether that assumption is correct."

In the Islands, although we do well on the activity scale, we can do far better.

According to the state Department of Health's Hawai`i Physical Activity and Nutrition Plan:

“In 2005, almost 48 percent of adults in Hawaii did not meet the recommended guidelines for physical activity (moderate intensity physical activity for at least 30 minutes on five or more days of the week or vigorous intensity physical activity for 20 or more minutes on three or more days per week).”

Hawai`i causes vast ocean eddies, and whales take advantage of them

2011-07-12T10:44:00.003-10:00

As winds and currents sweep across the central Pacific, the Islands cause disruptions in their flow—creating vast eddies.

Those eddies can bring nutrient-rich waters up from the deep, and create an extensive food chain.

(Image: Three melon-headed whales. Credit: © Robin W. Baird.)

New research indicates that melon-headed whales take advantage of this food resource. Satellite tagging indicates they regularly feed around the fringes of some eddies, and near the centers of others.

Researchers placed satellite tags on 10 adult melon-headed whales that are part of a population that stays around the main Hawaiian Islands.

In analyzing the tracks of the whales, they found that several of them spent significant amounts of time around several of the major eddies around the Hawaiian Islands, and were presumably feeding there, since it is known that these eddies concentrate fishery resources.

The whales tended to use the edges of counter-clockwise (cyclonic) eddies that have cold centers, and to go to the hearts of clockwise-turning (anticyclonic) eddies that have warm centers.

What’s going on at these locations? The authors write of the fringes of one such eddy: “This edge region is characterized by convergence of nutrients and phytoplankton upwelled in the eddy’s divergent center. Several studies identify this convergence zone as a fruitful foraging ground for species such as sea turtles, marlin and tuna, seabirds, and cetaceans.”

The paper, “Eddies as offshore foraging grounds for melon-headed whales (Peponocephala electra),” was written by: Phoebe Woodworth of NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center in Honolulu; Gregory Schorr, Robin Baird and Daniel Webster off the Cascadia Research Cooperative; Daniel McSweeney of Wild Whale Research Foundation; Bradley Hanson of NOIAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle; Russel Andrews of the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences; and Jeffrey Polovina, of the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center in Honolulu. It was published in the journal Marine Mammal Science.

“Both warm and cold core eddies are continually recurring features in the lee of the Hawaiian Islands. Wind stress from easterly trade winds is intensified by the islands’ topography, leading to the formation of eddies,” the paper says.

These kinds of research often turn up other mysteries that need solving. In this case, some of the whales went to feed in an area west of Ni`ihau, where no eddies are known to occur. What’s happening there? That’s a new subject for inquiry.

“The melon-headed whale tracks … indicate a potentially favorable habitat southwest of the Hawaiian island of Ni‘ihau, although the factors contributing to this area’s desirability are unclear,” the authors wrote.

New `opihi science: lots to know about limpets

2011-07-08T09:40:00.002-10:00

An 'opihi came to the Hawaiian archipelago, and evolved into three distinct species, each with specific characteristics built for their specific habitats.

You may not have thought much about 'opihi, but there's a lot to know about these limpets--besides that they are growing so rare due to overharvesting that they're priced like gold. That's because `opihi is a prized item at any Hawai`i gathering--a salty, crunchy condiment served raw, and delicious grilled with a little butter and garlic.

But we digress. Back to the science.

One thing: There's nothing to prevent their seagoing larvae from invading other shores, but Hawai`i's three edible `opihi are only found in Hawai`i.

Another: Since the original migrants could readily cross with others of their species, how and why did they evolve into three distinct species.

“Speciation seems highly improbable under these circumstances,” writes author Christopher E. Bird, of the Hawai`i Institute of Marine Biology at the University of Hawai`i. His paper is “Morphological and Behavioral Evidence for Adaptive Diversification of Sympatric Hawaiian Limpets (Cellana spp.)” The paper is in the journal Integrative and Comparative Biology: Integrative and Comparative Biology, pp. 1–8 doi:10.1093/icb/icr050

But they did evolve, and probably they did it, he argues, due to natural selection—the individuals found environments to which they could adapt, and they and their offspring stayed there.

Still, it seems odd that you can find three different species of 'opihi on the same slab of rock—the exarata or makaiauli baking in the sun above the tide; the sandwicensis, `alinalina or yellowfoot taking the brunt of the wave force at the interface between air and sea; and the talcosa or ko`ele fighting off marine predators below the surface.

Bird argues that those locations below to above the water define their ecological niches: “Overall, C. talcosa is regularly exposed to pelagic predatory fish, C. sandwicensis is subject to the greatest amount of wave energy and mechanical stress, and C. exarata is subject to the most extreme temperatures and desiccating conditions.”

The ko`ele is sometimes called the kneecap `opihi. It's much bigger than the others, and its shell can be very thick—perhaps a trait developed to protect it from marine snails and predatory fish.

In another just-published article, this one in Molecular Ecology, Bird teamed up with Brenden Holland, Brian Bowen and Robert Toonen, all of the University of Hawai'i. This paper is “Diversification of sympatric broadcast-spawning limpets (Cellana spp.) within the Hawaiian archipelago,” Molecular Ecology (2011) 20, 2128–2141 doi: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2011.05081.x

They say genetic studies suggest that the limpets first arrived in the Hawaiian archipelago between 3.4 and 7.2 million years ago—back in a time when Kaua`i, Ni`ihau and Nihoa were young islands

They probably arrived from the vicinity of Japan as free-floating larvae, and the original migrant was probably an inhabitant of the high shoreline, like Cellana exarata. Their nearest relative outside Hawai`i are probably the Japanese limpets, Cellana nigrolineata, C. mazatlandica and C. grata.

As little as six years ago, when this article was written, those things weren't known. http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2005/Jun/01/ln/ln08p.html

The researchers found that the Hawaiian 'opihi technically can hybridize but rarely do. They also found that they have different ranges throughout the island chain. All three are found in the main Hawaiian Islands, but talcosa doesn't go beyond Kaua`i and Ni`ihau. Sandwicensis stops at the basalt bastion, La Perouse Pinnacle. And exarata extends to the northewestern most Hawaiian land that still has volcanic rock above the surface, Gardner Pinnacles.

To confuse things, there are a couple of other `opihi reported from Hawaii. One is the small false `opihi, `opihi `awa, or Siphonaria normalis, which isn't eaten and isn't closely related to the others. The other is sometimes called Cellana melanostoma, which characteristically has steep sided shells, but genetic tests suggest it's a form of exarata.

Midway's golden gooney fledges

2011-06-20T15:14:00.004-10:00

Midway Atoll's golden gooney chick, the first of its species hatched outside Japan, has fledged—flown out to sea, most likely to the rich waters to the northwest.

(Image: The golden gooney chick is still mostly black, but eventually will develop white plumage and a striking yellow-gold head, like its papa, shown here. The chick is seen here sitting under its dad. For more recent shots of the chick, check our previous posts (see links at the end of this story.) Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.)

“It happened just as most followers of the bird’s short life drama expected, the bird slipping away from the Atoll’s Eastern Island sometime during the day, with no one there to watch,” said a press release from John Klavitter of the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.

Midway and the other Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, all part of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, are home to hundreds of thousands of Laysan albatross and black-footed albatross, but only within recent years have these cousins been joined by a handful of short-tailed albatross—also known as golden goonies for their yellow heads.

In January this year, a courtship between an 8-year-old male and 24-year-old female produced an egg that hatched into a healthy young bird. The chick has been knocked around some during its brief life, and was washed from its nest by the recent Japan tsunami.

In May it began stretching and flapping its wings, and in early June began paddling out to sea.

“The chick’s first swim in the ocean lasted 15 minutes. It walked into the lapping waters, paddled out 50 meters, submerged its head for a quick look, sipped some sea water, and then practiced flapping before paddling back to the shore. The chick was last seen the evening of June 15. By June 17 it was gone, most likely headed in a northwesterly direction to the rich and productive waters near Hokkaido, Japan, perhaps to join others of its kind,” a Fish and Wildlife Service release said.

Although its parents are both from Japanese-controlled islands, the birds normally return to their home islands to nest, and wildlife officials hope the chick will eventually settle on Midway for its own family.

“This event is a milestone in our international efforts to expand the range and population of this species,” said Fish and Wildlife Service Superintendent Tom Edgerton, one of seven co-stewards of the marine national monument.

“Once one of the world’s rarest birds, the endangered short-tailed albatross continues to recover,” said Refuge Manager Sue Schulmeister. “Sightings of the species have been relatively rare over the years, even on Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. In the years to come, following this event, perhaps that will start to change.”

See earlier stories on the young golden gooney at RaisingIslands here, here, here and here.

Rare plants rebound in newly fenced Ka`u preserve

2011-06-15T08:14:00.003-10:00

If you fence it, will things come back?

The Nature Conservancy is reporting resounding—one might say rebounding—success at its Kaiholena Preserve at Ka`u on Hawai'i.

“It’s amazing to see the abundance of new plant life. Plants that haven’t been seen in years are popping up all over the preserve,” said Shalan Crysdale, the Conservancy’s natural resources manager at the preserve.

A six-mile, six-foot-high fence protecting 1,200 acres was completed in 2007. The last of the pigs inside the lowland forest area were removed two years ago. The fence also keeps out Mouflon sheep. And the results are heartening.

The most impressive of the returning wild plants is a native vine, the nuku `i'iwi, whose name reflects the similarity in shape and color between its blossoms and the orange beak of the native red `i`iwi bird. An image of the blossom is shown here, courtesy of The Nature Conservancy.

It's a gorgeous blossoming display, and rare, except in fairly pristine native forest.

The evidence indicates that if you don't wait too long to protect native ecosystems, they can heal.

“The resurgence in plant life is a standard response of our native forest to protection from browsing animals. If there isn’t a major weed problem, the natives often come roaring back,” said Sam Gon, the Conservancy's cultural adviser and senior scientist.

Crews walk the fence perimeter weekly to ensure pigs haven't burrowed under it, and falling trees haven't compromised it. John Repogle, a senior member of the Conservancy's Ka`u field crew, said the fence-walkers can see the improvement in environment inside the enclosure.

“Over time, as we do our fence checks, we have seen dramatic changes in the number of rare native seedlings popping up. I would not have thought pigs had such a destructive effect on these particular plants until I saw how many are now germinating and growing to maturity.

“There is moss on the ground now where it was just soil before. When you look along the fence, the ground level on the outside is three to four inches lower than inside the fence. This is erosion caused by the presence of pigs.”

Among the returning wildlife are lobelias: two species of koli‘i (Trematolobelia wimmeri and Trematolobelia grandifolia) and three species of ‘ōhā wai, including one named for Mauna Loa (Clermontia montis-loa).

First Hawaiian "golden gooney" chick to fly soon

2011-06-11T09:48:00.007-10:00

There are few good-news stories on the environmental beat, but the tale of Midway's golden goonies is one.

These charismatic and endangered seabirds are known to professionals as short-tailed albatross, but their regal golden heads give them their popular name.

(Images: Papa golden gooney sits on young chick. Later, big chick nears fledging age. Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service photos.)

They are rare birds anywhere, and nesting colonies only occur on a couple of small islands controlled by Japan. A few years ago one, then two, then three of them appeared among the massive colonies of Laysan albatross and black-footed albatross in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

This year, a pair produced a live chick at Midway Atoll—the first known short-tailed albatross hatched outside Japan. And since albatross tend to return to their islands of hatching, it's hoped the chick will decide to stay in Hawai`i and establish a small colony here. (They don't always go back to their birthplace. Both parents were banded and are believed to have been hatched at Japan's Torishima Island.)

“We are very excited that the chick, raised by first-time parents, has made it to where we believe it will fledge, perhaps by mid-June,” said Deputy Refuge Manager John Klavitter, deputy refuge manager of the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.

“This chick is a survivor,” Klavitter said. “Hatched in the middle of a raging storm in January, it was swept 30 meters from its nest during a second storm in February, then survived the March tsunami that caused tens of millions of dollars in damage and the loss of some 100,000 Laysan and black-footed albatross chicks.”

See additional photos of of the golden goonies here.

See previous RaisingIslands.com stories here, here and here.

Kauai utility KIUC has nation's highest photovoltaic penetration

2011-06-10T18:07:00.002-10:00

The little cooperative electric utility on Kaua'i has the highest solar power penetration of any utility in the country.

A new report from the Solar Electric Power Association said that in 2010, the Kaua`i Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) was a national leader in total installed photovoltaic capacity on a per customer basis.

Hawai`i's other electric utilities lag KIUC, but they are also ranked near the top nationally.

(Full disclosure: Jan TenBruggencate, the owner of this blog and author of this article, is an elected member of the KIUC Board of Directors.)

The Solar Electric Power Association report, “2010 SEPA Utility Solar Rankings,” is available online here.

KIUC, which the report says had 3.25 megawatts of installed solar capacity at the end of 2010, has 23,300 customer-members and about 32,700 meters. That works out to about 100 installed solar watts per meter. The top utility in the SEPA ranking, and the only one to beat KIUC, is Southern California Edison 119 watts per customer.

O`ahu's Hawaiian Electric ranked 4^th at 94, Maui Electric 5^th at 93, and the Big Island's Hawaiian Electric Light 9^th at 66 installed solar watts per customer.

But those numbers are last year's news. The big news now, of course, is that KIUC expects to double its photovoltaic production within this calendar year, which should leapfrog it to first place by a very large margin.

As of this writing, installed solar penetration is about 150 watts per meter, and by the end of the year, the number should be well north of 200. As far as the utility figures, nobody else comes close.

To learn more about KIUC and it solar initiatives, see here.

For other info about Kaua`i's feisty little electric cooperative, visit its website.

Camera-equipped tiger sharks reveal feeding strategy

2011-06-08T07:18:00.003-10:00

Stick a camera on a critter, and you learn things.

When Critter Cams were placed on the backs of Hawaiian monk seals, researchers learned that these animals dive deep and actually flip over rocks to get at the prey items hiding underneath. They weren't catching dinner in open water, but trapping it against the ocean floor. Smart.

(Image: Researcher Carl Meyer took this image of a just-released tiger shark with an accelerometer strapped to its dorsal fin.)

The latest such news comes from tiger sharks.

You'd be forgiven for thinking of these big predators as cruising the coastlines, just below the surface, looking for turtles, seals and such, which they'd bite with a great deal of splashing, twisting and tearing.

It turns out that casual predatory cruising isn't the primary pattern. They work hard for their dinner.

Researchers working off the west coast of the Big Island caught and installed both cameras and sophisticated data gathering information on tiger sharks. The gear tracks swimming speed, depth, water temperature and even the animals' acceleration.

The scientific team was from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa's Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), the University of Tokyo, the Japanese National Institute of Polar Research, and the University of Florida.

As always happens in these cases, what they found surprised them.

One pattern was the big tigers' repeatedly diving deep and coming to the surface, a technique researchers called 'yo-yo' diving. And they do it not slowly gliding or cruising, but swimming hard, tails beating constantly.

With the cameras, the team found that the tiger sharks often encountered prey fish, and when they did, there were frequent bursts of speed. The conclusion: All this up and down was probably a feeding technique. By covering lots of water across three dimensions, the sharks were engaging in a strategy more likely to expose them to prey—reef fish in the shallows and pelagic fish in the deep.

“Although we have long debated the reasons for the yo-yo diving, we have only recently developed tools allowing us to directly measure the behavior in sufficient detail to understand what these animals are actually doing,” said Carl Meyer, the Hawai`i Institute of Marine Biology researcher who lead the project.

"These findings are exciting because they have given us unprecedented new insights into the behavior of these huge and difficult to study marine predators," he said

Warmer climate = stronger El Niño? Tree rings say maybe.

2011-05-24T06:55:00.002-10:00

How can we learn about ancient climates? Tree rings have been a valuable clue, along with ocean sediments, chemical analysis of slow-growing corals and other record keepers of the natural world.

University of Hawai`i scientists have now found that they can track El Niño events in the rings of trees of the North American Southwest. And they've found that El Niño cycles tend to be stronger during warmer climates.

They are careful not to outright predict that global warming will mean stronger El Niño and La Niña events, but they said the data they found can be valuable in fine-tuning climate models.

El Niño, and its counterpart La Niña, involve large-scale movements of heat within the Pacific, which have related impacts on global climate. The warm phase, El Niño, features a tongue of warm water that moves eastward into the equatorial Pacific, while cooler water represents La Niña and the climate “cool” phase. Associated with them are major changes in rainfall patterns, storms and other weather features. For Hawai`i, El Niño can mean winter drought an increased hurricane activity.

One question: what will happen to El Niño patterns as the global climate warms. And one problem with that question is how to gather the information needed to understand the issue. El Niño has been around for centuries, but scientists' instruments have only been keeping track of climate for decades.

Now, researchers have found that they can track El Niño events in the tree-ring records of the U.S. Southwest over a period of 1100 years.

Meteorologists Jinbao Li and Shang-Ping Xie of the International Pacific Research Center, published their findings in the May 6 issue of Nature Climate Change.

El Niño events, with their wetter winters in the Southwest, create wider tree rings. Cold La Niña conditions promote drought there, and correspondingly narrower tree rings.

To confirm the findings, the team was able to compare the tree ring data with modern instrument data, as well as isotope concentrations in both living and ancient corals from Palmyra Atoll.

“Our work revealed that the towering trees on the mountain slopes of the U.S. Southwest and the colorful corals in the tropical Pacific both listen to the music of El Niño, which shows its signature in their yearly growth rings. The coral records, however, are brief, whereas the tree-ring records from North America supply us with a continuous El Niño record reaching back 1,100 years,” Li said.

Their findings: “During warm phases, El Niño and La Niña events were more intense than usual. During cool phases, they deviated little from the long-term average as, for instance, during the Medieval Climate Anomaly when the eastern tropical Pacific was cool,” said a press release

“Since El Niño causes climate extremes around the world, it is important to know how it will change with global warming,” Xie said. “Current models diverge in their projections of its future behavior, with some showing an increase in amplitude, some no change, and some even a decrease. Our tree-ring data offer key observational benchmarks for evaluating and perfecting climate models and their predictions of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation under global warming.”

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, National Basic Research Program of China, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Hawaiian land crabs: Their extinction caused "profound consequences"

2011-05-19T08:41:00.002-10:00

Hawai`i is the only tropical island group without land crabs.

Those crabs are a classic part of the environment of other warm-climate islands in Polynesia and elsewhere. It’s just another way in which these islands are unique.

But it wasn’t always so. Archaeological digs now show that land crabs once existed here, were quite common, and disappeared shortly after humans arrived—part of that first wave of extinctions that marked the changing Hawaiian environment over the past millennium or two.

The new findings were published under the title, Evolution, Insular Restriction, and Extinction of Oceanic Land Crabs, Exemplified by the Loss of an Endemic Geograpsus in the Hawaiian Islands, by Gustav Paulay of the Florida Museum of Natural History and John Starmer of the University of Florida at Gainesville. Their paper was published in the online scientific journal PLoS ONE, and can be found here.

If we ponder how much today’s Hawai`i differs from that discovered by the first Polynesians, this is an interesting window through which we can peer.

The land crabs may have been part of an entire interconnected web of life that has disappeared in the Islands. They probably were predators, feeding on the eggs of birds whose rookeries are now largely gone, on land snails that are now mostly gone, and on native insects. They had beneficial roles in the environment, helping cycle nutrients in the ground litter, spreading seeds and other things.

The Hawaiian land crab Geograpsus severnsii was once common and found on multiple islands. Its shells have been recovered from Maui and Big Island caves, Moloka`i and Kaua`i sand dunes, from the Barbers Point area of O`ahu, and elsewhere.

These were good-sized crabs, with backs 2.5 inches across, and with huge claws. While, like all crabs they retained an oceanic phase of life during their larval stages, once these crabs returned to land, they were truly terrestrial, sometimes ranging a mile or more inland, and to elevations of more than 3,000 feet.

They grew larger than any other crab in the Geograpsus genus, extended farther inland, and traveled to higher elevations.

The crabs disappear from the fossil record shortly after the arrival of humans in the islands. And their disappearance represents the world’s first extinction of a crab species in the modern age.

“That the first documented crab extinction is of a land crab in the Hawaiian Islands is not surprising. The Hawaiian terrestrial biota suffered a veritable mass extinction following human arrival, and this mass extinction continues today,” the authors write.

Rats, pigs, dogs and perhaps even human predation may have played a role in their extinction.

Their loss was beneficial, certainly, to some prey species, and harmful to other parts of the environment. In the paper abstract, the authors summarize: “Land crabs are major predators of nesting sea birds, invertebrates and plants, affect seed dispersal, control litter decomposition, and are important in nutrient cycling; their removal can lead to large-scale shifts in ecological communities. Although the importance of land crabs is obvious on remote and relatively undisturbed islands, it is less apparent on others, likely because they are decimated by humans and introduced biota. The loss of Geograpsus and potentially other land crabs likely had profound consequences for Hawaiian ecosystems.”

The authors of the study worked with fossil material collected by several scientists who worked across the state. They thanked collectors Mike Severns (for whom the species was named), David Burney, Cory Pittman, Storrs Olson, and Helen James.

Citation:

^ Gustav Paulay & John Starmer (2011). "Evolution, insular restriction, and extinction of oceanic land crabs, exemplified by the loss of an endemic Geograpsus in the Hawaiian Islands". PLoS ONE 6 (5): e19916. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0019916.

Happy Energy: The new sustainability logo

2011-04-29T08:17:00.002-10:00

If solar energy, recycling and sustainability make you feel warm and fuzzy, there's a new logo for you.

It's the Happy Energy symbol, and information about it, are found here.

The symbol, according to its proponents, has this in mind: “Happy Energy is a young initiative that advocates a positive and sustainable culture, and which strives for a society that makes maximum use of recyclable products and clean energy, using the Happy Energy logo as the new universal symbol for sustainability.”

It comes in circle and rounded square forms. It's pale blue like the sky or a shallow sea, with a central image in yellow, which could be the sun, could be a flower. You can find versions to download here.

The founders of the happy energy movement are Erik Schoppen, Wubbo Ockels and Marleen Zoon, all from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Their aim is to create a global symbol for the green movement: renewables, recycling, conservation, all that good stuff.

Significant warming now inevitable, even if carbon release were cut to zero

2011-04-06T10:43:00.002-10:00

As we fiddle, the impacts of climate change grow, and new research says they are now inevitable.

A new Canadian study shows that even if we reduce all carbon emissions to zero, which of course we won't, there is already so much greenhouse gas in the atmosphere that 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) of warming is likely unavoidable by 2100.

The unstated extension is that much higher temperature rise is probable. And of course with it, direct impacts to Hawai`i, which include the rising sea levels, changes in rainfall patterns, acidification of the oceans, and all the rest.

What's the take-away from this? It's another heavy brick in the wall. We have a moral obligation to our grandkids to moderate our carbon-spending ways, and we have a fiduciary responsibility as citizens to plan strategically for the expected outcomes.

One of the purposes of this blog is to highlight the science that most media miss. This is an example.

The research is an early report from climate projections that will be part of the 2014 Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Here is the link.

These researchers strictly avoid hysterical language, even if that might be appropriate in this case. Their conclusion is understated and grim: “The results of this study suggest that limiting warming to roughly 2°C by the end of this century is unlikely since it requires an immediate ramp down of emissions followed by ongoing carbon sequestration in the second half of this century.”

They have formed a new set of predictions based on the best available and newest data on such things as “carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, aerosols, land use change, and the flow of carbon between the atmosphere and the underlying ocean and land surface.”

They conclude that the absolute best case for the next nine decades is that we'll face 2 degrees Celsius of warming. And since nobody believes limiting carbon emissions to zero is even possible, the actual number will be higher.

You're not reading this information much anywhere else. It's complicated, and since complexity is the enemy of understanding, the eyes of writers at most media outlets glazed over, or bypassed it altogether.

That's perhaps not surprising. The title of the paper doesn't give much of a clue about what's in it: Carbon emission limits required to satisfy future representative concentration pathways of greenhouse gases.

Here's the citation: Arora, V. K., J. F. Scinocca, G. J. Boer, J. R. Christian, K. L. Denman, G. M. Flato, V. V. Kharin, W. G. Lee, and W. J. Merryfield (2011), Carbon emission limits required to satisfy future representative concentration pathways of greenhouse gases, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L05805, doi:10.1029/2010GL046270.

These are the authors: V. K. Arora, J. F. Scinocca, G. J. Boer, G. M. Flato, V. V. Kharin, W. G. Lee, and W. J. Merryfield: Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Environment Canada, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada; J. R. Christian: Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Environment Canada, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada and Fisheries; and Oceans Canada, Institute of Ocean Sciences, Sidney, British Columbia, Canada; K. L. Denman: Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Environment Canada, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada; and VENUS, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Sharks, wolves and uninspected assumptions

2011-03-28T08:28:00.001-10:00

Anecdotal assumptions are so often wrong.

In the Islands, do sharks attack surfers because the surfers look like turtles or seals? Are big sharks attracted to shore because the small sharks have been fished out? Is that always the same shark cruising the surf zone, or are they constantly moving around?

The answers to some of these questions are known, partially known, or unknown, and occasionally they are correctly known for the wrong reasons.

We were struck by an article this month on sharks' culture cousins, wolves. The piece was in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

This goes to the question of whether wolves are major predators on cattle. Ranchers have long said so, and have launched wolf kills to respond.

The conservation community has argued that wolves, if they come near cattle, are doing ranchers a favor, culling the weak. And that since they perform the same service for wild herds of elk and deer, they ought not be slaughtered.

The new study confirms that cattle are indeed a big piece of wolf diet, seasonally. The study was done by Canadian researchers from the University of Alberta, who used GPS tracking equipment to follow wolf travels in 2008 and 2009, during grazing seasons near the Rocky Mountains.

But the wolves, for the most part, weren't preying on the herds. They were feeding on dead cattle at “boneyards,” places where ranchers dumped cattle carcasses. The four wolves researchers tracked switched from wild prey to eating cattle during the grazing season, but in 85 percent of the cases, they were scavenging on already-dead cattle.

Ranchers were dumping the carcasses near their grazing cattle. The boneyards also attracted grizzly bears and cougars. For the wolves, the cattle made up almost half of their summer diet.

The message from the researchers was that ranchers' management practices are actually attracting predators to their herds. Thus, changes in management practices could reduce wolves' opportunities to feed on the herds.

The message for the rest of us is to be real careful about uninspected assumptions.

Tsunami death toll at Midway alone: more than 110,000 albatrosses

2011-03-19T09:10:00.003-10:00

Federal wildlife officials are now estimating that more than 110,000 albatrosses were killed at Midway Atoll alone, from the tsunami waves that swept across nesting areas March 11.

“Surveys of the Refuge reveal that more than 110,000 Laysan and black-footed albatross chicks – about 22 percent of this year’s albatross production – were lost as a result of the tsunami and two severe winter storms preceding it in January and February. At least 2000 adults were also killed,” said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in an emailed statement.

(Image: Total losses at Laysan Island are not known. This image, taken before the Laysan federal wildlife crew was evacuated, displays some of the impact. The team reported that the entire coast was inundated by the tsunami, in many cases well into the vegetated areas. The debris includes remains of a research station that was overwashed. Credit: USFWS Pacific.)

Four major waves crashed through Midway Atoll, entirely overwashing small Spit Island, and partially overwashing Sand and Eastern Islands. The albatross are ground-nesting birds. Only four chicks remain on Spit, which once held nearly 1,500.

Immediately following the tsunami, Refuge staff estimated tens of thousands of albatross chicks had been lost, along with about 1000 adults. After initially concentrating on freeing approximately 300 entrapped or waterlogged birds with assistance from a small group of visitors there participating in a natural history tour, and waiting for danger from the tsunami to pass, biologists turned their attention to surveying the damage. “The results were both startling and disheartening,” Stieglitz said.

For example, in early January, Spit Island held 1498 Laysan and 22 black-footed albatross nests. After losses from the January 14 and February 11 storms and the March 10-11 tsunami, only 4 chicks remain on Spit.

“We are very fortunate not to have suffered any loss of human life or other tragedy, as have the people in Japan, and for that we are very grateful,” said Barry Stieglitz, Project Leader for the Hawaiian and Pacific Islands National Wildlife Refuge Complex.

“This tsunami was indeed a disaster at many levels, including for wildlife.”

A star of the atoll is the endangered short-tailed albatross chick, the first born in the Hawaiian Islands in recorded history. It was washed off its nest, but survived. However, its parents have not returned to feed it.

“Since the chick is incapable of fending for itself, the Service will carefully consider whether hand-rearing this bird is appropriate if it is determined that it is not being fed by its parents,” the statement said.

Biologists do not know how many burrow-nesting Bonin petrels were lost, drowned or trapped underground. Their nesting holes in many cases were covered over with coral rubble and sand. Small numbers of red-tailed tropicbirds, red-footed boobies and great frigatebirds were reported lost. There were no recorded deaths of green sea turtles or monk seals.

Federal officials still do not have a clear understanding of the impact on wildlife at other remote islands. Many threatened or endangered animals were potentially impacted. One fear is for the Laysan finch population that was translocated to the low island of Pearl and Hermes Atoll could have been wiped out.

“It is possible the entire translocated population of endangered Laysan finches on Pearl and Hermes Reef were roosting on the ground when the tsunami likely overwashed the low-lying islands there,” the statement said.

But at this point, no one knows for certain.

'Ghost crabs cleaning up the dead" in Northwestern Hawaiian Islands

2011-03-14T09:20:00.008-10:00

Thousands, and maybe tens of thousands of seabirds were killed or injured in last week's tsunami in the Hawaiian Islands.

“Thousands of ghost crabs are cleaning up the dead,” wrote researcher Cynthia Vanderlip, from Kure Atoll.

The humans in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, as far as we know, had plenty of notice and are all safe. Some were being evacuated today.

(Image: Short-tailed albatross chick survived the tsunami, but was washed far from its nest. Tens of thousands of birds were killed. Credit: Pete Leary, Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge biologist.)

Millions of seabirds nest each year on the sand spits and low sandy islands of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

The tsunami completely washed over some of those islands, washing away or burying every bird. In many cases both the flightless nestlings and a roosting parent were swept off nests or buried in their burrows. Other islands had only partial wash-overs.

Many of the uninhabited islands have still not been surveyed, but if the experience at Midway Atoll is a guide, the loss is near incalculable. There were reports of severe bird fatality counts at Kure and Laysan as well.

Here is the initial report, via Twitter, from the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge: “People are OK. No damage to infrastructure. The Short-tailed albatross nest was washed over again and the chick was found unharmed about 35 m away and carried back to its nest cup. Minimum of 1000 adult/subadult and tens of thousands of Laysan Albatross chicks lost. Spit Island completely washed over. Eastern and Sand Island 60% and 20% washed over, respectively.”

The reference to the short-tailed albatross chick is notable. It is the first chick of its critically endangered species known to have been hatched outside a couple of remote Japanese islands. More on that here.

The chick was washed about 100 feet from its nest, but apparently was unhurt. It was moved back to its original nesting location in hopes the parents would continue to feed it. We have no word on whether or how much the main short-tailed albatross colonies off Japan suffered from the tsunami.

Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge biologist Pete Leary posted that crews were conducting a salvage operation, going through debris piles in hopes of finding trapped live birds. Firm numbers are not yet available, but he estimated tens of thousands of dead albatrosses.

“There's no way to know how many Bonin petrels were trapped in their burrows,” Leary wrote.

He wrote of boating between islands and finding waterlogged birds, drifting, exhausted and half-sunken.

Beyond Midway is Kure Atoll, where the impact was also severe. Veteran researcher Cynthia Vanderlip, the field camp manager of Kure Atoll Conservancy, sent out this report on the Facebook page for the Kure Atoll Conservancy.

Her team climbed for safety onto to the roof of the old concrete Coast Guard station building, having heard the reports of devastation in Japan on shortwave radio.

“The first wave arrived at around 12:50. We heard cracking branches, but could see nothing, not even with the strong searchlight. Then another one arrived at 1:10, and another at 1:18 and finally, the last one at 1:30 am.”

They stayed on the roof for some time longer, waiting to be sure it was safe. Finally, “everyone climbed down off the roof went straight to bed, except me. I took a quick walk to see the damage at the beach and it is extensive. The wave washed about 400 feet inland. The Black-foot colony at the pier is gone, chicks are everywhere. Thousand of ghost crabs are cleaning up the dead. The wave washed over the top of the pier and tore the window frames out. The ocean is chocolate brown.”

Vanderlip added: “I am thankful that our building is 700′ inland and 20′ above sea level. We were spared, but I fear for all the other folks in the Pacific. The loss of wildlife breaks my heart. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers.”

At Laysan Island, five people—two from the Fish and Wildlife Service and three from the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center—were to be evacuated this morning (Monday March 14, 2011) by the research vessel Hi`ialakai. The ship was diverted from a mission to Wake Island.

(Update 12:10 p.m. HST 3-14-2011: Hi`ialakai Facebook site reports that seven people were successfully evacuated from Laysan, having suffered only minor injuries: "only a couple cases of scrapes and bruises."")

The NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Division blog had some details. The report indicated that the tsunami had climbed the sand dunes of Laysan Island and inundated both bird habitat and human field researcher camp.

“The field team... reported extensive damage to the island, with the wave line extending well into the vegetation. In places, reef fish were found in the short trees that ring the island. Most of their food buckets and water jugs were washed away, and they were still seeing buckets and jugs being washed back to shore. The kitchen tent was destroyed and they are cooking and eating at the USFWS camp. The USFWS camp has 32 six gallon jugs of water, which should be enough to sustain the Laysan personnel for the remainder of their time on island. Fortunately no injuries have been reported and their office tent was spared and most of their electronics and communication equipment were not damaged.”

Details of the impacts on birdlife at Laysan were not immediately available.

Apparently the waves were comparatively small at Tern Island, the Fish and Wildlife Service headquarters island at French Frigate Shoals, but it was not known at this writing whether waves caused issues with the many small sand spits that create homes for wildlife within the vast reef structure there. Nor have there been reports from Pearl and Hernes Atoll, Lisianski Island, and Nihoa Island.

A tragic loss, but this is a healthy ecosystem, and Vanderlip at Kure notes that the ghost crabs were feeding on the dead birds, and shorebirds were feeding on the dead sea cucumbers and other marine llife washed ashore. Nature was doing what it does.

“This is an ecosystem that is pretty well intact. There were a lot of changes created by the tsunami, but there is abundant life on Kure, ready to pounce on every opportunity that is presented,” she wrote.

Humpback whale range extends into Papahānaumokuākea

2011-03-06T09:47:00.005-10:00

It never made any sense that humpback whales would confine themselves by human political boundaries, and now research proves that indeed, they don't.

Humpbacks winter not only in the Main Hawaiian Islands, but their range extends right up the archipelago into the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. And there are lots of whales up there.

For this bit of information, we can thank an electronic listening post called EAR, for ecological acousting recorder, about which, more here.

(Image: What an EAR looks like. Credit: NOAA.)

When these buoys were deployed to listen to marine life in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, researchers heard the haunting calls of humpback whales.

More of them in the middle waters of the region, and fewer in the colder waters of the northernmost atolls.

Not that they weren't there all along, but research cruises into those islands in winter are limited, because of the risk to vessels of being caught without shelter during storms. The islands and reefs beyond Kaua`i are either small or treacherous and offer little protection from powerful seas and winds. The only safe harbor in the region is the old Navy base at Midway Atoll.

Scientists with NOAA and the University of Hawai`i's Hawai`i Institute for Marine Biology conducted the research within the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.

In a press release, the team said there seem to be plenty of whales up there: “Humpback whale song was found to be prevalent throughout the NWHI and demonstrated trends very similar to those observed in the MHI.”

The research has just been published in Marine Ecology Progress series (Vol. 423: 261–268, 2011 doi: 10.3354/meps08959.)

Authors are University of Hawai`i researchers Marc O. Lammers, Pollyanna I. Fisher-Pool, Whitlow W. L. Au and Carl G. Meyer, and Kevin B. Wong and Russell E. Brainard of NOAA Fisheries' Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center. You can find the paper online here.

They deployed nine of the EAR devices throughout the archipelago to see if they would detect whale singing, and they did.

“Song was found to be prevalent at Maro Reef, Lisianski Island, and French Frigate Shoals but was also recorded at Kure Atoll, Midway Atoll, and Pearl and Hermes Atoll,” they wrote.

Notably missing from the list are the islands nearest the main Hawaiian group, Nihoa and Necker/Mokumanamana. But the message, perhaps, is that they heard whale song wherever they put an EAR, and they just didn't put the devices at Nihoa and Mokumanamana, nor at Laysan and Gardner Pinnacles. No reason to think the whales are not there, too.

The research results add up to “strong evidence that humpback whales are common in the NWHI from late December to mid-May. Moreover, a comparison of the incidence of song on Oahu with the NWHI reveals that many locations show equivalence in song prevalence, suggesting whales use at least parts of the NWHI as a wintering ground much like the MHI.”

What isn't yet clear is whether the whales of Papahānaumokuākea are a distinct breeding group, or simply an extension of the main islands population.

And it's also not (yet) clear how many whales use the northern islands, which appear to have as much as twice as much shallow warm water habitat as the main islands.

Are nukes our energy answer? Are they any answer at all?

2011-03-01T10:46:00.004-10:00

Nuclear energy, to some observers, is the obvious answer to the high cost of electricity and our community's vulnerability to oil supply disruptions.

(Image: The hull of the Russian floating nuclear plant, now under construction, the Akademik Lomonosov. Credit: Rosenergoatom)

Some have argued that nuclear energy is appropriate, that it's readily available, and that it's cheap.

For anyone who does a minimal amount of research, it seems clear that for small communities like Kauai, nuclear energy is none of those things, even ignoring the elephant in the room: the debate over safety and radioactive waste disposal.

First, it remains unconstitutional in Hawai'i to build a nuclear plant. (Here's the actual language from the state Constitution: “No nuclear fission power plant shall be constructed or radioactive material disposed of in the State without the prior approval by a two-thirds vote in each house of the legislature.”)

Second, there is not available for purchase today a small (less than 100 megawatts) utility-configured nuclear plant. It's the Holy Grail of energy, and lots of companies are planning or designing them, but right now, you can't buy one, anywhere. (See this article in The Economist, and this article in the Wall Street Journal: )

Third, if there were one for purchase, it wouldn't be cheap. At a minimum, a plant twice the size of Kaua'i's entire grid is estimated to cost $5,000 per kilowatt to build, and that plant has not yet been built anywhere in the world, or even gone through permitting. (See the WSJ article above.) Other estimates have suggested a price that is multiples of that number.

There is a new international initiative to simply move nuclear power offshore. Russia is building a barge-mounted floating nuclear plant of 75 megawatts, the Akademik Lomonosov, which uses Russian maritime nuclear reactors. And we have previously written about the French proposal to put a nuclear plant on the ocean floor.

At a recent utility conference I attended, supporters of nuclear energy estimated permitting alone for a new nuclear plant in the United States could take 15 years. That's 2026 if we started right now.

Our energy needs are more pressing than that. Talking about nuclear in Hawai`i at this time is little more than a distraction.

The new cars: What's mean, what's green?

2011-02-15T09:05:00.002-10:00

The green car movement is advancing so fast that it can be hard to keep up.

We’ll discuss that further a little later on.

(Image: Bugatti Veyron, the fastest, most expensive and among the least fuel-efficient street cars in the world. Credit: www.bugatti.com)

If you don’t give a darn about green, and want to make some kind of statement by driving the most carbon-spewing mess of a vehicle you can, there are options.

GreenerCars.org has done us the favor of identifying the blackest of cars, its “meanest” as opposed to greenest car list.

What’s, from an environmental standpoint, the worst car in the world? According to GreenerCars, it’s the Bugatti Veyron. Makes your heart flutter how hot this car is. Its 1000 horsepower and 250-mile-an-hour top speed will cost you though. It’s also the most expensive street car in the world, at $1.7 million.

It gets 8 miles to the gallon in the city and 15 on the highway.

American cars take the next few “meanest” car slots: The Chevrolet Suburban K2500 and its twin the GMC Yukon XLK2500 is next, followed by the Dodge Ram 2500 Mega Cab. Another Chevy is in fourth, followed by a couple of Fords, the F250 and the F150 Raptor.

Everybody’s favorite bad guy, the Ford Expedition/Lincoln Navigator slides in at 12^th place on the mean list.

But if you insist on driving a car, and you don’t think life in the Islands is about helping damage the environment, there are, shall we say, less destructive options.

GreenerCars’ greenest vehicles of 2011 are, starting with the winner, the Honda Civic GX, Nissan Leaf, Smart ForTwo Cabriolet or Coupe, Toyota Prius, Honda Civic Hybrid, Honda Insight, Ford Fiesta SFE, Chevrolet Cruze Eco, Hyundai Elantra, Mini Cooper, Toyota Yaris and Chevrolet Volt.

The Smart Fortwo electric actually beats them all, but GreenerCars doesn’t consider it eligible for the list because hardly any are available in the United States.

It’s a nice mix of power supply on the green list. You’ve got gasoline cars, natural gas cars, electric cars, hybrids of various kinds.

Of course, this isn’t all apples to apples. Some of the cars are two seaters, and the Honda CR-Z wins that one in automatic and the Mercedes Smart Fortwo Cabriolet wins the manual two-seater category.

For compact cars, the Honda Civic GX wins for automatics and the Chevrolet Cruze Eco for manuals.

Need a midsize wagon? It’s the Kia Rondo. A minivan? The Honda Odyssey.

Pickup trucks are uniformly ugly when it comes to mileage. For a standard pickup, the Ford F-150 FFV is the top automatic and the Nissan Frontier six-cylinder is the top manual, inching out the Ford Ranger. For compact pickups, it’s the Chevy Colorado auto and the Ford Ranger manual.

If you need details on these or any other car, see. http://www.greenercars.org/greenbook.htm.

GreenerCars is a project of ACEEE, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. Here's their press release on the new car listings.

French plan nuclear power plants on the seafloor

2011-01-25T08:27:00.004-10:00

In the world of interesting ideas, here's one we hadn't thought of: Put nuclear power plants in the nearshore ocean.

Leave it to the French, who produce 75% of their electricity from nuclear power, to advance this idea.

(Image: A representation of the Flexblue power plant, from the DCNS website, http://en.dcnsgroup.com.)

One presumes that the nukes they're discussing would be placed in the relatively calm waters of the Mediterranean. In Hawaiian waters, recent hurricanes have been shown to scour the ocean floor as much as 60 feet down, and cause significant impacts even deeper.

The French plan is for these plants to be tethered "a few kilometers from shore" in water 60 to 100 meters (2-300 feet, roughly) deep.

France is calling the new proposal Flexblue. The developer is the French firm DCNS, which builds nuclear submarines for the French Navy. It is working with nuclear power plant builder AREVA, French electric utility firm EDF and French government research firm CEA.

Their plan is to design a movable nuclear plant—in essence a giant, tethered, propellorless nuclear submarine—that delivers power to shore via cable. It could be lifted with air bags to the surface for maintenance. It would produce 50 to 250 megawatts.

The plant's hull would be 300 feet long, about 40 feet around and shaped like a giant oxygen bottle. It would be movable, but would not have its own propulsion. A special ship would be used to transport it. Here is the DCNS website outline of the project: .

For this concept to ever be considered for Hawai'i, developers would require an unprecedented level of community approval. That's because of this line in the Hawai'i State Constitution: “No nuclear fission power plant shall be constructed or radioactive material disposed of in the State without the prior approval by a two-thirds vote in each house of the legislature.”

Golden gooney chick pix

2011-01-18T06:56:00.006-10:00

The short-tailed albatross pair at Midway Atoll have produced the first chick of their species born outside Japan territory in recorded history.

The event is considered monumental by biologists, as the species, whose head and neck color gives them the nickname "golden gooney," is seriously endangered. More on the birds at our previous posts here and here.

The new chick was well protected by its parents from the recent rainstorms and wind, and appeared to be thriving, Fish and Wildlife Service biologists said.

Humans are being kept away from the area. The images were taken using long lenses and by two service biologists operating from cover, so the birds would not be bothered.

In each of these images the chick's head and beak are barely visible between or next to the parent's leg. The body is obscured within the shallow depression that forms the nest.

More images are available at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwspacific/sets/72157625522391142 /with/5364606872/

The sex of the baby golden is not yet known. Those other birds in the images are mainly Laysan albatrosses. Laysan and black-footed albatrosses are the dominant members of their genus in the Hawaiian Island chain.

Golden gooney egg at Midway hatches: a first

2011-01-14T15:33:00.005-10:00

The golden gooney egg at Midway has hatched.

This story links to our previous post here. No pix yet of the chick. Image at right is an adult short-tailed albatross (aka golden gooney). Credit: USFWS John Klavitter.

No time to compose a complete post today, so here's the press release on the event from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Everything in italics is from the press release.

An important– and hopeful– milestone in the conservation of the endangered short-tailed albatross was recorded today at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. A short-tailed albatross hatched on Eastern Island, one of three small flat coral islands that comprise Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge about 1,200 miles northwest of Honolulu. This marks the first confirmed hatching of a short-tailed albatross outside of Japan in recorded history.

“We are all as excited as new parents,” said Daniel Clark, acting Refuge Manager. “The chick hatched during a major storm but the parent is doing an excellent job of protecting it and we are guardedly optimistic about its chances for survival.”

Establishing a new nesting colony is one of several important steps needed to continue the rare bird’s recovery because volcanic activity regularly threatens the short-tailed albatross’ main nesting grounds on Torishima Island. The species’ recovery also depends on reducing the threats of contaminants, especially oil contamination at sea and plastic ingestion; reducing bycatch of these seabirds from commercial fisheries; and addressing invasive species and other competitive species at nesting colonies.

A pair of short-tailed albatross first “met” at Midway Atoll Refuge during the breeding season four years ago (2007-08). During that season, they were observed spending only a little time together. During the second season (2008-09), their time together increased. By the third season (2009-10), they arrived at the Eastern Island breeding colony together and built a nest. This breeding season, on November 16, 2010, an adult short-tailed albatross was observed incubating a freshly laid egg. The pair have been under remote observation since.

The short-tailed albatross, listed as endangered since 1970, is the largest seabird in the North Pacific with a wing span of 7 to 7.5 feet. It is known for the golden, yellow cast on its head and nape; for its large, pink bill with blue tip and black border around the base; and for its pale bluish feet and legs. Its life span is 12 to 45 years. Pairs begin breeding at about seven or eight years of age, and mate for life.

Once thought to be the most abundant albatross species in the North Pacific with a population of more than 5 million adults, short-tailed albatross were hunted for feathers, and harmed in other ways, to near extinction.

By the 20th century, only two colonies remained on remote Japanese islands – Torishima Island in the Philippine Sea and Minami-kojima Island near Taiwan in the East China Sea. In 1939, the short-tailed albatross’ main breeding grounds on Torishima were buried under 30 to 90 feet of lava after a volcanic eruption. Population numbers plummeted to 10 nesting pairs. Since then, conservation efforts have helped increase the population to approximately 2,400 birds, which forage widely across the temperate/subarctic North Pacific and can be seen in the Gulf of Alaska, along the Aleutian Islands and in the Bering Sea.

Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge – since 2006 part of the Papahânaumokuâkea Marine National Monument – has actively planned to host a nesting colony for more than a decade, and this conservation effort seems to be paying off. Short-tailed albatross were rarely seen on Midway Atoll before the effort began. This season marks the pair’s first known mating and nesting attempt. Refuge staff and volunteers will continue to monitor the nest daily with the use of a remote video camera.

Barry Stieglitz, Project Leader for the Hawaiian and Pacific Islands National Wildlife Refuge Complex of which Midway Atoll is a part, said of the hatching: “This hatching – significant in and of itself – is really part of two stories. The first is about what the dedicated staff of the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge were able to accomplish on a shoestring over many, many patient years; slowly drawing these magnificent birds to Eastern Island with recorded calls and decoys. The second story started in 1903 when President Teddy Roosevelt sent the United States Navy to protect the albatross, sea turtles, and monk seals at Midway from poachers. These initial efforts grew into a larger vision to preserve and restore the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands ecosystem. We may not see this story finished in our lifetimes – it will be written over the decades to come, building on the work accomplished in the decades of the past.”

Imacts of warming on Hawaiian environment: new report

2011-01-12T08:29:00.004-10:00

It's not news that Hawai'i has more threatened and endangered species than any place as small as we are, but we're getting some new global publicity for it.

A new initiative calls the Islands one of the 10 places in the country that needs critically to be protected in the ongoing changing climate.

The Endangered Species Coalition and its partners have issued a new report: “It's Getting Hot Out There: The 10 Places to Save for Endangered Species in a Warming World.”

“The Hawaiian Islands are ground zero for climate change,” said Marjorie Ziegler, executive director of the Conservation Council for Hawai‘i.

The report says this about the global warming threats for Hawaiian species:

“Warming temperatures from global climate change assault the ecosystem on multiple fronts. First, as the sea levels rise with the increased melting of the arctic, low-elevation atolls will be inundated.

“Second, as oceans become more acidic, corals will bleach and die off more quickly, which will reduce sand production for coastal beach ecosystems and healthy reef ecosystems essential for fish and seabirds.

“Third, as temperatures rise, introduced mosquitoes carrying avian malaria and avian pox will breed at higher elevations, putting bird populations at increased risk of extinction. Because mosquitoes survive at specific temperature ranges, the cooler temperatures of the higher elevations have thus far protected some bird populations from the mosquitoes.”

It's not clear whether this is a ranked list, or just a compilation of the top 10, but here's now the Endangered Species Coalition set up the decem, using the language of a press release issued by the Conservation Council for Hawai'i.

1. The Arctic Sea Ice, home to the polar bear, Pacific walrus and at least 6 species of seal.
2. Shallow Water Coral Reefs, home to the critically endangered elkhorn and staghorn coral.
3. The Hawaiian Islands, home to more than a dozen imperiled birds, and 319 threatened and endangered plants.
4. Southwest Deserts, home to numerous imperiled plants, fish, and mammals.
5. The San Francisco Bay-Delta, home to the imperiled Pacific salmon, Swainson’s hawk, tiger salamander and Delta smelt.
6. California Sierra Mountains, home to 30 native species of amphibian, including the Yellow-legged frog.
7. The Snake River Basin, home to four imperiled runs of salmon and steelhead.
8. Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, home to the imperiled Whitebark pine, an important food source for animals, including the threatened Grizzly bear.
9. The Gulf Coast’s flatlands and wetlands, home to the Piping and Snowy plovers, Mississippi sandhill crane, and numerous species of sea turtles.
10. The Greater Everglades, home to 67 threatened and endangered species, including the manatee and the red cockcaded woodpecker.

Climate change may not promote hurricane increase

2010-12-29T08:51:00.004-10:00

Climate scientists have long known that hurricanes form much more easily when the water is warm.

In the past, they’ve told me the threshold temperature for promoting more tropical cyclone growth is about 28 degrees Centigrade, which is about 82 degrees Fahrenheit.

(Image: The average tropical sea surface temperature (black) and an estimate of the sea surface temperature threshold for convection (blue) have risen in tandem over the past 30 years. Credit: IPRC/SOEST/UHM.)

But does that threshold temperature change with a warming climate? New research suggests it does, which seems like good news for Hawai’i.

Researchers Nat Johnson and Shang-Ping Xie at the University of Hawai`i at Manoa’s International Pacific Research Center write in the journal Nature Geoscience that the threshold seems to rise along with climate warming.

They compared tropical ocean thunderstorm frequency with tropical sea temperatures over a 30-year period. Their finding was that the two measures track each other closely, with the threshold rising along with sea surface temperature at about a tenth of a degree Centigrade per year.

“The correspondence between the two time series is rather remarkable… The convective threshold and average see surface temperatures are so closely linked because of their relation with temperatures in the atmosphere extending several miles above the surface,” Johnson said.

The scientists say their research seems to indicate that this trend will continue.

What that means for the Islands is that warming climate does not necessarily mean more hurricane-type storms for Hawai’i—at least not purely because the water is warmer. One of the fears about climate and hurricanes has been that if the threshold didn’t rise, it could mean the water would be above the threshold longer each hurricane season, and we would be at greater risk.

N.C. Johnson and S.-P. Xie, 2010: Changes in the sea surface temperature threshold for tropical convection. Nature Geoscience, doi:10.1038/ngeo1004.

Musings on powering the family car: Gas, electric, pedals?

2010-12-24T09:40:00.005-10:00

Imagine the responses if all cars were electric and someone were trying to sell a gasoline-powered vehicle.

(Image: The electric Hungarian concept car Antro, which you can pedal into the garage if your battery runs out, and which splits into two cars for two-commuter households. Source: Antro Vehicle Development Public Benefit Company.)

What would folks say about gasoline cars?

“Gasoline? They can make fuel-air bombs out of that. It’s explosive! You’re going to pour that stuff down a tube and carry it around in your car? That's nuts! What about a collision?”

“Every city’s going to have dozens of gasoline stations with underground tanks filled with explosive liquid that could also leak and pollute groundwater? I don’t think so.”

“Internal combustion engines? They only operate at 25% efficiency. Enormous amounts of their energy are lost as heat. Makes no sense. They’re noisy. They stink. They pollute. You could kill yourself if you left one running in a closed garage.”

And so forth.

A fellow named Robert Llewellyn operates a video podcast on electric cars called Fully Charged. While driving a $2 million Honda hydrogen fuel cell-electric car, he had this comment:

“The internal combustion engine is just a clunky old bit of Steam Age technology. Pistons, crankshafts, valves, all that stuff … It’s clever and complex Victorian technology. It’s not what we should be doing now.”

That said, are there problems with these new post-Steam Age electric vehicles. But there is also any number of solutions for virtually all of them. Here are some pluses and minuses from your federal government.

And some of my thoughts:

Electric cars are expensive. I think of computers. I remember spending $2,000 for one of my first computers some three decades ago. It was quirky, had limited power, was heavy and there weren’t many programs for it. The laptop on which I’m writing this cost a third the amount, is portable, and has capacity and capability that leave that old machine fading like a bad memory. Like computers, they'll be cheaper later.

They’re not sexy and they’re so, well, golfcarty. Let me say two words. Tesla roadster.

Yeah, well, can I fit my kids and the groceries into one? Well, Tesla and Toyota are working on an electric RAV4. AMP has an electric Chevy Equinox now. Shucks, even Range Rover has one.

They’ll never get the price under control as long as they need a ton of batteries for range. Well, battery technology will certainly improve, at least somewhat, which will help. And getting charging stations into parking lots may mean you can fill up any time you stop for a couple of hours—to shop, to eat, to work. And if you charge up when you get home, you’re full at dawn every day. You know, that 300-mile range is mostly so you don't have to fill the car more than once every week or two, not because you drive 300 miles every day.

It’s all so inconvenient. You can charge your iPod and Blackberry and iPhone on a wireless induction plate. No need to even plug them in. Here’s one from Brookstone. And one from Slippery Brick. And there are others. I haven't tried these, but I hear they work fine. Can it work for cars? How about an induction charging plate in your garage. You drive in, and it automatically starts charging. No cables, no fuss. The folks at HaloIPT are among the many that are working on it.

What about long-distance driving? I’ll run out of power and there’s no quick-charge capability. Hard to say how this will work out eventually. Project Better Place is betting on simply driving into a station and quickly swapping your batteries for fresh ones. Others suggest that the induction plate technology cited above can be installed in highways—so you charge as you drive. Here’s a simple discussion on how it works.

The upshot of all this is that you can come up with lots of excuses, but either right now, or soon, pretty much all of them can be answered and put to rest.

Are electric cars the future? Or perhaps hybrids or hydrogen? Or something really quirky like the electric/human-powered Antro, which splits into two cars for two-income commuters and joins back into one car for weekend family outings?

Don't know, but it's clear that the future of alternative transportation is, well, really cool.

Ulua aukea and `ōmilu: these species sometimes cross

2010-12-23T11:26:00.004-10:00

A groundbreaking genetic study of two Hawaiian jacks, ulua aukea and `ōmilu, has reached a couple of interesting conclusions.

One is that while they often behave territorially, their genetic makeup suggests that either occasional long-distance voyaging or spawning characteristics establish each as a single genetic group across the main Hawaiian Islands.

Another is that there are occasional crosses between the species. In the neighborhood of 6 percent of the fish sampled were hybrids.

(Image: An ulua (Caranx ignobilis) from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Credit: NOAA's Coral Kingdom Collection, Dwayne Meadows, NOAA/NMFS/OPR)

The groundbreaking study, published in the January-February 2011 Journal of Heredity, was done by researchers Scott Santos and Yu Xiang of Auburn University in Alabama, and Annette Tagawa of the Hawai`i state Division of Aquatic Resources.

Santos has previously done extensive genetic work on the tiny anchialine pond shrimp of Hawai`i that are known as ‘ōpae `ula. His lab website is here.

First, some nomenclature. These fish are in the family Carangidae, whose members are variously called jacks, trevally, crevalle, cavalli, pompano and a few other names. In Hawai`i, big ones go by the general term ulua and little ones papio.

There are more than two dozen members of the family in the Hawaiian Islands, but this study looked at just two very popular sportfish: Caranx ignobilis, aka ulua aukea, aka white ulua; and Caranx melampygus aka `ōmilu aka bluefin trevally.

The white ulua (which turns black when it gets mad) is generally silvery with black spots, and can get huge—more than five feet long. The smaller `ōmilu is much more colorful, a grayish silver with a hint of gold, with blue spots and blue fins.

The researchers write that “catch data imply that (`ōmilu) is more common than any other jack species on Hawaiian coral reefs.” They had anglers collect genetic samples from fish caught on Kaua`i, O`ahu, Moloka`i. Maui and Hawai`ii Island. The samples were from 33 whites and 58 `ōmilu.

“Based on mitochondrial sequence data, we found no evidence of genetic structure in C. ignobilis and C. melampygus of the high Hawaiian Islands,” they wrote.

“Taken together, we conclude that the absence of genetic structure…is due to the active movement of adult individuals and/or the passive dispersal of eggs and juveniles at frequencies sufficient to homogenize populations in the high Hawaiian Islands.”

The crossing of the species has previously been reported. Santos and his partners, interestingly, found that in all the cases they studied, the hybrids are the result of a female `ōmilu crossing with a male ulua aukea. It’s not clear why.

Maybe male `ōmilu-female aukea crosses can’t survive. Maybe male aukea manage to intrude on `ōmilu spawning events, which occur more frequently simply because there are more`ōmilu .

“In either case, the potential importance of these hybrids to the evolution of the genus Caranx deserves further attention,” the writers conclude.

Source: Journal of Heredity J Hered (2011) 102 (1): 47-54. doi: 10.1093/jhered/esq101

Golden Gooney nesting at Midway; this is a big deal

2010-12-10T09:41:00.003-10:00

The dominant big birds of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are two albatross species, black-footed and Laysan albatrosses, but an intriguing extended courtship appears to open the door for a third—the exceedingly rare Golden Gooney.

(Image: They take turns. This is the male Golden Gooney incubating its egg in a photo taken Dec. 3, 2010, at Eastern Island in Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. Credit: USFWS John Klavitter.)

This is exciting stuff in the bird world, because this bird is reproducing today on only two small Japanese-owned islands and its numbers remain small.

A pair of Golden Gooneys or short-tailed albatross at this writing is sitting on what is believed to be a fertile egg for the first time in the Hawaiian Islands—at least in recent memory. Their nest is on Eastern Island, one of three flat coral islands within Midway Atoll .

The two birds have been showing up at Midway for several years, initially spending most of their time on separate islets, but occasionally getting together. Last year they made a nest together, but produced no egg. This year they're incubating an egg.

Both of the birds were initially banded on Japan's Torishima Island. The male is an old timer. He was banded as an adult in 1987. The female is a comparative youngster, having been banded as a juvenile in 2003.

Albatrosses generally mate for life, so if both survive, they may begin establishing a small colony of their species at Midway. The birds can live as long as 45 years.

These albatrosses have long arms. Their wingspan of 7.5 feet makes them the biggest bird in the North Pacific. (That's still not much compared to the 10-foot wingspan of the wandering albatross, which is limited to the Southern Ocean, where it spends its life circumnavigating Antarctica.)

The short-tailed albatross' nickname, Golden Gooney, comes from the yellow coloring on its head and neck. The nickname is the more accurate title, because their tails aren't really particularly short, when compared to other albatrosses.

Feather harvesting caused their numbers to crash a century ago, and then in 1939, a volcano eruption on Torishima destroyed the primary breeding grounds, leaving just 10 nesting pairs. Worldwide numbers have now climbed to 2,400 birds, still far below the estimated historic population of 5 million birds.

The Midway egg is not the first there. A short-tailed female is reported to have laid an infertile egg about 20 years ago at Midway. And this year, there are two eggs at Midway's western neighbor Kure Atoll, likely also infertile since there appears to be no male attending the nest.

New UH Research: Warming to rise to high end of climate change estimates

2010-12-03T08:40:00.005-10:00

One of the trickiest things in climate modeling is predicting what clouds will do.

That’s important, because heavy clouds reflect solar radiation, causing cooler conditions, and lower cloud cover let solar radiation reach the surface, increasing warming.

(Image: In this IPRC graphic, covering cloud cover over the Eastern Pacific for the past quarter century, the black line represents satellite-observed cloud cover, while the red line represents model-predicted cloud cover.)

New research done largely at the University of Hawai`i’s International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) is suggesting that clouds may thin when it’s warmer, meaning future climate change could be more severe than the most conservative estimates.

The researchers are conservative in their language, but they say their results are worrisome.

“If our model results prove to be representative of the real global climate, then climate is actually more sensitive to perturbations by greenhouse gases than current global models predict, and even the highest warming predictions would underestimate the real change we could see,” said IPRC researcher Kevin Hamilton.

It comes down to clouds.

“All the global climate models we analyzed have serious deficiencies in simulating the properties of clouds in present-day climate. It’s unfortunate that the global models’ greatest weakness may be in the one aspect that is most critical for predicting the magnitude of global warming,” said IPRC scientist Axel Lauer.

Researchers at the center have developed a new cloud prediction model that may help fine tune the predictive process. After developing their new model, they applied it to satellite imagery of the Eastern Pacific over the past 25 years. As the image with this post shows, it seems to be a pretty good match.

The center’s report on the research, “The Impact of Global Warming on Marine Boundary Layer Clouds over the Eastern Pacific—A Regional Model Study,” was written by University of Hawai`I scientists Lauer, Kevin Hamilton, Yuqing Wang and Vaughan Phillips, along with University of Wisconsin atmospheric scientist Ralf Bennartz. It was published in the Journal of Climate.

They call their new model iRAM, which is an acronym for something that already contains an abbreviation: IPRC Regional Atmospheric Model. In their careful terminology, they say that while this research may not be a slam dunk, it’s strongly suggestive that the ball goes through the hoop with some force (to poorly employ a sports analogy.)

“The iRAM results by themselves cannot be connected definitively to global climate feedbacks; however, among the (Global Climate Models) the cloud feedback in the full tropical–subtropical zone is correlated strongly with the east Pacific cloud feedback, and the cloud feedback largely determines the global climate sensitivity," the paper says.

In essence, the work suggests a troubling feedback mechanism may take place with continued warming, in which more warming means less clouds, which in turn means even more warming.

Our screens for e-book readers--it comes down to Nook and Kobo

2010-11-21T13:11:00.002-10:00

Searching for an e-reader is kind of like buying a car.

If you haven’t fallen in love with one from the first, making the decision is a long slog. You’ll be able to tell that from the tone of this article.

First, why an e-reader? I’m the kind of person who goes traveling with three to five paperbacks in the carry-on, because on a flight from the Islands to anywhere east of the Mississippi, I can easily go through two. This is a Hawai’i problem; Most folks elsewhere don’t have those kinds of flight times.

It’s both a volume and a weight issue. Years ago, when the excellent “The Hunt for Red October” first came out, I bought the hardcover for a trip, but sliced the hard covers off to save on size. Today, I won’t even consider a Clancy book; way too much bulk for the useful content, if you know what I mean.

In my search for a reader, I immediately discount the iPad. I have already bought the hype and purchased one. I used it. I spent an inordinate amount of time figuring out how to get books onto it. In precisely the right conditions, it’s wonderful as a reading device. But ultimately, I gave it away. I am over the glare, over the finger prints on the screen, and over the whole proprietary technology thing.

Which is my problem with Amazon and Kindle, arguably the most competent performer among the e-readers. If you want me wedded to your store and only your store, then give me the damn reader. If I want to read one of my personal documents on your machine, I need to send it to you, and pay money to have it converted to a Kindle format? Hello?

My e-reader needs are pretty simple, I think. Two basic things:

· I want to easily get diverse reading material into it. Books, personal documents, magazines, newspapers, and work documents (agendas, reports, environmental impact statements, legislation.)

· And I want the stuff to be easy to read on the device, wherever I am. That means anywhere from under a tree to on a plane, from in a meeting room under fluorescent lights to in the sack.

I guess I don’t need some of the features that are blurring the line between readers and computers. Like audio (my phone does that, thanks), web browsing (my laptop works fine, and I can also type on it), color (I’m not reading the pictures), touch screen (no way around the fingerprints, although the new oleophobic screen coatings are interesting.)

There are lots of resources for comparing e-book readers. Here’s a nice one. These folks really like the Kindle. Unfortunately, this and most other comparison charts only include the most popular electronic readers, and actually, the universe of e-readers is quite large.

Wikipedia has just about the most thorough comparison around.

Using that resource, and screening for non-touch screen, at least 1 gig of memory and ability to read library books (as a screen against proprietary systems), I got the Kobo eReader, Iriver Story and Bookeen Cybook Gen3. All of them can read both pdf and epub files, and though the Kobo eReader can’t read txt files, the others can. (And both Microsoft Word and Open Office Writer will convert to pdf, so that’s not a deal-breaker)

If we forget about the touchscreen ban, but require WiFi and at least 1 Gig of memory, then the list is Bookeen Cybook Orizon, Kobo Wireless eReader, Condor EGriver Touch, Spring Design Alex eReader, Barnes & Noble Nook and Entourage eDGe and Entourage Pocket eDGe.

Okay. One final screen: No touch screens, must have WiFi, at least a gigabyte of memory, must be able to read library books.

Kobo Wireless eReader is the only thing that comes up. However, the Barnes & Noble Nook has its touchscreen separate from its reading screen, so it’s also a finalist. There’s a simple comparison at this website, which includes the Kindle (for those not turned off by needing to be tethered to Amazon.)

So for this reader, it’s between the simpler Wireless Kobo and the significantly more fully-featured (and only slightly more expensive at $149 vs $139, at our last check) B&N Nook.

The Nook plays mp3 files, reads more files and also can browse the web. By contrast, the Kobo has a 25% longer battery life (2 weeks compared to 10 days), weighs about a quarter less (8 ounces compared to 11.2 ounces, or maybe 12.1—there’s been an issue about this.) Kobo is thinner by 20% (.4 inch compared to .5 inch.)

The Nook is Android-based and Kobo is Linux-based, if that matters to you. Some reviewers like to refer to the Kobo as Nook-lite.

The site eldergadget calls it a draw between these two, depending on which features you like.

That’s the research. Next, we’ll be going out to get a hands-on sense of which we like best. Which raises the additional question of what’s available on-island, one of the caveats about living in the Islands.

(Keep in mind that features, prices and models are changing all the time. If you do your own research, know that a lot of the online stuff is older, and the model you like may not be available in that same configuration by the time you’re ready to buy.)

The NEW Hawaii Home Energy Scorecard: Rate yourself

2010-11-15T09:25:00.005-10:00

The federal government is planning to spend most of the next year developing a national home energy scoring program.

(Image: The photo shows a device called a Kill A Watt meter, which allows you to determine how much electricity any home electrical product is using.)

Here at RaisingIslands, we’ve developed a prototype Hawai’i Home Energy Score program, which will be quicker, simpler, and user-friendly.

On its face, the Feds’ idea of a home energy score is a great idea. But our caveats: Must it be so mired in the molasses of bureaucracy that it takes months and months to develop? And must it be so complex that you need “trained and certified contractors” to run the numbers? And you already know there will be stuff about furnaces and in-floor heating that make it minimally useful for Hawai’i.

And really, doesn’t the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program already provide a complex environmental design scheme that requires trained and certified staff?

Microsoft has a generic home energy rating system on which you can plug in your neighborhood and home. It’s called the Hohm Score, but it’s an estimate rather than an actual assessment.

So let’s develop the Hawai’i Home Energy Score system. We’ll use a 10-point system, and allow fractional points. This system won’t work well for apartments, and we welcome comments that will help fine tune the system.

Hawaii Home Energy Score: Draft One.

1. Lights. Walk through your house and check every light (including exterior lights) that you or someone in the household has switched on anytime during the past week. If at least 75 percent are compact fluorescent or LED, give yourself half a point. How many are turned on nightly? If none of those is incandescent, give yourself another half point. (Bonus: .25 points if you have skylights or other daylighting options, if you scored less than 1 on the main scoring.)

2. Water heating. Do you use a solar water heater ? One point. Gas or instantaneous heater, half a point. (If you have and use both, you only get the half point). Total possible: 1 point.

3. Insulation: Is there effective insulation under your roof? Half a point. Alternatively, an attic fan is good for half a point. Are your walls also insulated? A quarter point. Are windows designed to reflect heat? A quarter point . Total possible: 1 point.

4. Water use: Are your toilets low-flow (1.3 gallons per flush)? Half a point. Are shower heads and sink faucets low-flow (2 gallons per minute or less)? Half a point. (Most Hawai’I water is pumped using electricity.) Total possible: 1 point.

5. Air circulation: Windows that open and fans. One point. Air conditioning, no points.

6. Are your appliances newer Energy Star appliances? We’ll keep it simple. Since, after a water heater, the biggest energy hog in the house is a refrigerator, if it’s Energy Star, give yourself one point. If you have a second refrigerator and it’s Energy Star, make that half a point. If a second reefer is non-Energy Star refrigerator, even if you have an Energy Star in the kitchen, you get no points. Total possible: 1 point.

7. Laundry: Half a point for an Energy Star efficient washer. One half point if you have and exclusively use a clothesline. Make that a quarter point if you have a clothesline but still occasionally use a dryer. Total possible: 1 point.

8. Grid: Are you totally off-grid on renewable power, or grid-connected but have no net electricity draw? 1 point. Photovotaic panels on the roof, but still also a net user of utility power? Half a point. Total possible: 1 point.

9. Phantom loads: Walk around your house with the lights off at night. One point if there are three or fewer little red or green LED lights on—on computers, televisions, entertainment centers, charging stations, routers, emergency flashlights, etc. Half a point if there are four to six. No points if there are seven or more. (You can use timers to control those that don’t need to be on all night.) Total possible: 1 point.

10. Good habits: Do you and your family turn off lights in vacant rooms, make sure clothes washing loads are near full, recycle and so forth? If you think you’re doing all you can, give yourself a point. If you’re doing okay but could improve, half a point. If you’re more brown than green, no points and resolve to move up in this ranking. Total possible: 1 point.

This is a first take on the Hawaii Home Energy Score. Please add comments to this post or email us at hawaiiwriter@gmail.com with ideas for improvements.

In the interest of full disclosure, I got a 7.5 ranking on this scale of 10. But I see a couple of places where I can improve.

A great resource for information on home energy use is Blue Planet Foundation’s site, http://blueplanetfoundation.org/home-energy.

Hop-skip-turnaround on climate science data source

2010-11-08T10:03:00.004-10:00

The American Geophysical Union, in an interesting little hop-skip-turnaround, is insisting that its plan for a reporter's scientific resource base is not an anti-climate-denial initiative.

Although you might be forgiven for thinking it would work that way.

The AGU first operated its Climate Q&A Service during the climate summit in Copenhagen last year. The goal was to provide a place for reporters to seek correct basic information amid all the competing claims about what is or is not going on.

The AGU is aiming to restart its service, to tell folks what's going on, but, importantly, not what to do about it.

The organization decided clarification was needed after the Los Angeles Times messily blended the AGU initiative with others aimed at actually affecting policy. If you read it, be clear that the AGU initiative and the "Climate Response Team" are two entirely separate things. It is not clear in the article, and that has confused lots of folks with different positions on climate change.

“Climate Q&A Service...aims simply to provide accurate scientific answers to questions from journalists about climate science,” the AGU says. You can read the organization's full press release here.

“AGU's Climate Q&A Service addresses scientific questions only. It does not involve any commentary on policy. Journalists are able to submit questions via email, and AGU member-volunteers with Ph.D.s in climate science-related fields provide answers via email,” the organization said.

But despite all its protestations, at some level, it will necessarily act as a debunking service. That's because it will operate in a world in which you have folks aggressively promoting wild, sketchily supported assertions, like, “It's not really warming,” or “Arctic ice isn't melting” or “Sea levels aren't rising.”

In Hawai'i as an island state with limited options, correct information is critical. We require good data to deal with the impacts of ocean acidification, sea level rise, changing rainfall patterns, storm frequency and more.

And in a world in which many news outlets get by without a dedicated science writer, a trusted resource like AGU will help replace a veteran science writer's well-worn Rolodex of sources.

Hilo to Kona and back, twice, in a four-seater electric car. On one charge.

2010-10-27T08:43:00.002-10:00

The impossible just takes a little longer.

The German firm DBM energy is claiming it has solved the intractable problems of electric cars. (Here’s their website, but you’ll need to read German.)

They’re claiming they can produce an electric car that can get from Hilo to Kona, and back, twice, on a single charge—and have plenty of juice left to charge your cell phone and your iPod.

Electric vehicles always worked, but they couldn’t go fast, and they couldn’t go far, the batteries took up all the storage space, and it took forever to recharge them.

Well, a lot of folks with very large brains have been working on those issues for a few years, and little by little, the barriers are crashing down.

You’ve got your fast cars, like the diminutive but speedy Tesla Roadster.

And if you pack enough batteries in, you can go far, like the Japanese team this year that filled a Daihatsu with batteries and drove it 625 miles (they had to take out the passenger seat to make battery space, and average speed was 25 miles an hour).

One solution has been what some engineers smilingly call a “workaround.” The hybrid, for instance: an electric car that also has a gas engine for backup. Or the battery-swap solution: if it takes forever to charge a battery, just change the batteries when you need a charge. Of course, that means you need a lot more battery packs—ones for driving and ones for charging.

Neither is elegant, but they can work.

DBM Energy has a lithium battery technology called Kolibri AlphaPolymer. It holds a great big charge, and according to DBM, it recharges in six minutes from a standard outlet. The company says it has outfitted an Audi A2 with its batteries, kept its four seats, and driven 375 miles with power to spare.

It’s not clear whether any independent agency has tested these claims, but DBM Energy already runs its batteries in things like warehouse forklifts, where they presumably get a pretty good workout.

Have they done the impossible? And what might the impossible cost? We’ll see.

Hypergreen at Hawai'i Prep: state's latest LEED Platinum building

2010-10-22T07:58:00.004-10:00

The most environmentally friendly buildings in the world amount to a pretty short list, and just a handful of them are in Hawai'i.

The latest of these is Hawai'i Preparatory Academy's new energy lab, just the third Hawai'i building to gain Platinum Certification under the LEED program. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

(Image: horses, and a LEED-Platinum building in the pastures of Waimea. Credit: HPA)

Others are Hawaii Baptist Academy Middle School in Honolulu and the Hawaii Gateway Energy Center at the state's Natural Energy Lab in Kona.

The HPA center is the first to get a Platinum certificate under the new LEED for Schools 2.0 rating system.

Our previous post on the opening of the energy lab is here.

Why go to the difficult task of getting such a certification?

“The green building movement offers an unprecedented opportunity to respond to the most important challenges of our time, including global climate change, dependence on non-sustainable and expensive sources of energy and threats to human health.

“The work of innovative building projects such as the Energy Lab at Hawaii Preparatory Academy is a fundamental driving force in the green building movement,” said Rick Fedrizzi, president U.S. Green Building Council.

The energy lab is still in the running for an even tougher green certification, the Living Building Challenge, another environmentally appropriate building ranking system.

What did the energy lab designers and builders do to impress the raters? A sampling: It collects waste heat from its computers; The lab is liberally supplied with hundreds of sensors that track electricity and water use; All wood is from salvaged sources; Solar panels produce its power.

For pictures of the facility, see here.

Here's the school's Facebook link.

Hawai'i gripped by historic drought; heavy rain predicted for winter

2010-10-17T08:32:00.004-10:00

It's hardly news that Hawai'i is dry, but the extent of the drought may reach record proportions.

Lawns are brown, pasture colors in some areas have gone from yellow to gray, water bills are spiking as residents try to keep their yards alive, cattle and horses need special attention because food is short and normal water sources have dried up.

(Image: the U.S. Department of Agriculture drought map for Hawaii, effective Oct. 12. The darker the red, the dryer it is. Yellow is just “abnormally dry.” Credit: USDA.)

Hawai'i is in the grip of a historic drought—maybe a record drought year if late-year rains don't fill in soon. (And they should, but not until after November. More on that later.)

Agricultural ventures report significant farm losses for tree crops, flowers and any unirrigated fields, pasture production down by as much as 90 percent in some areas, and cattle herds being culled by 30 percent.

The federal government has a drought monitor with five levels of severity, and much of leeward Hawai'i is under the worst conditions, “D4, Exceptional drought.” (The Drought Intensity Categories are: D0 … Abnormally Dry; D1 ... Moderate Drought; D2 ... Severe Drought; D3 ... Extreme Drought; and D4 ... Exceptional Drought.)

Many parts of the state are working on all-time record dry conditions, with small fractions of normal rainfall. Here's the state drought map.

The comparative severity is graphically shown on the national drought monitor map.

The only good news in the scenario is that the National Weather Service predicts the drought will break sometime after November, and that a wet winter is forecast.

It seems bizarre under these arid conditions to be planning for heavy rains and floods, but that's the recommendation of the Weather Service:

Wet season preparedness guidelines:

Clean gutters and drainage ditches

If you live in a flood-prone area, identify your evacuation routes ahead of time

Plan for more rainy weather impacts

Increased road travel times or possible detours due to flooding

Outdoor activities may be postponed, canceled, or adjusted

Increased potential for lightning strikes

Be prepared for possible power outages

Move indoors during a thunderstorm

Do you have a NOAA Weather Radio?

Hawaii 12th in energy efficiency; there's more to do

2010-10-13T09:17:00.001-10:00

The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy has ranked Hawai'i 12^th among the states for energy efficiency.

That's up from both 2006 and 2008, when Hawai'i was tied for 15^th. The scorecard was compiled by Humboldt State University and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The fact that we're improving is a good sign, in part because everyone is improving, and we're doing slightly better than keeping up with the crowd.

But clearly, and particularly in the state with the highest energy costs in the nation, there's much more that we could do. Our state gets a score on the ACEEE ranking of just 24.5 out of possible 50 points.

The most heavily weighted judging category covers “Utility and Public Benefits Fund Efficiency Programs and Policies” which is a total of 20 possible points and Hawai'i gets 12. This one covers electricity efficiency programs and savings from them, natural gas efficiency, performance incentives and established targets.

Clearly, some of these rankings are a little arbitrary (We don't use much natural gas, and despite a zero score on this measure, Hawai'i still ranked 10^th overall in the larger category.)

On Transportation, we get 2 out of a possible 8. It's another area where the rankings are iffy. Hawai'i got no points for transit funding, which means these folks haven't been listening to our state's rail debates, the expanding bus system on Kaua'i, and so forth. We also got no points because our state lacks vehicle tailpipe emission standards, which 15 states do have. We did get a point (the maximum possible) for our state's support of alternative fuel vehicles.

On Building Energy Code we get 4 of 7. Our state is working on enacting a high-energy-efficiency building code, but we're not there yet, accounting for this score.

On Combined Heat and Power, we get 3 of 5. This refers to a power generation system in which the heat from a generation unit is recovered to improve efficiency or produce more power. It's also called cogeneration. This category also includes a basket of measures, including rate structure, incentives for distributed power systems, and others.

On state government initiatives we get 3.5 of 7. The state got full marks for its various “lead by example” demonstration efforts, which presumably include retrofits of state buildings, support for electric vehicles and so forth. We did poorly on our commitment to research and development, and also poorly on the state's tax incentives, loan programs and other financial support for efficiency.

On Appliance Efficiency Standards, we get 0 of 3. Not a proud ranking. “States have historically led the way when it comes to establishing standards for appliances and other equipment,” the report says. And while the federal government has standards for a lot of equipment, it doesn't govern everything. This measure looks at the amount of energy saved by such standards, where they exist.

So, the ACEEE ranking isn't entirely fair, or entirely up-to-date, but it's a useful measure for identifying places where, as a state, we need work.

Are motorcycles the obvious environmental choice? It depends.

2010-10-04T09:17:00.003-10:00

The European Union is considering fuel economy regulations for motorcycles, an idea which, at first glance, seems like a bit of overkill.

(Image: BMW's 1092cc K1100RS, which the BMW website says has a fuel economy of 5.8 liters per 100 kilometers at 120 kph, which works out to 1.5 gallons per 62 miles at 74 miles an hour, or about 41 miles to the gallon. Credit: BMW.)

The initial proposed regulations are for exhaust pollutants other than greenhouse gases, but clearly, that could be the next step.

Seems odd, since one might be forgiven for thinking that cycles would be the clear environmental choice over any car, given the reduced road friction of two wheels, reduced engine sizes, reduced vehicle weight and so forth.

Would a Hawai'i highway be more energy efficient it it were filled with bikes instead of cars?

Well, it's complicated.

(And as we'll see a little later, a lot of the complication deals with how many individuals are on board the bike or riding in the car.)

Turns out, for example, that if you set a 2007 Harley-Davidson Road King Classic next to a Toyota Prius, the Prius wins the straight mileage calculation. The Harley is listed at 32.5 city/45 miles a gallon highway, while the Prius comes in at 51/48.

But that might be a little like comparing a Clydesdale to a Shetland pony. From some perspectives, the Harley is a big, gorgeous, powerhouse road warrior, and the hybrid Prius a prim, schoolmarmy fuel sipper.

Within the motorcycle category, there is plenty of variation, and often it falls in predicable areas. Engine size, for example.

The Honda Shadow Spirit 750 from 2005 gets 50/55 on the mileage scale, while its little brother the Honda Rebel 250 gets 73/86. Yamaha's 125 gets 90/99.

Yeah, size matters. The big issues are how big the engine is, how heavy the bike is, and how you drive it. Certainly, manufacturers' engine design is a factor as well, along with tire design, wind resistance and lots more. This article at MotorcycleCruiser nicely reviews the issues.

The upshot, oddly, is that on a per-passenger-seat basis, fuel-efficient cars are often more efficient than motorcycles.

But if you're riding to work alone in your car, then almost any option (walk, bicycle, motorcycle, bus, carpool) is a better option from a fuel and climate perspective.

`Ōhelo berries going mainstream

2010-09-27T13:20:00.003-10:00

‘Ōhelo berries are among the great treasures of Hawai'i, and they may soon be more available than ever.

Rich and red when ripe, they're great for munching off the bush while hiking in the uplands, or for making jam for breakfast.

(Image: `Ōhelo bush full of berries. Credit: Francis T.P. Zee, ARS.)

These relatives of cranberries, Vaccinium reticulatum, can be sweet, or sour, or bland. There are multiple varieties that grow in the uplands of most of the islands.

They are also attractive compact shrubs with foliage that ranges from red and orange to green.

Researchers have now done the work to select tasty, attractive cultivars for both fruit collecting and ornamental uses.

In a press release, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it is the first cultivar of its kind to be released, and that one of the key reasons is to provide a viable stock that will help reduce pressure on wild native environments.

“As people scour the landscape to harvest this delectable berry for use in jam, jelly and pie filling, they unfortunately disrupt the fragile habitats where this plant grows,” the release said. (The release says the plant is limited to Maui and Hawai'i uplands, but it's also found on other islands.)

Horticulturist Francis T.P. Zee, of the USDA's Agricultural Research Service's Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center in Hilo, led the work, in collaboration with other ARS folks, including Amy Strauss, and Claire Arakawa, and interested individuals at the University of Hawaii, Big Island Candies, and the Big Island Association of Nurserymen.

They used wild-collected seed to grow many plants, then collected the one best suited for fruit production. They named that cultivar “Kilauea. They also used tissue culture and cuttings to develop potted plants suitable for such uses as bonsai.

For an extensive discussion of the procedures and progress, see this University of Hawai'i Cooperative Extension Service report.

Automotive X-Prize under-delivers

2010-09-20T07:43:00.009-10:00

You have to wonder what the folks at the Progressive Automotive X-Prize were thinking.

These are the folks that were offering a $10 million prize for the company that could develop a four seat car that can get 100 miles to the gallon, with a design people would buy.

(Image: Is this the new family car? A couple of models presented by X-Prize victor Edison2. Credit: Progressive Automotive X-Prize)

We have given their project a fair amount of coverage at RaisingIslands. You can search our archives for those stories. Here is our piece on the finalists.

They did a lots of testing and calculating. They decided, unfortunately, to split the prize--only half would go to the four seater, and the other half would be so split between two-seaters with side-by-side seating and tandem seating.

They gave one of the latter to a teardrop-shaped thing that is very aerodynamic and unlikely to go mainstream, the Li-ion Motors “Wave II.” And the other went to a covered motorcycle with training wheels that deploy at slow speed, the Peraves X-Tracer “E-Tracer.”

Sigh. Both are electric, which is cool. Both got in the neighborhood of the equivalent of 200 miles to the gallon, which is way cool. But these things are not going to move us into the brave new energy future. Neither will be the family car.

Which was the point, we thought, of the X-Prize competition.

Finally, we have the $5 million main class winner. This would be the one that would rock the world, right?

Sorry.

The prize went to Edison2's Very Light Car, which has detached wheels, like a go-cart with cowlings. It got 102 miles to the gallon with a quarter-liter, 40-horse engine running 85 percent ethanol and the rest gasoline.

Chances are, you are not going to drive this thing to the supermarket, or use it to carpool the kids to school.

Progressive Insurance is to be congratulated for the effort, which brought a lot of attention to the field of energy efficient vehicles, and did credit to the company.

We kind of wish they’d stuck with the original plan, which we understood to be a goal of providing the world with a vision of an automobile that was hyper-efficient, and wouldn’t look so much like a kit car in someone’s garage.

The efficiency of the electric models is tantalizing, and one wonders whether an electric four seater with traditional styling might have actually met the requirements of the X-Prize.

Ó Jan TenBruggencate