Island ground water reacts to big surf

Deep under the islands' surfaces, the groundwater is moving.

It flows, of course, from the mountains toward the sea. As rain falls on the surface of islands, it percolates down and forms a vast underground lake within the volcanic matrix. That lake is constantly at flow seaward, where the island's fresh water leaks into the salt water surrounding the islands. In some areas, swimmers can feel its cool flow where it enters the ocean below the surface near shore.

But the groundwater also moves up and down.

Researchers have long known that the water in the islands' aquifers rises and falls with changes in atmospheric pressure. But it also moves with the tides, and with periods of storm surf along the coast.

When storm surf pounds an island's shore, the change in the height of the groundwater can be measured in wells miles inland, according to research by Kolja Rotzoll, of the U.S. Geological Survey's Pacific Islands Water Science Center.

Rotzoll and Aly El-Kadi, both associated with the University of Hawai'i UH Dept of Geology and

Geophysics Water Resources Research Center, published their study on the subject in the Journal of Hydrology.

The work was part of Rotzoll's work toward his doctorate degree. Its aim was to better understand the movement of water in the aquifers under islands. In research on Maui, he found that the impact of a major storm surf event on the coast can be measured as a rise in the water level in wells more than three miles in from the shore.

“The change in water level travels through the aquifer and can be detected as a net rise in the ground-water table kilometers away from the coast,” he said in an email.

The effect is apparently the reaction to a rise in sea level at the coast. When storm surf occurs, it shoves vast amounts of water up against the island, creating a rise in the overall level of the water.

That rise is reflected in the groundwater, although the damping effect of the island's rock does interfere with the reaction. The farther inland you measure it, the less is the rise in groundwater, and the longer is the delay in a reaction to a coastal surf event, says the paper by Rotzoll and El-Kadi.

“The research shows how ocean processes (waves, tides) are connected with responses in the aquifers,” Rotzoll said.

In areas with dense rock, the flow of fresh water can be slowed, and the reaction of ocean events like storm surf can be muted. In these areas, the water level may be significantly higher near the coast than the sea level.

On the other hand, in areas where there is little interference with the water flow, the movement is speeded, and coastal areas have groundwater much closer to the sea level.

“If the coast does not have a confining sediment layer like we have in the Pearl Harbor/Honolulu area, the water-table is close to sea level near the coast. Also due to the missing caprock, ocean water-level changes are transmitted more easily. Hence, in times of high tides or big swell events, the natural ground-water flow gradient could be reversed, which has consequences for not only ground-water flow, but also contaminant transport and might impact water quality,” Rotzoll wrote.

The Kona coast, where water readily flows through porous lava rock, is an example of an area where the action of the ocean can have an exaggerated impact on the groundwater near the shore, he said.

© 2008 Jan W. TenBruggencate

Monumental monument management plan, made manageable

If there were ever a way to scare people away from a document, how about putting it in four volumes and letting it run to 1,200 pages?

That's the new Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument Draft Management Plan.

(Photo: IKONOS satellite image of Midway Atoll. NOAA photo.)

Something that long might work for Harry Potter, but certainly not for a planning document.

Even the executive summary is long. It runs five pages, and it's more a summary of the table of contents than a summary of what the plan actually says.

This is not to argue that it could have been done shorter—the task was enormous.

But there are ways to make sense of this thing—which even the Governor said she wouldn't read—if you want to trot out to your local library to pore over it, or wanted to download it (from http://papahanaumokuakea.gov/).

First of all, understand that it's not really a plan. It is no less than 24 different plans, and you could simply read the background information and the plans in which you're specifically interested, and you'd perhaps save yourself 1,000 or more pages.

Now you're down to just a fair-sized novel.

Here, then, is a reading guide.

Most folks ought to read the nearly 80 pages of introduction, because this gives you the essence of why we as a society are going through this exercise. One point is the immensity of the refuge—there's a nice map in which the monument is overlaid on the continental United States, and here you learn that if you could drive its length, the monument would be the equivalent of a passage from Maryland to Minnesota.

There's some information on the volcanic origin of the archipelago, of water temperatures and currents, and a nice, concise natural history of each of the 10 major reefs, islands or atolls that make up the emerged portion of the region.

For school kids, the introduction could serve as the basis for countless school papers, with a compilation of the human history, natural history, ecosystem threats and other issues.

After the introduction are a couple of dozen pages on the remarkably complex management framework that oversees the monument, led by a state agency (DLNR) and two federal agencies with often competing missions—the Fish and Wildlife Service (think conservation) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (in the Department of Commerce).

What they've agreed on in the draft is a mission to “Carry out seamless integrated management to achieve strong, long-term protection and perpetuation of NWHI ecosystems, Native Hawaiian traditional and customary cultural and religious practices, and heritage resources for current and future generations.”

NWHI is, of course, the geographical name of the region, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

The draft management plan then breaks down its mission into 22 separate action plans. We won't discuss any detail here, but we'll list their names:

Marine Conservation Science Action Plan, Native Hawaiian Culture and History Action Plan, Historic Resources Action Pan, Maritime Heritage Action Plan;

Threatened and Endangered Species Action Plan, Migratory Birds Action Plan, Habitat Management and Conservation Action Plan;

Marine Debris Action Plan, Alien Species Action Plan, Maritime Transportation and Aviation Action Plan, Emergency Response and Natural Resource Damage Assessment Action Plan;

Permitting Action Plan, Enforcement Action Plan, Midway Atoll Visitor Services Action Plan (which is different from the Midway Atoll Visitor Services Plan, also included in this draft);

Agency Coordination Action Plan, Constituency Building and Outreach Action Plan, Native Hawaiian Community Involvement Action Plan, Ocean Ecosystems Literacy Action Plan;

Central Operations Action Plan, Information Management Action Plan, Coordinated Field Operations Action Plan, Evaluation Action Plan.

The second volume of the four-volume draft monument management plan is an environmental assessment. Because it must act as a stand-alone document, it contains much of the same information in Volume I, but it looks at the data in different ways, considers consequences of and alternatives to many of the actions that could take place in the monument. The volume also contains a cultural impact assessment.

Volume III has a number of features, including the draft visitor services plan for Midway Atoll, including both the World War II historical side and the natural history side. Plus some other appendices, including the Presidential proclamation that formed the monument and the early regulations enacted to manage it.

Also, here is a list of the things people have to go through when working or visiting the most protected islands of the monument, to prevent their carrying pests or weeds there. Like wearing brand-new, never-worn clothing that's been frozen for at least two days—to kill anything that might be on or in it.

Volume IV consists, in its entirety, of the 24th plan in the draft monument management plan. It's the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge Conceptual Site Plan, and—if you're still paying attention 1,100 pages into the series—it has the best photographs in the entire draft plan.

Midway is important, of course, because it's the only part of the monument that average folks would ever get to see, since most of the refuge is limited to scientific and some Hawaiian cultural activities.

Public meetings on the draft plan are scheduled around the state and in Washington DC. The Hawai'i meetings are all from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Here's the schedule:

O'ahu: Waianae Parks and Recreation Complex, June 9, 2008
Maui: Kahului / Maui Arts & Cultural Center, June 12, 2008
Lana'i: Lana'i High & Elementary School, June 13, 2008
Moloka'i: Kaunakakai / Kulana 'Oiwi Halau, June 16, 2008
Oahu: He'eia Visitors Hall, June 19, 2008
Hawai'i Island: Kona / King Kamehameha Hotel, June 17, 2008
Hawai'i Island: Hilo / Mokupapapa Discovery Center, June 18, 2008
Kauai: Lihu'e / Hilton Kauai Beach Resort, June 23, 2008
O'ahu: Honolulu / Japanese Cultural Center, June 24, 2008

The Washington meeting is slated from 1 to 4 p.m. June 11 at the Auditorium in the Main Department of the Interior Building.

The best resource for information may be http://papahanaumokuakea.gov/, but there's other information at these websites:

http://www.hawaiianatolls.org/

http://papahanaumokuakea.gov/education/NavChange.html

http://hawaii.gov/dlnr

http://www.fws.gov/pacific/

http://www.noaa.gov/

© 2008 Jan W. TenBruggencate

Shaving peaks and educating the grid: The new face of electrical power

A unique public-private partnership will address some of the world's key future energy issues at the Maui Lani Substation of Maui Electric.
(Photo: New program could result in rewiring of the grid.)

The program—which is a piece of a three-year, $50 million, nationwide energy research effort--is designed to find ways to bring the power grid into the modern age, including allowing power grids to handle far more renewable power than they now can.

The $15 million Hawai'i project—one of nine nationwide—would be funded with $7 million in U.S. Department of Energy funds and $8 million from a range of partners that include research institutions, utilities and renewable energy providers.

It will be headed by the University of Hawai'i's Hawai'i Natural Energy Institute. Partners include General Electric, Hawaiian Electric Company, Inc., Maui Electric Company, Columbus Electric Cooperative, the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Sentech and UPC Wind.

Two significant problems with today's energy grid are these:

• Power use has significant peaks and valleys. Utilities need to have generators to meet the peaks, even though those costly generators are superfluous during the rest of the day.

• Utilities are running up against limits in the amount of intermittently available renewable energy they can now handle, in part because their grids are unable to respond quickly to variability, such as sudden drops in wind power when the breeze fails.

The new research effort is aimed at increasing the efficiency of the energy infrastructure and increasing its ability to handle renewable power.

One goal will be smooth out the day's load curve, primarily by reducing peak load by as much as 15 percent.

Other goals will be to look into energy storage techniques, distributed generation and responsive loads.

• Energy storage would allow, for instance, solar photovoltaic power collected during the day to be available at night.

• Distributed generation refers to the move from a central power generation scheme to one in which power is generated at many, smaller production sites—like wind farms, solar arrays, wave power facilities and more.

• Responsive loads refers to methods for reducing the power demand as needed when there's a supply shortage. This can be done in a number of ways, including the concept of a “smart grid.” An electrical system could be reconfigured to provide two-way communication. In one scenario, utility customers could identify in advance the loads (such as water heating or swimming pool motors) that could be turned off in a crisis, and the utility could then avoid system-wide blackouts or brownouts by shutting off the designated loads—leaving other functions like lighting and power for electronics, unaffected.

“The deployment of this distribution management system will benefit Hawai‘i by providing improved reliability and power quality by addressing concerns such as energy grid congestion, energy reserves and intermittent power supplies,” said a press release from Gov. Linda Lingle's office.

Lingle announced the new program last week, along with Ken Kolevar, Assistant Secretary for Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability with the U.S. Department of Energy.

“This is a groundbreaking project that again highlights Hawai‘i as a national center for new energy development. This project will help set the foundation to improve the reliability and efficiency of Hawai‘i’s electric grid system while allowing greater utilization of renewable energy sources,” Lingle said.

The effort is part of the new Hawai'i Clean Energy Initiative, announced in January 2008. HCEI is a partnership between the state and the Department of Energy, and seeks to move Hawai'i to have 70 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030..

In a related issue, the Department of Energy recently announced that it will establish a research station at UPC Wind's Kaheawa Wind Farm on Maui. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory will collect data at the wind generation factility as a Remote Research Affiliate Partner Site.

© 2008 Jan W. TenBruggencate

Snakes and other scary invasives targeted

The threat of new invasive species in Hawai'i grows with the expansion of trade, and with each increase in incoming cargo.

(Image: A brown tree snake fang. USGS photo.)

A bill that is moving well in the Hawai'i state Legislature seeks to help fund the inspection of cargo with a $.50 per ton fee. It is HB2843, and was in conference committee at this writing.

Invasive species have cost the Islands plenty in recent years—think about the bug that has killed off much of the state's ornamental wiliwili, causing landscapers to simply chain saw the trees down. And the aquatic weed that choked Lake Wilson, with an extensive, expensive cleanup cost.

“The coqui frog, Salvinia molesta, Miconia calvescence, ohia rust, nettle caterpillar, and little fire ant are all present in Hawaii, disrupting the delicate balance of our ecosystems, crowding out native species, and reducing the biodiversity of our islands. Other harmful species like the papaya mealybug, Erythrina gall wasp, Asian citrus psyllid, and Varroa mite have the potential to devastate our environment and agriculture if allowed to become widespread in Hawaii and spread unchecked by natural predators,” the bill says.

The elephant in the room, though, is a serpent. The threat of the brown tree snake is difficult to understate. In Guam, it has wiped out virtually all native birdlife, causes regular electrical outages, and crawls into babies' cribs to bite them.

Says the bill in the Legislature:

“In Guam, the accidental introduction of the brown tree snake has resulted in widespread devastation. Without natural predators or competition for food, brown tree snake populations have grown exponentially, causing mass extinctions of endemic birds. Where there were once bird songs, the silent forests of Guam are now home to as many as fifteen thousand snakes per square mile. Just one new pest like the brown tree snake could forever change the character of the Hawaiian islands.”

Despite a concerted effort, searchers still haven't found the latest apparent snake import, which was spotted last week at Marine Corps Base Hawai'i.

A particular concern is a dramatic increase in construction at military facilities in Guam, which will require considerably more movement between Guam and Hawai'i.

Christy Martin, Public Information Officer for CGAPS, the Coordinating Group on Alien Pest Species, said that current efforts in Hawai'i are “inadequate to ensure that all incoming cargo, ships and planes are inspected for brown treesnakes.”

Last year's Legislature placed a $1 charge on big incoming ocean shipping containers, but that did not cover the considerable amount of containerized air cargo and stuff that comes that's not in containers. House Bill 2843 would address that, she said.

It would replace the shipping container charge with the $.50 per ton fee on all cargo.

For an update on the bill, see http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session2008/hearingnotices/CONF_04-25-08_AGR_RECONVENE_.htm.

© 2008 Jan W. TenBruggencate

Ocean is striped with opposing currents--now, to find them...

Outrigger canoe steersmen look for the currents flowing the way they're going, which often can be only a few yards from flows that work against them.

Open ocean sailors can describe the oceanic furor where a major east-flowing current slides alongside a west-flowing section.

Scientists, including ones at the University of Hawai'i, have now determined that these changes in direction are amazingly common in the ocean. They are referring to the “striped” currents that are superimposed on every ocean.

In an article printed in New Scientist, researchers describe being shocked to discover the zebra quality of the oceans. A team led by Peter Niiler, of Scripps Institute of Oceanography studied the data from more 10,000 buoys drifting on the open oceans, and whose movements are tracked by satellite.

Clearly, the researchers found, the drifting buoys were being pushed by the wind, and were reacting the known major currents. But there was something else going on as well.

They were finding that buoys appeared to be responding to side-by-side flows in opposite directions. And where these currents met, there were either troughs or peaks in sea level. The current sections were about 90 miles wide, and existed all over the ocean.

“My god, we've never seen these before,” Niiler said in the New Scientist article.

The implications of the findings are significant, although the article didn't go into some of them. Although the water movement is comparatively slow, if such current flows are identifiable and predictable, for example, they could be used by oceanic shipping to reduce travel times as well as fuel consumption.

The researchers went out into the eastern Pacific to see whether they could actually detect on the water what they were seeing in the satellite data.

University of Hawai'i oceanographer Nikolai Maximenko, an associate researcher with the International Pacific Research Center, was among those who went out to check on the currents.

“Their existence is so surprising that we had to prove first that they are not an artefact of satellite data,” Maximenko said.

They found the currents. They were just oozing along, at about 120 feet per hour. Barely enough to notice, which may be why nobody noticed them before, he said.

“Only a very lazy canoeist would notice the effect,” Maximenko said.

On the other hand, the difference between going with the flow and going against it is 240 feet an hour, and in a four-hour boat race, being in the right flow could make a 1,000-foot difference at the finish. More than enough to make the difference.

The flows appear to extend deep into the ocean, and they could play a role in moving nutrients and ocean temperatures around. But researchers still don't know why they're there.

“They are a fascinating new aspect to the ocean's circulation, but the jury is still out on the mechanisms leading to their formation,” said Princeton University researcher Geoff Vallis.

© 2008 Jan W. TenBruggencate