When biology meets geology: Birds vs the volcano

The folks facing the daunting task of saving Hawai'i's endangered forest birds are also handling the daunting challenge of doing it on an erupting volcano.

(Photo: A Hawai'i island palila, Loxioides bailleui. Jack Jeffrey photo via U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.)

The Keauhou Bird Conservation Center sits perched in the forest atop the volcano Kīlauea, which has been erupting at two locations in recent weeks: the rift eruption that is creating flows to the sea and a summit event that is spewing gas and clouds of dust from the Halema'uma'u firepit.

The birders continue to raise colorful Hawaiian forest birds amid quaking and toxic air.

The 11 staff members working at the Center are keeping close watch on the threats caused by the volcano but are still doing their work.” said Alan Lieberman, conservation program manager for the program, which is operated by the San Diego Zoo.

“What to do if the threat becomes imminent? The staffers are preparing to move their birds, but hoping they'll be able to avoid it—because these birds don't respond well to stress.

“We have crates stacked up ready to fill with these birds if it becomes apparent we need to leave. These are very delicate species, however, and any kind of move could potentially cause enough stress to cause them serious medical problems. Until there is an imminent threat we will continue to care for these birds at the Center,” Lieberman said.

The six forest birds being raised at the center are part of a program aimed at learning how to breed these animals in captivity, so the captive birds can be released back into the wild to supplement endangered wild stocks.

Scientists from the center, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey and the Hawai'i state Division of Forestry and Wildlife have been actively releasing one species, the puaiohi or small Kaua'i thrush, Myadestes palmeri, into the wild in the upland forests of Kaua'i. For more on that program, see http://biology.usgs.gov/pierc/PLWoodworth1PUAIOHI3.htm.

The Center also works with the yellow palila of the Big Island. For more see http://biology.usgs.gov/pierc/PLBankoPage1.htm.

For more information on the San Diego Zoological Society and its programs, see www.sandiegozoo.org and http://cres.sandiegozoo.org/projects/sp_hawaii_birds.html.

© 2008 Jan W. TenBruggencate

A sextet of Hawaiian anchialine shrimps

In the oddest, often most inhospitable habitats of the islands—deep in the most remote lava tubes and in tiny pools on fields of sun-baked rock—there is native Hawaiian life.

The native shrimps of Hawai'i's anchialine ponds are fascinating examples.

(Photos: Top: Kanehena achialine pool on Maui. Middle: Red and white color morphs of the 'ōpae 'ula, or Halocaridina rubra, heading in opposite directions. Bottom: The shrimp Procaris hawaiana. All phones by Mike Yamamoto, used with permission.)

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Land and Natural Resources Division of Aquatic Resources released photos of six species of Hawai'i's anchialine shrimps.

Anchialine ponds, where the shrimps live, are generally coastal ponds with no surface connection to the sea, but which rise and fall with the tides, suggesting some underground connection. They can range in salinity from nearly as salty as the ocean to quite fresh, with the fresh water often flowing from the mountains toward the sea.

Often the water is layered, with the freshest water lying near the surface and saltier water below.

“Three of the six species of anchialine pool shrimp are candidates for listing as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act,” said Lorena Wada, candidate conservation coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service for the Pacific islands. The three, listed below, are the Metabetaeus, the Procaris and the Palaemonella.

Hawaiian anchialine shrimps tend to be found in clean water in either lava coastlines or limestone areas with open sinkholes. Much of the time, the shrimps appear to remain in cracks and underground water-filled caverns that are not accessible to humans, and so they are hard to count and to study.

The best known of the six Hawaiian anchialine 'ōpae is the 'ōpae 'ula, of which eight distinct genetic lineages have been located—indicating that once these creatures take up residence in a new part of the island, they tend to be isolated there and evolve into unique forms.

The 'ōpae 'ula are found on Maui, Hawai'i and O'ahu.

They grow to about a half-inch in length and are by far the best-known of the tiny achialine 'ōpae, but hardly the only ones.

The Palaemonella burnsi is much smaller—in the range of a quarter-inch—and is mainly found in only the saltiest pools—three known polls on Maui and one on Hawai'i.

Procaris hawaiana, shown here, is pinkish in color and can grow to more than an inch long. It is found in two clusters of pools on Maui and one on Hawai'i.

Metabetaeus lohena can be pale pink to bright red, is about three-quarters of in inch long at maturity, and can prey on its cousin, 'ōpae 'ula. Its numbers appear to have been declining, but it is found on the same three islands as 'ōpae 'ula.

A plant-eater, Antecaridina lauensis is about half an inch long and reddish, and tends to be active at night. It is found in two groups of pools each on Maui and Hawai'i.

And Callaismata pholidota, from half an inch to more than an inch long, is pink to red with red bands. It's a predator and scavenger. It is apparently not common, and is found from a few pools on the Big Island and on Maui.

Learn more about the anchialine shrimps at a previous RaisingIslands.com post here: http://raisingislands.blogspot.com/2007/12/life-evolving-in-wet-darkness-below.html.

A Hawai'i state status report on eight shrimps is here: http://hawaii.gov/dlnr/dar/pubs/sawcs/anch_shrimp.pdf.

A fact sheet on six species, with images, is here:

http://www.fws.gov/pacificislands/anchialinefactsheet041608.pdf.

© 2008 Jan W. TenBruggencate

The key future energy assumption: Make no assumptions

Americans tend to focus on a single solution, a magic bullet.

With energy, that may be the wrong approach, according to many participants in the recent Blue Planet Summit.

(Photo: Microalgae that produce lipids that can be converted into biodiesel. Credit: Paul Roessler, National Renewable Energy Laboratory.)

“You need to get all the energy you can any way you can,” said Martin Hoffert, a professor emeritus at New York University and an aeronautical engineer.

One of the themes at Blue Planet was the concept of a distributed energy future, one in which multiple sources feed people's energy needs. In some situations, the mix of energy production would be determined by local conditions.

Geothermal might work on Hawai'i and parts of Maui, but not so much O'ahu and Kaua'i.

Biomass might work better on islands with a lot of abandoned agricultural land.

In areas where ocean floors drop off steeply, ocean thermal energy conversion might be appropriate. On windy ridges, wind turbines. On sunny roofs, solar water heating and solar photovoltaic.

And so on.

Picking favorites is generally not a good approach, speakers said.

A pet technology, whether it's hydrogen, corn ethanol, solar, or something else, must not be the sole focus, said Eliot Assimakopoulos, business development manager with GE Global Research and Development.

“What we've learned...you have to have a holistic...a portfolio approach,” Assimakopoulos said.

When the U.S. Department of Energy has selected a technology to support, it has often been disappointed, said Denis Hayes, chief executive officer of the Bullitt Foundation and chairman of the Earthday Network.

“An awful lot of what the Department of Energy placed its biggest bets on are losers,” Hayes said.

The challenge?

“How to move forward on all these things are once,” said Bill Parks Jr., deputy assistant secretary for research and development with the U.S. Department of Energy.

A policy:

“There is no technology that you can take off the table...They all have to be there,” said Mark Brownstein, managing director of the Environmental Defense Fund.

The reason for it:

“It's hard to prejudge which technology will work and which won't,” Hoffert said.

Certainly one of the things that has to be on the table is the transformation of the current view of the electrical grid, or what former CIA director James Woosley called the “loaded-up, Balkanized electricity grid.”

One view of the traditional grid is an octopus, with the generation plant at the head, and tentacles going out in many directions to touch the consumers.

Not only is that not a good analogy for the future grid. There may not be a nice analogy for the future grid. Shucks, it might not be a grid at all.

Certainly, there would not be a single generation source, but many sources of power. There could be interdependence and some levels of independence among power users. What serves as a grid could be interactive, constantly assessing its condition and making adjustments.

Some power users—for instance those with large photovoltaic arrays—might produce more power than they use. The batteries in personally owned electric cars might serve as distributed emergency storage units for the community grid.

How society thinks about future energy will require a different way of thinking, Blue Planet participants said.

The key assumption: don't make assumptions.

Not so much envisioning a sole solution, but rather envisioning diversity.

© 2008 Jan W. TenBruggencate

Loihi seamount yields volcanic glass, limu o Pele.

Limu o Pele is a magical product of the volcano, formed when waves wash over lava flowing into the sea.

(Photo: Limu o Pele fragment. USGS photo by J.D. Griggs.)

It is being created daily when Kīlauea's lavas ooze into the ocean.

Seawater gets trapped under molten rock. The water flashes to steam. The still-molten rock forms a huge, thin bubble. Almost instantly, the bubble wall hardens, the bubble explodes and and the tissue-thin fragments waft away on the wind.

If there's an onshore breeze, you can find it in greenish-brown see-through flakes of volcanic glass.

When I first saw it, the tiny flakes had filled voids in a lava flow and was gleaming gold in the setting sun. You could pick it up in your hand, and the fragments slid against each other.

It seems odd, but the stuff also forms deep under the sea, and is being studied at the volcano Loihi.

Loihi, sometimes called the “next Hawaiian island,” lies 20 miles off the southeast coast of the Big Island. Its tallest point is still 3,000 feet below the waves.

There, the water temperature is cold, and the water pressure is extremely high. But the power of steam is enormous, and the presence of the volcanic glass flakes proves that the undersea eruptions create similar processes to those along the shore.

Still the Loihi limu o Pele is not identical to the stuff at the surface.

“Limu o Pele fragments quench at fantastic rates and that affects the structure of the glass,” said David Clague, formerly with the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and now at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

A report on the Loihi volcanic glass was published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters by researchers Marcel Potuzak, Alexander Nichols and Donald Dingwell of the University of Munich's Earth and Environment program, and Clague. Potuzak is also association with Corning, Nichols with the Japan Agency for Marine Earth Science and Technology, and Dingwell with Stanford's Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences.

The article is entitled, “Hyperquenched volcanic glass from Loihi Seamount, Hawaii.”

The used the limu o Pele bubble wall fragments to study the super-fast cooling of the volcanic rock as it formed the volcanic glas bubbles—a process they called hyper-quenching.

The limu o Pele at Loihi appears to “have experienced the fastest cooling of any natural volcanic glass measured to date,” the authors write in their abstract.

When the basalt from Hawaiian volcanoes cools slowly, the rock normally tends to form crystals. But the crystal formation can be bypassed, the authors write, if the lava can be cooled superfast.

Limu o Pele is not crystalline, “thus, the mere existence of such glasses on the sea floor is one measure of their rapid cooling,” the authors write.

© 2008 Jan W. TenBruggencate

Local food as a radical act

Local food is a powerful sustainability potion.

The second Kaua'i Conservation Conference at Kaua'i Community College, April 11 and 12, celebrated that with what they called an All-Kauai Meal.

(Photo: Kalo growing among sweet potatoes in a Kaua'i garden.)

It's an intriguing concept: eating local food as a radical act. Poi as a way to say, “Up the establishment.”

For most people, it might be baffling to try to figure out how to do an all local meal.

The “fish and poi” of a bygone era has been replaced, one speaker said, by Spam, Vienna sausage and rice.

And yet, if you want to eat food whose pesticide content can be readily determined by talking to the farmer, whose freshness is known, whose transportation cost is minimal, and which will still be available during shipping and air cargo disruptions—you need to eat local.

The All-Kauai Meal served at the conference had local beef, local kalua pork, locally caught ono, a couple of dishes of local greens, local (tasty!) purple sweet potato and some other local foods. The only non-local item was rice, which used to be grown on Kaua'i, but no longer is.

There's a distinct “if you build it, they will come” feature to eating local food.

The theory: If you spend money at Costco or Wal Mart, you're sending a message that those companies' products are needed.

If you spend money with local food producers, the message is that they can make a living producing their crops.

“Every time you put a dollar down, you're saying, 'I want more of this,'” said one speaker.

The opposite is, of course, also true. You can talk all you want about the value of and the need for locally produced food, but if you and your friends and neighbors don't buy it, it won't happen.

The goal ultimately would be to eat some or all of every meal from local farms—or from your own backyard garden. Marie Mauger at the conference suggested folks start small: just once a week, try to eat an all-local meal.

Ts we dine on fish from our surrounding seas, beef from the north shore, pork from the south shore, poi from the north shore, and vegetables harvested from Moloa'a and Kīlauea, all prepared beautifully and generously by local artisans, let us be thankful for the abundance on our island and share a vision for the future.”

© 2008 Jan W. TenBruggencate