Kaʻū News Briefs, Friday, Feb.3, 2023

AFFORDABLE HOUSING IS A BASIC HUMAN RIGHT, according to a statement released by Gov. Josh Green' team on Friday. "That's why the Green administration is making housing a top priority, and planning to invest over $1 billion to make sure that working families can afford housing in Hawai'i."
The statement from Team Green said the governor plans for the state to invest: $1 to $12 million to increase funds for rental assistance; $400 million towards the state's rental housing trust fund; $500 million towards infrastructure improvements for developers to build affordable housing units and "much more."

AVOCADO LACE BUGS HAVE HIT KA'Ū, damaging trees and production. A presentation from University of Hawai'i's College of Tropical Agriculture & Human Resources has been posted online to show farmers and homeowners how do deal with this pest, Pseudaccysta perseae, which arrived to these islands in 2019 on O'ahu and spread to Hawai'i Island. These pests and their nymphs live and feed on the underside of the avocado leaf, in such numbers that they can look like the leaf is covered with ground red and black pepper. They are tiny, one-sixteen of an inch and smaller.

POLICE ARRESTED 23 FOR DUI during the week of Jan. 23 through Jan. 29. They arrested the motorists for driving under the influence of an intoxicant. Eight drivers were involved in a traffic accident. Three were under the age of 21. So far this year, there have been 95 DUI arrests compared with 83 during the same period last year, an increase of 14.45 percent.
    After a review of all updated crashes, Hawai‘i Police Department’s Traffic Services found 76 major accidents so far this year compared with 68 during the same period last year, an increase of 10.5 percent.

COUNTY WORK ON MILOLI'I ROAD includes a recent resurfacing and the scheduling of installing pavement markings, with officers directing traffic and minor delays, next Friday, Feb. 10 from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

A DEEP STUDY TO UNDERSTAND THE PLUMBING OF KILAUEA VOLCANO is the subject of this week's Volcano Watch, written by USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory scientists and affiliates. The
study measures subsurface conductivity beneath Kīlauea volcano to reveal its subsurface magmatic plumbing.

    The project is permitted by Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park and various landowners and funded by the Additional Supplemental Appropriations for Disaster Relief Act of 2019 (H.R. 2157). 
    The project started within Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park last summer and will be completed over the entire volcano this year.
    The technique has a catchy name—magnetotelluric (MT) sounding. It’s a passive geophysical technique that measures tiny perturbations in the natural Earth magnetic and electric (telluric) fields to map out how well the rocks beneath our feet conduct electricity.
    Last year, the team was successful in getting high-quality data at about 40 sites within Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. This year, the team of geophysicists from the USGS Denver office will return in February to collect data at another 65 sites in the Puna District along Kīlauea’s East Rift Zone. The final phase of the work will occur in May-June when the Denver crew will collect any remaining sites both inside and outside of the National Park.
    The MT sounding method relies upon natural electromagnetic energy from a combination of solar winds (continuous flow of charged particles from the Sun) interacting with the Earth’s magnetic field and global lighting strikes. Electromagnetic energy with periods (inverse of frequency) between 1 millisecond (1000 cycles per second) to 4,000 seconds (21.6 cycles per day) are recorded at each site. The longer-period data provides a measure of electrical conductivity at greater depths beneath the ground surface.
    Why measure electrical conductivity?
    Subsurface magma, as well as the surrounding hydrothermal systems, conducts electricity very well whereas cooled and solidified lava flows don’t. The dense network of MT sites on Kīlauea will collect data that we’ll use to map the subsurface locations of magma in three dimensions. Areas of high conductivity beneath the surface will show us where magma is located beneath Kīlauea volcano including the summit magma reservoir and the pathways from there to Kīlauea’s East and Southwest Rift Zones.
    The field work will involve setting up sensors to measure the Earth’s magnetic and electric fields at each site. To get information from the greatest depths, data must be acquired continuously for 1-5 days.
    A 2002 MT study of the summit and upper East Rift Zone of Kīlauea volcano showed subsurface
conductors in three distinct areas within 3 km (2 mi) of the surface. One was beneath Kīlauea caldera, a second was 1.5 km (1 mi) south of the caldera, and a third was beneath and to the south of Puʻuʻōʻō on the middle East Rift Zone.
    The conductive zones south of the summit and Puʻuʻōʻō were within fault zones that may have held electrically conductive saline or hydrothermal fluids. The conductive bodies below the summit and Puʻuʻōʻō likely represent the magma conduit from the summit reservoir to the East Rift Zone that fed the ongoing eruption in 2002.
    The 2022-2023 MT project will cover almost the entire surface of Kīlauea volcano and allow us to see more detail about the subsurface plumbing of the Southwest Rift Zone and the lower East Rift Zone that fed the 2018 Puna eruption. These data, combined with the data from an airborne electromagnetic and magnetic survey flown last year should give us a very detailed ‘CAT scan’ of the volcano. We hope that the subsurface plumbing that fed the 2018 Puna eruption will be mapped in detail.
    Over February, and May-June this year, you might see USGS scientists installing these MT sites across Kīlauea volcano. We appreciate Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate, the State of Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, and Kapoho Land and Development Company, and various other land owners who have granted us permission to access these locations. More details and updates on the progress of the Kīlauea subsurface conductivity project can be found here https://www.usgs.gov/supplemental-appropriations-for-disaster-recovery-activities/science/2019-kilauea-disaster.

VOLCANO ACTIVITY UPDATES: Kīlauea is erupting. Its USGS Volcano Alert level is at WATCH. Kīlauea updates are issued daily.
    Kīlauea volcano's summit eruption in Halemaʻumaʻu crater within Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park

 continues. Activity is concentrated in a large lava lake in the eastern half of the crater, as well as a smaller 

    There were three earthquakes with 3 or more felt reports in the Hawaiian Islands during the past week: a M3.2 earthquake 9 km (5 mi) E of Pāhala at 31 km (19 mi) depth on Jan. 30 at 10:02 p.m. HST, a M3.1 earthquake km (5 mi) E of Pāhala at 31 km (19 mi) depth on Jan. 30 at 2:57 p.m. HST, and a M2.7 earthquake 3.1 km (1.9 mi) NNE of Hōlualoa, Hawaii, United States at 13 km (8 mi) depth on Jan. 27 at 5:39 a.m. HST.