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Saturday, August 06, 2022

Ka‘ū News Briefs, Saturday, Aug. 6, 2022

Volunteers and school staff clear an area for native plants and a culinary greenhouse at Kaʻū High 
& Pāhala Elementary on Saturday. Photo by Jennifer Makuakane

THE SECOND KA'Ū HIGH COMMUNITY GARDEN WORKDAY AND FIFTH ANNUAL HAWAI'I ISLAND FOOD SUMMIT welcomed Jodie Rosam to the Pāhala campus as guest presenter on Saturday with her knowledge of the wiliwili tree. She explained how to propagate the native trees, which are known for their red and orange blossoms and their popularity among native Hawaiians for making lei.

Jody Rosam, left, teaches about the propagation
of wiliwili trees. Photo by Jennifer Makuakane

    Rosam spoke about the natural history and ecology of wiliwili: where they live, how they grow, where to find them in Kaʻū. She explained that wiliwili is drought-deciduous (it drops its leaves during the dry season). The showy orange, red, salmon, peach, light green, yellow, or even white flowers bloom during the summer months after the leaves drop, and the nearly heart-shaped leaflets emerge in threes during the fall. Wiliwili can grow quite large, exceeding 45 feet tall with an impressively wide crown. Wili means to twist, screw, or wind, and wiliwili means repeatedly twisted, referring to the seed pods that twist to expose the bright, coral colored seeds. Rosam told participants about threats to the wiliwilli, including fire, habitat loss, the gall wasp that almost wiped them out in the early 2000s.  
The wiliwili. Art by Joan Yoshioka
    She shared moʻolelo about wiliwili and the four sisters at Paʻula in Kaunāmano, and also shared the ʻōlelo noʻeau. Finally, each participant was able to fill a pot with media, learn to scarify the seed, and plant it to bring home along with growing instructions.
    After Rosam's presentation, volunteers cleared and cleaned the lower field at the school to prepare for the native Hawaiian garden and culinary greenhouse. Both areas will be part of the middle school students' project this coming year.
    Kaʻū High & Pāhala Elementary released a statement thanking the Hawaiʻi Island School garden Network team, Zoe Kosmas of HISIGN lead, Jody Rosam and Stacey Breining of Hawaiʻi Wildlife Fund, Hawaiʻi Island Food Alliance, Hawaiʻi Island Food Basket, County of Hawaiʻi, and state Department of Health.
    The school also sent a mahalo to Āina Akamu and Jennifer Makuakane of its Kaʻū Global Learning Academy, its Farm Manager Jesse Denny and "hardworking volunteers."
    See more from Rosam on the wiliwili in the September 2021 edition of The Ka'u Calendar and in Ka'u News Briefs at  http://kaunewsbriefs.blogspot.com/2021_09_06_archive.html
The wiliwili tree, a species almost wiped out by a wasp in the early 2020s, can be propagated
from its seeds. Photo from Hawai'i Department of Agriculture

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KILAUEA'S SUMMIT LAVA LAKE CONTINUES TO BE QUIETLY REMARKABLE is the headline for this week's Volcano Watch, written by scientists and associates of USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory:
    In fact, the slow and steady lava lake activity in Halemaʻumaʻu crater has been quite fascinating, so it deserves another Volcano Watch visit.
    The first thing to appreciate is that we are witnessing a pattern that has typified Kīlauea’s summit behavior for centuries—the cycle of collapse and refilling. The caldera floor collapses and/or subsides—often due to an eruption on the rift zone—and subsequent summit eruptions fill the depression with new lava. Destruction and reconstruction, set on repeat.
    Numerous cycles of collapse and refilling occurred during the 1800s and early 1900s. These ranged from large to small, some spanning much of the caldera floor, with others limited to just the Halemaʻumaʻu area. In each instance, lava eventually returned to the summit and filled much or all of the depression.
    The collapse of the crater floor in 2018 was one of the largest such events in the past 200 years. Over the past year and a half, lava has been erupting in Halemaʻumaʻu crater and slowly refilling the new
Lava lake activity continues in Halema‘uma‘u, at the summit of Kīlauea. This photo looks east, and shows that the lake surface is composed of large crustal plates separated by incandescent spreading zones, with spattering along the east margin. The lake and the surrounding crater floor, formed by solidified lava, are being gradually uplifted due to endogenous lava supply beneath the surface. USGS photo by M. Patrick
depression. Since returning to Halemaʻumaʻu in December 2020, lava has refilled about 17% of the volume of the 2018 collapse.
    Watching the current activity is like having a time machine to an earlier century on Kīlauea.
    The second thing that is interesting about the current activity is the manner in which the lava is refilling the crater. In the simplest scenario, we might imagine the lava in Halemaʻumaʻu simply pouring in over earlier flows, stacking up and filling the crater.
    While a portion of the refilling is being done in this manner, a major amount of the refilling is
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“endogenous.” In other words, lava from the vent is supplied beneath the solidified surface crust, out of view, lifting the crater floor. It’s akin to inflating a giant air mattress.
    We can track this growth with unprecedented detail using modern tools. A continuous laser rangefinder measures the lava surface every second, with centimeter precision. Webcams operating on the rim of Halemaʻumaʻu show the nature of uplift clearly.
    The process of endogenous growth is particularly well illustrated with the webcam on the east rim of Halemaʻumaʻu (the B1cam). Timelapse images from this webcam show the central portion of the crater floor is being lifted like a piston, intact and largely without fracturing.
    The active lava lake—forming a relatively small portion of the crater floor—has essentially been lifted up gradually with the remainder of the crater floor. The laser rangefinder shows short-term fluctuations in the level of the active lava in the lake, superimposed on a gradual upward trend of the crater floor due to this slow uplift.
    Around the perimeter of this central portion of the crater floor, a series of large cracks have developed. Beyond the cracks, along the margins of the crater floor, the behavior is more complex than simple piston-like uplift. This outer region is often tilted and deformed from the endogenous growth below.
    At the same time, this zone along the margins of the crater floor is often resurfaced due to ooze-outs—basically lava that is squeezed out from beneath the crater floor, onto the surface.
    This type of endogenous growth, or “bodily uplift,” was also observed in the 1800s and early 1900s. But it hasn’t been observed so much in the past hundred years on Kīlauea. And it certainly hasn’t been observed this clearly before, given our modern tools such as laser rangefinders and webcams.
    You can bear witness to this important phase in the lifecycle of Kīlauea, and a fascinating period in Hawaiian volcanism. Volcano watchers on the Island of Hawaiʻi can see the summit lava lake filling Halemaʻumaʻu crater by visiting the public viewing areas in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. For those off-island, Hawaiian Volcano Observatory webcams showing the lake and crater are operating 24/7 on the HVO website (www.usgs.gov/hvo).

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COMMUNICATING WITH EMPATHY is the topic of this month's Kuʻikahi Mediation Center Brown Bag Lunch event on August 18 as part of its Finding Solutions, Growing Peace series. Talks are Third Thursdays from noon to 1 p.m. via Zoom. This month's speaker is Anne Marie Smoke on the topic Communicating with Empathy: The Path to Seeing More Deeply.
        "How can we engage in communication that will help to establish a deeper connection with others?" asks Smoke.
Anne Marie Smoke, Appellate Mediation Program
Administrator for Center for Alternative Dispute
Resolution, Hawai'i State Judiciary.
    "Empathy development includes emotional intelligence techniques such as perspective taking, staying out of judgement, recognizing someone's emotions, and communicating understanding." The talks is designed for participants to take away tools to practice empathic communication in daily life.
    Smoke is Appellate Mediation Program Administrator and Trainer for Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution at the Hawaiʻi State Judiciary. She holds a graduate certificate in conflict resolution and MS in Travel Industry Management (sustainable tourism), is a facilitator for multiple policy-development and strategic planning initiatives, and has 17 years of training experience including teaching conflict management practices.
    Kuʻikahi's Brown Bag Lunch Series is free and open to the public. Attendees are encouraged to enjoy an informal and educational talk-story session and connect with others interested in Finding Solutions, Growing Peace. To get the Zoom link, register online at https://freebrownbagtalk.eventbrite.com.

To read comments, add your own, and like this story, see www.facebook.com/kaucalendar. See latest print edition at wwwkaucalendar.com. See upcoming events at https://kaunewsbriefs.blogspot.com/2022/04/upcoming-events-for-kau-and-volcano.htm