Ka`u News Briefs Saturday, May 6, 2017

Big Island Democrats held their annual convention on Saturday and talked about climate change,
the needs for the elderly, homelessness and other topics. Photo from Big Island Video News

NEW LEADERSHIP FOR THE HAWAI`I ISLAND DEMOCRATIC PARTY was named on Saturday at the annual convention, this year held in Kea`au. The new Chair is former County Council member Margaret Wille.
      Gov. David Ige gave a talk. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard skyped in. Topics at the convention, attended by Ka`u Sen. Russell Ruderman and Rep. Richard Creagan, included Climate Change, Homelessness and Elderly Needs, and the basics of How to Run for Office.

Margaret Wille to chair Democratic Party.
Photo from Big Island Video News

     Ka`u's Raina Whiting, a Na`alehu school teacher, was named Secretary. Vice Chair is Tonya Coulter. East Hawai Vice Chair is Shannon Matson. Treasurer is Valerie Barnes. Assistant Secretary is Maya Parish and Assistant Treasurer is Richard Harris.
      In a Big Island Video News interview, the new chair for the Big Island said that members of the leadership in the Democratic Party should "really earn their (letter) 'D'. Should every candidate be allowed to put a 'D' by their name, regardless of how they vote, or whether they block hearings on matters that are party priorities? I think there needs to be more accountability," said Wille. She was referring to only two of the Democratic Party's legislative priorities making it through House and Senate to conference committee discussions in the 2017 Hawai`i Legislature. Some of the other Democratic Party priority bills were blocked, she said, by Democrats themselves.
     "We need everyone to mobilize," said Wille. She said that Saturday may have been the Democratic Party day but it is also "the first day of work." She called the convention "inspired" and said that all candidates who ran for office within the Democratic Party will be invited to serve with their skills and knowledge whether or not they won a title in the party organization.

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MAYOR HARRY KIM'S REVISED $491.2 MILLION COUNTY BUDGET is a 6.1 percent hike over last year's budget. It goes before the County Council on May 17. He released it on Friday.
     The extra money, in the mayor's plan, is expected to come from an increase in property tax revenues by hiking rates for all properties with the exception of affordable rentals. The mayor also proposes more property tax savings for the elderly.

 Mayor Kim expects higher property taxes and gas taxes to help
pay for the rising county budget. Image from Big Island Video News

     A rise in the gas tax, planned for next year, would take it from 8.8 cents per gallon to 19 cents. An additional 2 percent increase each year would be levied until 23 cents per gallon becomes the new gas tax. Infrastructure would be the targeted use of gas tax income. Other priorities are upgrading police cars and the Hele-On Bus vehicles. Some costs that are rising are uncontrolled by the Mayor and County Council. They include statewide hikes in union-negotiated pay for government workers.
     Cut short in the mayor's budget are the contingency funds for County Council members, that go to subsidizing non-profit organization's activities, such as Summer Fun in Ka`u this year. The mayor's islandwide budget for such spending has been slashed from $810,000 to $675,000 to be split up among the nine County Council members.

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HARVARD UNIVERSITY IS PROVIDING HAWAI`I VOLCANO OBSERVATORY the latest program to archive important earthquake data, reports USGS scientists in this week's Volcano Watch:

     Seismology is often thought of as “earthquake science” because earthquakes—while not the only cause—are the most prolific producers of seisms, or earth shaking. The largest earthquakes ever recorded release many thousands of times more energy than the largest man-made explosions.

Thomas Jaggar working on his seismograph in 1913 at Volcano.
Photo from USGS

      Continuous and systematic study of volcanic and related earthquake activity began at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory  in 1912, when Professor Thomas Jaggar put his first seismographs into operation in HVO’s Whitney Laboratory. He purchased and installed these instruments to record the shaking produced by Hawai‘i’s active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes.

      Through the early 1900s, led by Jaggar and other geological pioneers, seismic monitoring gradually spread around the world into areas known for earthquake and volcanic activity. During roughly this same time, mathematicians were developing the theoretical underpinnings of seismic wave generation and propagation.

      At HVO, the seismic waves were initially recorded by a stylus that etched its squiggly trace into a layer of kerosene soot that coated glossy paper wrapped around the seismograph’s slowly rotating drum. Through the next 100 years, the recording media changed from smoked or soot-coated papers to photographic, then heat-sensitive papers, and finally to pen-and-ink before paper recording was discontinued in 2013.

Hawaiian Volcano Observatory volunteer Marcy Frenz feeds seismogram

 from the May 1982 Kīlauea south caldera earthquake flurry into a 
large-format document scanner. Preserving stacks of paper earthquake
records as digital image files is an ongoing project at HVO. 
USGS photo by S. Tsang

     By then, HVO had moved to its fourth-generation of computer-based data acquisition, recording, and processing systems. In addition to automatically detecting and locating earthquakes, seismograms in digital format make it possible to more rigorously apply seismological theory toward a deeper understanding of seismic processes associated with active volcanoes.

      With computer-based recording, adding stations or instruments is achieved with RAM, disk space, and clock-cycles. With paper recording, an additional instrument required an additional seismograph that produced another paper record per day. In the late 1960s, just as the U.S. Geological Survey began processing earthquake data in California on mainframe computers at Stanford University, the number of seismic paper records produced at HVO reached a peak of 30 per day. From 1912 to 2013, HVO collected nearly half-a-million paper seismograms.

     HVO is by no means alone with its stacks upon stacks of paper seismograms. This is a common problem among seismic network operations, and the older the seismic network, the more records there are.

      Creative storage solutions are sometimes exercised. The University of California’s Berkeley Seismological Laboratory stored seismograms from their 100-year-old collection in the Campanile clock and bell tower at the center of the university’s Berkeley campus.

      The seismological community has long been striving to preserve historical seismograms for future researchers. Early efforts produced copies of seismograms on microfilm. Now, large-format digital scanners enable more groups to work through their stacks of paper seismograms and preserve them as digital image files.

      With funding from USGS data rescue initiatives, HVO scanned seismograms from a number of significant earthquakes and seismic sequences. Since last summer, volunteer Marcy Frenz has enthusiastically and diligently assumed scanning duties at HVO, working through the 1974–1984 interval spanning Mauna Loa Volcano’s two most recent eruptions.

      Motivated by the opportunity to renovate and upgrade their seismographic station, seismologists at Harvard University recovered and scanned records collected from 1933 to 1953. They also wrote a computer program that digitizes or extracts digital seismic traces from the squiggles captured by the scanner.

      Harvard colleagues have generously shared their program with HVO. As HVO builds up its collection of scanned and digitized historical seismograms, the scientists say they  look forward to exploring data recovered from these seismograms with analytical tools used on current and recent data that track changes in seismic wave properties within the volcanoes.

   



Visit the HVO website (http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov) for past Volcano Watch articles, Kīlauea daily eruption updates, Mauna Loa weekly updates, volcano photos, recent earthquakes info, and more; call for summary updates at 808-967-8862 (Kīlauea) or 808-967-8866 (Mauna Loa); email questions to askHVO@usgs.gov.

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Ham Radio Operators Potluck Picnic, Sun, May 7, 

Manukā Park. All American Radio Emergency Service members, anyone interested in learning how to operate a ham radio and families are invited to attend. Dennis Smith, 989-3028 

Hi‘iaka & Pele, Sun, May 7, 9:30 – 11:30 a.m., Kahuku Unit of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park. Discover the Hawaiian goddesses and the natural phenomena they represent on this free, moderate, one-mile walk. nps. gov/havo