>>Narrator: As the lava from the volcanic
eruption on Hawaii Island continues to flow,
a team from the University of Hawaii at Hilo
is providing critical information to the U.S.
Geological Survey scientists responding to
the natural disaster: real-time chemistry
analysis of lava samples that help determine
how the lava will behave and how fast it will
move.
>>Cheryl Gansecki: The first time anybody
is trying to do this, to really look at the
chemistry at the same time the volcano is
erupting.
>>Narrator: The samples are collected daily
from the flows, bagged and dated, and brought
back to the Hilo campus.
That’s when the UH Hilo team goes to work.
>>Gansecki: We can do a really quick chemical
analysis.
We can look for tracers that tell us if anything
is changing in the magma, in the system, and
get that information back to HVO right away,
usually within hours, or at least a day.
>>Narrator: It’s a process that used to
take weeks or months.
The new system is also providing once in a
lifetime opportunities for UH Hilo undergraduate
students who test the lava samples.
>>Ryan Sasaki: My job is to take those, turn
them into powder, and run them through the
machine and that gives us chemical data.
>>Narrator: UH Hilo has been analyzing lava
flow samples from Kilauea since 2013 but the
composition barely changed.
Then came May 2018 and a dramatic change.
>>Gansecki: It’s magma that has been stored,
it’s older, it’s colder and then as the
fissures progressed, we started to see, younger,
hotter, magma coming in.
>>Narrator: This type of lava is more fluid
and can travel longer distances.
The chemical change detected by the UH Hilo
team preceded the change in the eruptive behavior
by two to three days.
That gave officials advanced warning.
>>Sasaki: It’s awesome to know that I am
contributing to cutting-edge, real science
that’s happening now.
