More than one of the 10 entries in the National Geographic Channel’s "Expedition Granted" competition is directly connected to Hawaii.
Only the entrants of "Poop Out of Poverty," written about in this space on Wednesday, listed Honolulu as their city of origin, but at least two other entries were submitted by former Hawaii residents.
Both of the additional entrants’ subjects are close to the hearts of local folks, and both dig below the surface to get at underlying truths.
Carolyn Parcheta wants to use robots to map magma conduits at the very active, Pahoa-threatening Kilauea Volcano.
She earned a degree in geology and geophysics and a Ph.D. in volcanology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and spent seven months working at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory on Hawaii island.
Her video entry indicates this sort of mapping has never before been done.
Parcheta already has selected for her project fissures that, when last she checked, were not full of lava. Lava is what magma is called when it reaches the earth’s surface.
"The long term goal is that this data about volcanic conduit shapes will allow volcanologists (myself and others) to better understand how volcanoes erupt, which will help us better understand the hazards (of) eruptions and how to advise/help communities living on volcanoes that would be affected by eruptions and their hazards," Parcheta said in an interview on the website Reddit.
"We can analyze volcanic conduits with seismics and deformation, but their resolution is 10’s to 100’s of meters," she wrote. Parcheta wants to collect "centimeter (half-inch) size scales for the conduit geometry," which she added is "truly a first of it’s kind dataset."
Her video entry includes images from a test run in May, which were collected using a variation of the Kinect sensor, such as the kind used with an Xbox video game console.
Pipeline sequence
Clifford Kapono, who graduated from UH-Manoa as well as Kamehameha Schools’ Kapalama campus, is hoping he and his research partner Clinton Edwards win the $50,000 grant.
They want to document and scientifically quantify reef health at world-famous surf breaks.
"A great-breaking wave doesn’t necessarily mean a healthy reef system," Kapono said in their video entry.
The two are not your average avid surfers.
Edwards is a staff researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, while Kapono earned a degree in biotechnology and a master’s degree in molecular biosciences at Manoa, and in 2012 undertook studies for a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California at San Diego.
"I’m just a local boy," he said humbly.
In their entry, Edwards explains that he will use leading-edge, large-scale, high-resolution photography to assess the status of reefs at surf breaks such as Pipeline on Oahu’s famed North Shore, Cloudbreak in Fiji and Teahupoo, Tahiti.
Kapono will then analyze the chemistry of the coral surfaces at the molecular level, and that information can be overlaid on Edwards’ images to provide a clear idea as to each reef’s health.
The two are not just hoping for an epic free surfing expedition, Kapono said.
"We want to provide the highest standards of science" to the work they hope to do in reef imaging and chemistry-based profiling. They will then leverage the global media attention the surf breaks receive in order to give their information "to the world."
If the reefs are healthy or sick, "we can start talking about it, but right now we can’t even talk about it," said Kapono.
"People have a right to understand what’s going on with their oceans, especially if people around the world are using it to benefit their own economy or social system."
Voting for any or all the Hawaii-connected entries seeking the $50,000 National Geographic grant continues online through Sept. 29, and the winner will be announced Sept. 30.
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On the Net:
» expeditiongranted.nationalgeographic.com/project/inside-a-volcano
» expeditiongranted.nationalgeographic.com/project/through-the-surface
Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com or on Twitter as @erikaengle.
