2017 cohort image

The 2018 ESVI REU Cohort of 10 visiting students from across the US. The 11th student (Alex) was supported by a NASA Internship and was adopted as part of our cohort.

ESVI REU Program 2018 — Overview

www.facebook.com/UHGGREU
Prof. Paul Wessel, ESVI REU Leader

This was the second summer of the ESVI NSF/REU site program. The response to our REU has been phenomenal, with almost 600 applicants responding to the opportunity. Our program offers undergraduate students a unique opportunity to visit Hawaii and work with individual faculty mentors on research projects. We hosted 10 undergraduates, and each student spent 9 weeks working on a research project with their individual mentor or mentor pair. See below for a brief summary of each participant’s project and mentor.

In addition to research, our group has had many cohort activities, such as

  • A 3-day oceanographic cruise on the R/V Kilo Moana to the Ka‘ena Ridge [we also hosted 3 Leeward Community College students and the leader of the UHM Biodiversity REU and his student]
  • A 2-day geologic field trip to the Big Island (unfortunately, the ongoing eruption meant we had no access to the active sites).
  • Visit to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.
  • Visit to HIMB, Coconut Island [jointly with Biodiversity REU].
  • Quaternary geology kayak expedition to Mokulua Islands.
  • Botanical hike (Palehua-Palikea trail) [jointly with Biodiversity REU].

The program concluded with a joint symposium with other REU programs on the UHM campus.

Click on the small poster images below to see a larger version.

Alexander Alverson poster image. Click to see a larger version. Alexander Alverson [Brown U. Mentor: Konter]. Alex has been studying samples obtained by ROV from submarine volcanoes around Wake Island (W. Pacific) to determine if their compositions match those of the Rurutu Hotspot trail. This hotspot has a distinctive Pb isotope composition that allows us to trace this hotspot back into the western Pacific, and if Alex’ sample set carries the same signature, it will define the longest-lived hotspot track in the Pacific. This will have significant implications for Pacific plate motion.

Manlio Calentti poster image. Click to see a larger version. Manlio Calentti [Bowdoin College. Mentor: Hammer]. Sector zoning in igneous minerals is a spectacular type of compositional heterogeneity that preserves information about the magma's thermodynamic state. Manlio is analyzing clinopyroxene crystals from Kauai using the SOEST electron microprobe and performing crystallization experiments in the Experimental Petrology lab to decipher the information encoded in clinopyroxene during kinetically-controlled crystal growth.

Kelsey Cushway poster image. Click to see a larger version. Kelsey Cushway [Western Michigan Univ. Mentor: Smith and Glenn]. Kelsey’s project probed the occurrence of wastewater nutrients derived from land-based sources of pollution in central and northern Kaneohe Bay. She deployed starved algae in cages and then analyzed their tissues to demonstrate that wastewater nitrogen was detected in coastal algae. Her work tied to on-going hydrological studies and documents the high probability of discharges into the Bay.

Annika Dechert poster image. Click to see a larger version. Annika Dechert [Occidental College. Mentor: Martel]. Annika has conducted a series of laboratory experiments to gain insight into the vertical propagation of geologic dikes. In the experiments, Annika used gelatin as a host medium, and a combination of air and water as buoyant fluids in the dike. She also coded up theoretical analytical fracture mechanics solutions in MATLAB to gain insight into the shapes of the model dikes. Annika’s work provides the basis for her senior thesis at Occidental College.

Katherine Donovan poster image. Click to see a larger version. Katherine Donovan [U. Texas. Mentor: Moore]. Katherine has been studying the sedimentary sequences in the northern Shikoku Basin (Philippine Sea Plate) south of Honshu, Japan. She is mapping the sequences in seismic reflection data to understand how the sequences vary in thickness and character with distance along and across the trench. These variations control the style of deformation at and beyond the frontal thrust as the sediments are accreted at the toe of the accretionary prism. Katherine will present her results at the 2018 Fall AGU meeting in Washington, D.C.

Mary Gabito poster image. Click to see a larger version. Mary Gabito [Cerritos College. Mentor: Foster]. Mary’s project involved bringing together precise GPS positions and radar gauge range measurements from the UH Research Vessel Kilo Moana and combining them to derive estimates of the ocean wave height. These sea-state estimates will form a new real-time product generated for every cruise. Waves are a major natural hazard, and climate change is predicted to increase the sizes and duration of storms sizes that generate them. This new data stream will help us to better understand and model waves and their impacts on our coastlines.

Jacob Burstein poster image. Click to see a larger version. Letrell Harris [Hampton U. Mentor: Apuzen-Ito]]. The enormous weight of the Hawaiian volcanoes on the Pacific seafloor causes the underlying tectonic plate to buckle and flex. The amount of flexing and the rate at which this occurs reflects upon elastic, brittle, and ductile deformation, which are not well understood for the high stress state and cool temperatures of the lithospheric plate. Letrell is examining realistic elastic and ductile deformation of oceanic plates beneath volcanic loads using two-dimensional numerical models. The first step is to verify the accuracy of the models by comparing their solutions with analytical solutions of ideal elastic deformation.

Otto Lang poster image. Click to see a larger version. Otto Lang [Fort Lewis College. Mentor: Garcia and Shea]. Otto investigated the chemical characteristics of olivine crystals from the early 1983-1986 products of the Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō eruption at Kīlauea. These early phases marked a transition between intermittent subsurface magma mixing to a long-lived period of steady output without magma mixing. By examining variations in olivine compositions, modeling timescales between magma mixing and eruption, Otto demonstrated that contrary to previous interpretations, the fingerprint of mixing remained detectable even in 1986. Such results help scientists understand past eruption behavior to better predict future scenarios during events similar to those that unfolded at Kīlauea in 2018.

Kelsey Nichols poster image. Click to see a larger version. Kelsey Nichols U of Hawaii at Mānoa. Mentor: Chen]. Nano-polycrystalline diamonds (NPD) have been found in meteorite impact craters and industrially produced as a super-hard abrasive material. Kelsey used the 2000-ton press in the MultiAnvil Press Laboratory (MAPLab) at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology and successfully synthesized large NPD samples from super-pure graphite starting materials. Multiple NPD samples including pure NPD were synthesized at extreme conditions (15.5 gigapascal and 2150-2848 K) and subsequently probed by various analytical techniques, i.e., optical microscope, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscope (SEM), for phase identification and grain size determination. We finally confirmed the synthesis of pure NPD and determined the optimal synthesis conditions of NPD from various starting materials.

Kaelan Weiss poster image. Click to see a larger version. Kaelan Weiss [U. Minnesota. Mentor: Glazer]. Kaelan experimented with emerging low-cost sensor technology for coastal oceanography in two applications. Using a low-cost, custom, pressure-light-temperature sensor developed in our lab for enabling improved spatial scale monitoring, he calibrated, time-synched, and deployed five loggers on a sandy beach break to quantify tide and wave characteristics over a 48-hour period. He also worked throughout the summer to evaluate using a low-cost red-green-blue light sensor as a proxy for photosynthetically-active radiation. The work that Kaelan launched is being applied and continued by students working in traditional Hawaiian Fishponds and the SMART Ala Wai project.

 

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