MILES O’BRIEN:

Back in his lab at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, graduate student Kendra Lynn does her part to understand Kilauea, shaving rocks into 30-micron slices, and then analyzing them using an electron microprobe.

She is interested in this green mineral called olivine. It is the most common mineral that forms at Kilauea.

What can we learn from it?

KENDRA LYNN, University of Hawaii: Because it's the first thing to crystallize in these magmas, it tells us a lot about the mantle source, where the magmas came from. And it can also tell us a lot about the magma's history.