Aurora Kealohilani Kagawa-Viviani

Hawaiʻi Cooperative Studies Unit (UH-Hilo)

Tropical ecosystems offer a unique setting for understanding ecohydrological processes, but to date such investigations have been limited. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of studying these processes—specifically, how they are being affected by the transformative changes taking place in the tropics—and to offer an agenda for...

Hawaiian dryland agriculture is believed to have played an important role in the rise of archaic states and consolidation of political power. At the same time, the sensitivity of agricultural production in dryland field systems to temporal variability in climate would have had implications for economic and political relationships, both competitive...

While the Hawaiian Islands are experiencing long‐term warming, spatial and temporal patterns are poorly characterized. Drawing on daily temperature records from 309 stations (1905–2017), we explored relationships of surface air temperatures (Tmax, Tmin, Tavg, and diurnal temperature range) to atmospheric, oceanic, and land surface variables. Statis...

Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas [L.] Lam.) is one of the most important staple crops globally with particular cultural and economic significance in the Hawaiian Islands, yet the extent to which traditional cultivars persist remains unknown. The objective of this study was to elucidate the relationships between traditional Hawaiian sweet potato variet...

Maunakea, the proposed site of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), is a lightning-rod topic for Native Hawaiians, Hawaii residents, and the international astronomy community. In this paper we, Native Hawaiian natural scientists and allies, identify historical decisions that impact current circumstances on Maunakea and provide approaches to acknowledg...

Climate change models project an increase in the frequency and duration of drought globally. Changes in rainfall are expected to have particularly detrimental effects on seedlings due to their inability to reach deep water sources. We conducted a greenhouse experiment to test how the timing of watering affects seedling performance, physiology, and...

Spatially continuous data products are essential for a number of applications including climate and hydrologic modeling, weather prediction, and water resource management. In this work, a distance-weighted interpolation method used to map daily rainfall and temperature in Hawaii is described and assessed. New high-resolution (250 m) maps were devel...

Indigenous crops, tremendously valuable both for food security and cultural survival, are experiencing a resurgence in Hawaiʻi. These crops have been historically valued by agricultural researchers as genetic resources for breeding, while cultural knowledge, names, stories and practices persisted outside of formal educational and governmental insti...

2017. Restoring people and productivity to Puanui: challenges and opportunities in the restoration of an intensive rain-fed Hawaiian field system. Ecology and Society 22(2):23. https://doi. ABSTRACT. Prior to European contact, Hawaiian cultivators developed and sustained large rain-fed field systems based on sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) and other...

Observations of sugarcane in traditional Hawaiian agriculture indicate that sugarcane may have played an essential role in maintaining productivity and increasing resilience, particularly in the large, rainfed agricultural systems that existed on the younger islands. We present observations and preliminary data that support our hypothesis, illustra...

This report was written as a short synthesis of research on Hawaiian varieties of ʻuala, sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) which has a rich history in Hawaiʻi and Oceania. It is a living document and subject to revision/correction. Much of this work reviews, builds upon, and in some cases, re-interprets research by Edward Smith Craighill Handy and Mar...

Printable slides from public workshop held at Maui Nui Botanical Garden on Hawaiian ʻuala (sweet potato) cultivars.

Intensive rain-fed agricultural systems represented the foundation of the agricultural economies of the island of Hawai‘i and parts of Maui in the centuries before European contact. These systems largely were abandoned in the nineteenth century, and our understanding of how they functioned as productive systems is sparse. We established three exper...

Tropical forests are becoming increasingly alien-dominated through the establishment of timber plantations and secondary forests. Despite widespread recognition that afforestation results in increased evapotranspiration and lower catchment yields, little is known of the impacts of timber plantations on water balance relative to native forest. Nativ...

Large-fronded tree ferns are critical components of many tropical forests. We investigated frond and whole-plant allometries for Hawaiian keystone species Cibotium glaucum, for prediction and to compare with global scaling relationships. We found that C. glaucum fronds maintain geometric proportionality across a wide range of plant and frond sizes....

Native plants are often claimed to be conservative water users that enhance groundwater recharge compared to faster-growing non-native species that tend to dominate watersheds. This argument would have implications for motivating conservation and restoration of native forest in Hawai'i. However, few studies have examined differences in native and n...