Climate Adaptation

Bringing multiple values to the table: assessing future land-use and climate change in North Kona, Hawai‘i

January 1, 2018

As ecosystem service assessments increasingly contribute to decisions about managing Earth’s lands and waters, there is a growing need to understand the diverse ways that people use and value landscapes. However, these assessments rarely incorporate the value of landscapes to communities with strong cultural and generational ties to place, precluding inclusion of these values—alongside others—into […]

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Bringing multiple values to the table in local decision making – NSF Coastal SEES

December 16, 2017

By Leah Bremer “Want to carry one up?” the natural resource management team with Limahuli gardens in Haʻēna, Kauaʻi asks us as they hand out potted endangered plant seedlings before our hike up the trail toward one of their native forest restoration areas. We arrive 30 minutes later to the first restoration plot and are […]

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A Scoping Study for Climate Action Planning in Kauaʻi

October 16, 2017

This report documents best practices for county-level climate action plans (CAPs), with considerations for Kaua‘i. A CAP is primarily a process by which a jurisdiction agrees upon greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction strategies and policies. This report is based on the gathering of studies and protocols addressing climate action planning and GHG mitigation best practices.

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Estimating Cost-Effectiveness of Hawaiian Dry Forest Restoration Using Spatial Changes in Water Yield and Landscape Flammability Under Climate Change

October 1, 2017

Resource managers increasingly seek to implement cost-effective watershed restoration plans for multiple ecosystem service benefits. Using locally adapted ecosystem service tools and historical management costs, we quantified spatially explicit management costs and benefits (in terms of groundwater recharge and landscape flammability) to assist a state agency in evaluating cobenefits for a predefined restoration scenario (focused […]

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Electric Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emission Assessment for Hawaii

July 28, 2016

This study estimates greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of electric vehicles (EVs) compared to that of other popular and similar cars in Hawaii, by county over an assumption of 150,000 miles driven. The GHG benefits of EVs depend critically on the electricity system from which they derive their power. The analysis shows that EVs statewide are […]

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Intergenerational Games with Dynamic Externalities and Climate Change Experiments

June 8, 2015

Dynamic externalities are at the core of many long-term environmental problems, from species preservation to natural hazard resilience mitigation. We use laboratory experiments to compare welfare outcomes and underlying behavior in games with dynamic externalities under two distinct settings: traditionally studied games with infinitely-lived decision makers, and more realistic intergenerational games. We show that if […]

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Payments for Watershed Services as Adaptation to Climate Change: Upstream Conservation and Downstream Aquifer Management

January 1, 2015

Economically optimal groundwater extraction allocates water over space and time to its highest and best social use. But optimal management of water resources also requires optimal investment in watershed capital, even as the climate is changing. We augment a standard coastal groundwater management model with stock-dependent extraction costs to include recharge-enhancing natural and produced capital […]

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Understanding the Links Between Local Ecological Knowledge, Ecosystem Services, and Resilience

September 16, 2014

By Kim Burnett and Cheryl Geslani UHERO’s Project Environment has received funding from the National Science Foundation to participate in an interdisciplinary, international project that spans the natural and social sciences as well as the terrestrial and marine spheres. UHERO is partnering with scientists, resource managers, cultural practitioners and private landowners in Hawaii and Fiji. […]

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How Do We Measure Social-Ecological Resilience?

September 3, 2014

By Alex Frost and Kim Burnett Two UHERO graduate researchers, Alex Frost and Cheryl Scarton, attended a field course about social-ecological resilience of island systems in Nadave, Fiji. Participants of the field course were students and environmental practitioners from places throughout the Pacifc like Fiji, Vanuatu, Micronesia and the Solomon Islands. On day three of […]

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