Environment
Energy, Backstop Endogeneity, and the Optimal Use of Groundwater
To meet the growing demand for freshwater, many regions have increased groundwater pumping in recent years, resulting in declining groundwater levels worldwide. A promising development to address these declines is technical change regarding groundwater substitutes such as desalination and wastewater recycling. However, because these technologies are energy intensive, optimal implementation also depends on future energy […]
Read MoreUnderstanding the Links Between Local Ecological Knowledge, Ecosystem Services, and Resilience
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. […]
Read MoreHow Do We Measure Social-Ecological Resilience?
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 […]
Read MoreIn the Eye of the Storm: Coping with Future Natural Disasters in Hawaii
Hurricane Iniki, that hit the island of Kauai on September 11th, 1992, was the strongest hurricane that hit the Hawaiian Islands in recorded history, and the one that wrought the most damage, estimated at 7.4 billion (in 2008 US$). We provide an assessment of Hawaii’s vulnerability to disasters using a framework developed for small islands. […]
Read MoreA Hurricane’s Long-Term Economic Impact: the Case of Hawaii’s Iniki
The importance of understanding the macro-economic impact of natural disasters cannot be overstated. Hurricane Iniki, that hit the Hawaiian island of Kauai on September 11th, 1992, offers an ideal case study to better understand the long-term economic impacts of a major disaster. Iniki is uniquely suited to provide insights into the long-term economic impacts of […]
Read MoreQuantifying Household Social Resilience: A Place-based Approach in a Rapidly Transforming Community
In an era of ecological degradation, global climate change, demographic shifts and increasing intensity and frequency of natural hazards, the Pacific Islands including the State of Hawai‘i face heightened risk. Human and environmental well-being are tightly coupled; thus, science-based solutions must marry place-based, culturally relevant processes that link disaster preparedness, relief and recovery with resilience […]
Read MoreUHERO 101.12: What is the Value of the Environment?
By Cheryl Geslani The Earth’s environment is divided into different combinations of living organisms and their nonliving surroundings: air, water and soil. These different organic communities are called ecosystems. Humans receive benefits from these ecosystems in the form of “ecosystem services”, a term that covers a range of benefits from artistic inspiration to soil detoxification. […]
Read MoreHow Do We Manage Our Interdependent Environmental Resources?
By Christopher Wada Managing water resources requires an understanding of the linkages between key hydrologic factors and direct human influences. The problem is further complicated by the fact that water resources are often interdependent, which suggests that management should also account for ecological interlinkages. For example, a forested upstream watershed may replenish an underlying groundwater […]
Read MoreIncentivizing interdependent resource management: watersheds, groundwater, and coastal ecology
Managing water resources independently may result in substantial economic losses when those resources are interdependent with each other and with other environmental resources. We first develop general principles for using resources with spillovers, including corrective taxes (subsidies) for incentivizing private resource users. We then analyze specific cases of managing water resources, in particular the interaction […]
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