Environment
Traditional and novel time-series approaches reveal submarine groundwater discharge dynamics under baseline and extreme event conditions
UHERO’s Peter Fuleky and his team conducted time-series data analysis and machine learning on a long-term, high resolution radon time-series from Kīholo Bay, Hawaiʻi to analyze the dependencies between rainfall, groundwater and ocean-water levels, coastal salinity, and submarine groundwater discharge. The analyses presented in this research are the first step in understanding what to expect […]
Read MoreOpen Access Renewable Resources, Urban Unemployment, and the Resolution of Dual Institutional Failures
This paper investigates how poverty reduction and natural resource preservation can be simultaneously achieved in a small open dual economy with urban wage rigidity, open access rural resources, and rural-urban migration. An increase in the export tax rate on the rural resource good increases urban unemployment in both the short run and the long run with resource […]
Read MoreShould Hawaii Levy a Visitor Green Fee to Protect Our Environment?
By James Mak Since the visitor to the Islands unquestionablycontributes significantly to the State’senvironmental problems, he will no doubthave to bear a substantial portion of the outlays needed for their solution. William Baumol1970 IntroductionMore than 50 years ago in 1970 when Hawaii hosted a relatively paltry 1.7 million visitors, Princeton University economist, William Baumol, authored […]
Read MoreDetecting religion from space: Nyepi Day in Bali
Daily changes in human activity are difficult to detect using nightlight imagery because many factors that influence nightlights are changing from night to night. We propose using a difference-in-differences methodology for detecting daily changes in human behavior using NASA’s Black Marble product suite. We find that total top-of-atmosphere radiance on the Indonesian island of Bali decreases by […]
Read MoreThe Rising Cost of Climate Change on Home Values
By Justin Tyndall Climate change poses a clear threat to coastal real estate assets. As sea level rises and coastal weather events become more severe, exposed properties will experience recurring damage and some will become uninhabitable. Homebuyers may fail to fully appreciate the threat of sea level rise, causing homes in coastal areas to be […]
Read MoreA density-dependent multi-species model to assess groundwater flow and nutrient transport in the coastal Keauhou aquifer, Hawai‘i, USA.
Fresh groundwater is a critical resource supporting coastal ecosystems that rely on low-salinity, nutrient-rich groundwater discharge. This resource, however, is subject to contamination from point- and nonpoint-sources such as on-site sewage disposal systems (OSDS) and urban developments. Thus, the significance of flow and transport processes near the coastline due to density effects and water circulation […]
Read MoreYou can’t always get what you want: Protectionist policies with the transport sector
This paper incorporates key stylized facts about the transport sector into the conventional international oligopoly model and explores how protectionist policies perform differently when transport costs are endogenous and subject to the backhaul problem (i.e., the imbalance of shipping volume in outgoing and incoming routes). A country’s protectionist policies, which benefit domestic firms and harm foreign firms in the […]
Read MoreIdentifying wastewater management tradeoffs: costs, nearshore water quality, and implications for marine coastal ecosystems in Kona, Hawai‘i
Untreated and minimally treated wastewater discharged into the environment have the potential to adversely affect groundwater dependent ecosystems and nearshore marine health. Addressing this issue requires a systems approach that links land use and wastewater management decisions to potential impacts on the nearshore marine environment via changes in water quality and quantity. To that end, […]
Read MoreBlog: Identifying wastewater management tradeoffs: costs, nearshore water quality, and implications for marine coastal ecosystems in Kona, Hawai’i
By Christopher A. Wada, Kimberly M. Burnett , Brytne K. Okuhata, Jade M. S. Delevaux, Henrietta Dulai, Aly I. El-Kadi, Veronica Gibson, Celia Smith, Leah L. Bremer An interdisciplinary team from UHERO, the Water Resources Research Center, Dept. of Earth Sciences, and the Dept. of Botany recently published new scientific results in the journal PLOS […]
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