Establishing Climate Change Vulnerability Rankings for Hawaiian Native Plants

Summary

Hawai‘i has a relatively large number of native plants which are under threat from human activity including habitat loss due to development, damage from introduced species, and climate change. This project’s modelling combined large amounts of geographic and life-history information with future climate scenarios to determine the relative vulnerability of over 1,000 native plants to climate change. Through extensive consultation with resource managers, we have determined that vulnerability scores and associated information will be extremely valuable to plant conservation management groups so that they can focus scarce time and resources on the most vulnerable species. This model framework may be adapted for similar assessments in other Pacific Island locations.

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This research feature was produced by the Pacific Islands Climate Science Center.

Related Publications

 Vulnerability Assessment for Native Hawaiian Plants | Pacific Islands Climate Change Cooperative

Featured photo:  Loulu lelo, a threatened endemic Hawaiian tree. Photo courtesy Forest and Kim Starr/ CC BY 3.0.