Hawaiian seascapes and their management implications

Summary

Sociocultural aspects of shore use will be affected by changing climate, but there is a paucity of research on the scales and timelines in which users interact with the environment. Better integration of local community viewpoints and experiences can help improve holistic understanding of seascapes and allow for better multi-use adaptation management and planning. We used interviews and surveys to determine the scales at which different use groups experienced environmental change in Hilo Bay, and connected these with biophysical data from sensors and climate change projections. Recreationists who regularly interact with their environment are natural environmental monitors with key insights into environmental change on important social scales. This knowledge can inform future research scale and focus, and should be integrated into adaptation, resilience, and management plans.

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

Related Publications

N. Puniwai, S. Gray, C.A. Lepczyk, A. Kapono, and C. Severance, 2016 | Mapping Ocean Currents Through Human Observations: Insights from Hilo Bay, Hawai’i | Human Ecology | https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-016-9822-0 

Featured photo by Anson Chappell/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.