Opportunities and solutions for the nation’s most critical water issues are proposed in a published report co-authored by two University of Hawaiʻi Sea Grant College Program (Hawaiʻi Sea Grant) experts.

The report, “Water Resources Research Act Program—Current Status, Development Opportunities, and Priorities for 2020–30,” is the first vision document for the Water Resources Research Act (WRRA) Program in its 50-year history. It focuses on seven critical challenges: water scarcity and availability; water-related hazards and climate variability; water quality; water policy, planning and socioeconomics; ecosystem and drainage basin functions; water technology and innovation; and workforce development and water literacy.

The vision document was initiated in 2018 at the request of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to guide its WRRA Program and its 54 university-based state institutes and centers for the next 10 years.

The co-authors of the report, Darren T. Lerner and Mary J. Donohue, engaged the USGS WRRA Program federal coordinator, Earl Greene, all 54 state institutes, and an ad hoc vision committee to articulate the current and future trajectory of the program to maximize its service to our nation.

Lerner, director of Hawaiʻi Sea Grant, university consortium director of the Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center, and past interim director of UH Mānoa’s Water Resources Research Center, noted “It is truly a privilege to have had the opportunity to work with all of the WRRA program directors and many of their staff to develop this critical synthesis and pathway forward for the amazing work of these university-based programs in service to communities across the entire U.S.”

Donohue, who serves as Hawaiʻi Sea Grant’s program development and national partnership specialist, said “Each of us has, or will soon, be touched by water issues resulting from climate change and other pressures. We urgently need the innovative research conducted by the WRRA Program and the next generation of water professionals it trains to see us through the coming years.”

The USGS WRRA Program delivers university-based research, outreach and education services to citizens in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. For more than 50 years, the WRRA Program has invested in local, state and regionally focused water-related research, information and technology transfer, and workforce development through student training and professional internships.

Thomas Giambelluca, director of the UH Water Resources Research Center, stated “The WRRA Program is critically important to the nation in providing guidance and financial support for research, outreach and education to address pressing water problems. Hawaiʻi and other island jurisdictions benefit greatly from WRRA-supported work to identify and reduce the impacts of climate change, population growth, species invasion and other threats to water supply.”

Read also on UH News.

Witnessing a widespread coral bleaching event during the summer of 2015 sparked Mariko Quinn’s determination to conserve that which she loved. Growing up on the edge of the water of Kaneohe Bay, Oahu, Quinn spent many days exploring, swimming and snorkeling with family.

“Being in the water made me very passionate about the oceans and the health of the marine ecosystem from a very young age,” said Quinn, who is now a University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa undergraduate student in the Global Environmental Sciences (GES) degree program. “Seeing the coral bleaching event impact reefs both in Hawai‘i and around the world prompted me to do my eighth grade science fair project observing how coral recovered after the bleaching.”

At the state science fair, she connected with the Kulia Marine Science Club, an afterschool marine biology club for high school students at the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). 

After her first year in the club, one of the instructors, Mike Henley became Quinn’s mentor to assist with her next science fair project on coral reef ecology. After a successful project, Quinn became an intern with Henley in the Smithsonian Institution’s Hagedorn Lab, based at HIMB.

“I have been consistently impressed with Mari’s dedication, performance, responsibility, motivation, and reliability as a student and young researcher,” said Henley, who is also a postdoctoral researcher in the Hagedorn Lab.

Quinn continued working with the lab group on several different projects spanning from 2017 to this past summer as a student in the GES program in SOEST. Earlier in 2021, Quinn co-authored a study published in Nature Scientific Reports revealing that blue coral’s secret sunscreen may provide resilience to changing ocean conditions.

“I’ve been able to explore not just coral reef ecology but also coral restoration and reproduction,” she said. “I’ve also learned a great deal about what goes into being a good researcher and how to design a successful large-scale experiment. One of the main things I’ve learned thus far is that failure is just part of the process. If an experiment doesn’t work the first, or fifth, time, it still moves the project and our scientific understanding forward.”

Drawn to the holistic and relatively broad course curriculum, she appreciated that the Global Environmental Sciences degree program covered a variety of topics with real-world applications, and that there is space for personalization and focus.

For her senior research thesis, Quinn plans to investigate the reproductive differences of the sea urchin, Tripneustes gratilla in locations around Oahu. This species of urchin is often known as an indicator species, as they are incredibly sensitive to changes in their environment, such as toxins or chemicals in the water.

“I also really enjoy how much support and community GES provides since it is one of the smaller programs on UH Mānoa campus,” Quinn said.

After graduation, she hopes to participate in the Knauss Fellowship Program in Washington, DC which allows students to connect policy and research in water-based ecosystems at a national level.

“In addition to the fellowship program, I hope to go to graduate school to pursue a doctoral degree in marine biology, likely with a project focused on coral reef ecology or conservation,” said Quinn. “Ultimately, I hope to be able to use my research in these fields to influence policy decisions that consider the future health of critical ecosystems.”

To learn more about Quinn’s research interests, watch a video from Blue Planet’s Empowered: Youth Climate Leadership.

Read also on UH News.

An international team of scientists may have solved a key mystery about the origins of Earth’s water, after uncovering persuasive new evidence pointing to an unlikely culprit—the Sun.

In a new paper published today in the journal Nature Astronomy, a team of researchers, including two from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), describe how analysis of dust grains from the surface of an ancient asteroid suggests that extraterrestrial dust grains from asteroids and comets carried water to the surface of the early Earth. The water in the grains is produced by space weathering, a process by which charged particles from the Sun, known as solar wind, altered the chemical composition of the grains to produce water molecules.

The finding could answer the longstanding question about the sources of the water that covers 70 percent of Earth’s surface – far more than any other rocky planet in our Solar System. Planetary scientists have puzzled for decades over the source of Earth’s oceans. One theory suggests that one comets and asteroids brought the water to the planet in the final stages of its formation 4.6 billion years ago.  

To test that theory, scientists have previously analysed the isotopic ‘fingerprint’ of chunks of asteroids which have fallen to Earth as water-rich carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. If the ratio of hydrogen and deuterium in the meteorite water matched that of terrestrial water, scientists could conclude that meteorites were the likely source.

The results weren’t quite that clear-cut. While some water-rich meteorites’ deuterium/hydrogen fingerprints do indeed match Earth’s water, others do not. On average, these meteorites’ liquid fingerprints do not line up with the water found in Earth’s mantle and oceans. Instead, Earth has an additional different, slightly lighter isotopic fingerprint.

In other words, while some of Earth’s water must have come from chunks of comets and  asteroids, the forming Earth must have also received an additional contribution of isotopically-light water from another source.

The University of Glasgow-led team used a cutting-edge analytical process called atom probe tomography to scrutinise samples from a different type of space rock known as an S-type asteroid, which orbit closer to the sun than C-types. The samples they analysed came from an asteroid called Itokawa, which were collected by the Japanese space probe Hayabusa and returned to Earth in 2010.

Atom probe tomography enabled the team to measure the composition of the grains one atom at a time and detect individual water molecules.  Their findings demonstrate that a significant amount of water was produced just below the surface of dust sized grains from Itokawa by space weathering.

The early solar system was a very dusty place, providing a great deal of opportunity water to be produced at the surface of spaceborne dust particles.  Water in this dust, the researchers suggest, would have constantly rained down onto the early Earth and contributed water to Earth’s oceans.

“Over time, the ‘space weathering’ effect of the hydrogen ions can eject enough oxygen atoms from materials in the rock to create H₂O – water – trapped within minerals on the asteroid,” said lead author Luke Daly of the University of Glasgow’s School of Geographical and Earth Sciences. “Crucially, this solar wind-derived water produced by the early solar system is isotopically light. That strongly suggests that fine-grained dust, buffeted by the solar wind and drawn into the forming Earth billions of years ago, could be the source of the missing reservoir of the planet’s water.”

“As recently as a decade ago, the notion that solar wind irradiation is relevant to the origin of water in the solar system, and even to Earth’s oceans, would have been greeted with scepticism,” said co-author John Bradley, affiliate researcher at SOEST’s Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology. “By showing that water is produced in-situ on the surface of an asteroid, the study builds on the accumulating body of evidence that the interaction of the solar wind with oxygen-rich minerals in dust grains produces water. Since much of the dust throughout the solar nebula was inevitably irradiated prior its accretion into larger objects, water produced by this mechanism is highly relevant to the origin of water in planetary systems and possibly the isotopic composition of Earth’s oceans.”

Supporting future space explorers

Their estimates of just how much water might be contained in space-weathered surfaces also suggest a way future space explorers could manufacture supplies of water on even the most seemingly arid planets.

“One of the problems of future human space exploration is how astronauts will find enough water to keep them alive and accomplish their tasks without carrying it with them on their journey,” said co-author Hope Ishii, research professor at HIGP. “We think it’s reasonable to assume that the same space weathering process which created the water on Itokawa will have occurred to one degree or another on many airless worlds like the Moon or the asteroid Vesta. That could mean that space explorers may well be able to process fresh supplies of water straight from the dust on the planet’s surface. It’s exciting to think that the processes which formed the planets could help to support human life as we reach out beyond Earth.”

Remote ocean wilderness areas are located more than four hours from people and more than nine hours of travel distance from urban markets. A new study co-led by a University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa expert discovered that these remote areas are sustaining fish populations up to three times better than some of the best marine reserves and managed fisheries.

Alan Friedlander, a researcher at UH Mānoa’s Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology and chief scientist with the National Geographic Society Pristine Seas, co-authored the study, which was published in Fish and Fisheries in late October 2021. Friedlander and researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society, National Geographic Society and other universities, examined more than 700 remote sites, marine reserves and managed fisheries in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. They said wilderness areas shelter many important and threatened species like sharks, groupers, jacks and snappers, which require large spaces to thrive.

Experts, including Friedlander, are calling for more action, as these marine wilderness areas are rapidly disappearing in the face of widespread fishing.

“Marine wilderness areas support unique ecological values with no equivalency as one gets closer to humans, even in large and well-managed marine reserves,” Friedlander said. “These areas are essential to biodiversity conservation and the spillover benefit that they can provide to fisheries.”

30×30 initiative

The High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People is an intergovernmental group of 70 countries that is currently championing a global deal with the central goal of protecting at least 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030. Similarly, a new “30×30” initiative by U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to protect and conserve at least 30% of the country’s land and sea by 2030. Progress toward this goal is underway, but currently less than 3% of the world’s oceans are fully protected in marine reserves.

Friedlander said while the focus on 30% coverage of marine reserves is ongoing, the need to find and protect marine wilderness areas remains a high priority. The authors said that the two approaches complement each other, as marine reserves protect more resilient species while wilderness protects space-requiring species.

“Observing and surveying fishes for decades has made it clear to me that many fishes, and particularly big fishes, require lots of space to survive and thrive,” Friedlander said. “This collaboration and analyses with my colleagues have made it clear how this need for open marine wilderness is essential to ocean health. This robust and extensive dataset has allowed us to confirm what many of us have observed for years, that remote marine wilderness are like time machines that allow us to observe the ocean of the past in order to protect the future.”

Read also on UH News.

From laboratory experiments to observations of young star systems, University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa researchers are on a quest to understand how rocky planets like Earth form.  

Planets form from disks of gas and dust that surround young stars: previous research has shown that nearly all stars are born with such disks, and revealed hints of planet formation within them.  Surveys for planets around other stars, termed “exoplanets,” have discovered that Earth-size and presumably rocky planets are common, and many stars have planets orbiting much closer to their host star than the Earth-Sun distance.  But most of the steps between dust and planets are poorly understood, in part because they are obscured within the inner region of these proto-planetary disks.  

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently awarded a total of $1.3 million in three separate grants to teams of UH Mānoa scientists from the Department of Earth Sciences and Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), the Institute for Astronomy, and the Information and Computer Science Department (ICS) to explore this inner realm around other stars — and our Sun — in search of the secrets to planet formation.  

SOEST Earth Sciences professor Eric Gaidos, lead investigator on two of the grants, explained, “the story of planet formation is like an epic movie, where we could watch only the dramatic opening scene and the happy ending, but missed everything between, leaving us guessing about  the main characters, their roles and most of the plot.”  

Because of the vast distances to even the nearest young stars, the most powerful telescopes are usually unable to resolve details in the inner zones of planet-forming disks.  Instead investigators must employ indirect means to probe these regions. Gaidos and his collaborators are using instances where dusty material from the disk briefly blocks part of the star, causing hours-long dimming or “dipping” in the starlight.  

While the phenomenon was discovered decades ago using telescopes on the ground, space telescopes such as NASA’s Spitzer, Kepler and TESS spacecraft have revealed that the “dipper” phenomenon is common around young stars, and could be produced by a combination of structures in a disk or dust-producing bodies like asteroids or comets that could be the building-blocks of planets.  Much smaller amounts of dust can be detected much closer to a star in this way and the properties of the dust and any accompanying gas can be determined by analyzing the scattering and absorption of starlight at different wavelengths. These observations can be readily obtained from the ground, but the rotation of Earth means that a single telescope cannot continuously monitor a star. 

The centerpiece of the NSF-funded effort is an observing program using the Las Cumbres Observatory, a global network of small robotic telescopes that can continuously monitor a star, handing off the task from telescope to telescope as the Sun rises on one site and sets at another. This network also includes a set of smaller cameras with telephoto lenses called the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN), which scans most of the sky each night.  

The team, including co-investigators Ben Shappee at the Institute for Astronomy, Peter Sadowski of the ICS, and IfA graduate student Suchitra Narayanan, is developing improved algorithms to precisely measure changes in the brightness of stars and to detect dimming events in near-real time to direct observations by other telescopes.  

A second effort, supported by NASA and involving IfA graduate student Alexa Anderson, re-purposes a satellite called Swift  that usually looks for the flashes of high-energy radiation coming from distant cosmic explosions to monitor these “dipper” stars instead.  Its instruments are sensitive to ultraviolet and X-ray radiation that is absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere and cannot be observed from the ground. Observations at these wavelengths will indicate whether there is gas—in addition to dust—that is in orbit around these stars. The amount of gas, primarily hydrogen and helium, compared to dust is an important aspect of planet formation models.  

Only two planets—Mercury and Venus—orbit at a distance from the Sun within the range of exoplanets detected by the NASA Kepler mission. Both are poorly explored neighbors of Earth, but both may hold important secrets to understanding the formation of rocky planets, including planets that are Earth-like and potentially habitable.  

The third award, also from NASA, will support an effort led by HIGP researcher Bin Chen, joined by Gaidos, to understand the origin and properties of Mercury’s metal iron core.  Mercury is anomalous in the relatively large size of its core and the chemistry of its surface—both suggesting that the planet formed under much more oxygen-poor conditions than Earth. 

Using laboratory experiments that reproduce the pressure and temperature found in the interior of Mercury and computer models, Chen and Gaidos will investigate how this enigmatic planet could have formed and how its different chemistry affected the fate of light-weight elements such as carbon early in the planet’s history. In Earth’s silicate mantle, carbon is typically in an oxidized form and emerges as carbon dioxide when molten rock erupts as lava to the surface, e.g. through volcanoes.  In the interior of Mercury, carbon might be in the form of iron-carbon alloys (analogous to steel), graphite or even diamond, dissolving into the core or appearing in the planet’s surface crust. This research will guide studies of the many small exoplanets found on close-in orbits around their stars and that may resemble Mercury.  

“The magnetic field in rocky planets such as Earth and Mercury offers clues concerning their internal structures and dynamics. To decipher how Mercury’s magnetic field is generated within its core, we can build the planet from scratch with analog ingredients through laboratory experiments. We are trying to answer how the planet’s initial conditions and early processes would affect the composition of its core and mantle, surface chemistry and mineralogy, and internal dynamics such as the generation of a magnetic field.” said Chen. 

The research uses special “anvils” made of sintered diamonds to squeeze samples with a pressure half a million times our atmosphere.   Graduate student Keng-Hsien Chao is performing these experiments in Chen’s Multi-Anvil Press Laboratory (MAPLab) and the Advanced Photon Source of the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. 

“The first golden age of planetary exploration began almost 60 years ago with space probes to other planets in the Solar System,” said Gaidos.  “The second began 30 years later with the discovery of planets around other stars.  We are on the threshold of a third age when these two scientific adventures coalesce, and we better understand the origin of Earth and other rocky planets in a cosmic context.”

This editorial by SOEST Associate Dean Chip Fletcher was posted in The Hill on November 17, 2021.

Politics is the art of compromise, making it uniquely unsuited for establishing the future safety and well-being of our children. Compromise on safety? Who would ever agree to that? Our leaders, apparently.

In the lead-up to the UN climate summit COP26, U.S. Special Presidential Climate Envoy John Kerry said that the climate change summit in Glasgow would be the “last best hope for the world to get its act together.” Describing the threat of climate change as “existential,” Kerry signaled that the Biden administration understands the science of global warming and is committed to keep temperature increases below 1.5 degrees Celsius and adhere to the Paris Agreement. Hope was in the air.

As a participant at COP26, I watched the upbeat news about agreements on methane reductions, trillions of dollars in renewable energy investments, ending deforestation, an unexpected China-U.S. climate pact and more. Yet, in the end, despite the need for all these steps, the language behind these headlines was vague and even combined, are not capable of stopping warming at the planetary boundary of 1.5 degrees.

Today, air temps are 1.1 to 1.3 degrees above pre-industrial levels and will continue to increase until at least mid-century under all emissions scenarios. Global warming of 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep and rapid reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions occur soon. These reductions mean ending the use of coal, leaving oil and gas reserves in the ground, cutting emissions an average 7 percent every year beginning now, and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 through a complete transformation of the energy, food, building, industrial and transportation sectors of the global economy.

By the time COP26 came to an end, Kerry’s language, and attitude, had changed. After two exhausting weeks of negotiation, his final remarks reflected the latest analysis: Government energy policies currently in place around the world are projected to result in about 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels. Government pledges to cut emissions would limit warming to 2.4 degrees (that’s if they are met). According to the UN Environmental Program, based on current energy policies, we stand a two-thirds probability of warming 2.8 degrees by the end of the century.

But there is more to the story. We learned this year that our strongest natural ally in reducing emissions, photosynthesis by plants on land, may be faltering. On average, about 30 percent of annual CO2 emissions are removed from the air by this process with the remainder either dissolved in the ocean (causing ocean acidification) or remaining in the atmosphere for decades to millennia (causing global warming). Photosynthesis has a thermal maximum beyond which carbon uptake sharply declines and respiration, the process in which plants give off CO2 and water, sharply increases. Studies show this limit was already briefly passed in the warmest quarter of the past decade and with continued emissions (and warming), land-based carbon uptake is projected to decline by nearly 50 percent as early as 2040. This effect has not been included in published pathways to limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, nor in national pledges to cut emissions.

This is more than a speculative worry. The Amazon basin contains about half of the world’s tropical rainforests, which are more effective at soaking up and storing carbon than other types of forests. After decades of clear-cutting, wildfire, fragmentation and river damming, the Brazilian portion of the Amazon is no longer effective at storing carbon. It has become a net greenhouse gas emitter.

Tropical rainforests are critical to stopping global warming in line with UN targets. As these are lost, we may see other natural systems tip into new states as well. Exceeding the 1.5-degree limit threatens to produce dramatic increases in melting glaciers, thermally expanding oceans, disappearing Arctic Sea ice, coral reef bleaching, changes to key ocean currents, increasing extreme weather and wildfires, spreading forest loss, as well as other devastating impacts. And when we are finally successful at stopping global warming, should we begin the process of removing CO2 from the air, you cannot unmelt the Greenland ice sheet, and you cannot unburn the boreal forest. Setting in motion some of these global-scale biophysical changes may lead to irreversible tipping points in the climate system that could prove highly regretful.

Sounding irritable and defensive, like a man charged with defending an indefensible position, John Kerry encouraged us with “you can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Settle for “good” in an existential crisis?

If we let it, climate diplomacy will be a death sentence for over 19 percent of Earth’s land area. On our current emission pathway, the Marshall Islands, the Maldives, Kiribati and Tuvalu, Vietnam, SE Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, Central America—and about one-third of land humans occupy—are projected to either drown by sea-level rise or become too hot for human life before the end of this century.

Managing these futures by compromise is suicide. If to a hammer everything looks like a nail, then to a climate negotiator, must every COP climate conference treaty look like compromise?

The final text of the Glasgow Climate Pact commits the 197 parties to the Paris Agreement to “phase down” unabated coal power and “phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.” This language is substantially weaker than expected because of a last-minute change required by India and China, the coal commitment was changed from “phase out” to “phase down.” The pact also commits countries to strengthen their 2030 emissions reductions targets by the end of 2022 and asks rich nations to “at least double” the amount of money they give developing countries for adapting to climate change.

India, China and other developing nations, are deeply engaged in improving human well-being through economic development and poverty eradication. Removing their ability to utilize ready and affordable fossil-fueled energy, threatens this important agenda. This is why climate change mitigation and achieving human equality must go hand in hand and is achieved by investing in the developing world. Deploying renewable energy across developing communities must happen at lightning speed and is, in fact, the best pathway to decarbonizing the global economy and stabilizing the climate for everyone. Investing in the developing world is an investment in ourselves and can be affordably achieved through green COVID-recovery stimulus plans.

Let’s set the record straight. Under current climate policy pledges, children born in 2020 will experience a two- to sevenfold increase in extreme events, particularly heat, compared with people born in 1960. Our world will heat up to a blistering 2.8 degrees Celsius by 2090 and for children born in 2020 versus those born decades earlier, they will experience 7.5 times as many heatwaves (4 versus 30 heat waves), 3.6 times as many droughts, 3 times as many crop failures, 2.8 times as many river floods and 2 times as many wildfires. These results highlight a severe threat to the safety of young generations and a call for drastic emission reductions to safeguard their future.

If we let it, climate politics, and the art of compromise, will bear responsibility for millions of deaths and untold suffering. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change must develop a better way forward for future COP summits—a way that places science in the lead, and the safety and wellbeing of humankind at the center, there is no time for compromise.

* * *

Read also on UH News.

Hawaiʻi Island’s vulnerability to climate change and sea-level rise was highlighted on the global stage at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change  COP26 summit on November 8. A local, community-based solution, co-developed by the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo and Hawaiʻi County was showcased as a model approach to climate change adaptation challenges.

An inspiring video presented the details of a project co-developed by UH Hilo geography professor Ryan Perroy and Hawaiʻi County Planner Bethany Morrison. Together with UH Hilo student Aloha Kapono, they are generating a comprehensive inventory for Hawaiʻi Island’s 428 kilometers of coastline, collecting high-resolution aerial imagery and ground surveys of its steep sea cliffs, rocky coastal lava fields and white, black and green sand beaches. 

Hawaiʻi Island’s coastal vulnerability

With support from the Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center (PI-CASC), which is co-administered by Hawaiʻi Sea Grant within SOEST, the study builds upon a previous PI-CASC project by UH Hilo Manager Climate Corps master’s student, Rose Hart, who collaborated with Perroy and Morrison to estimate coastal erosion rates for three stretches of Hawaiʻi Island coastline and compared them to projected sea-level rise rates. The ultimate goal of this collaboration is to establish the entire island’s coastal vulnerability to rising sea levels, providing agencies and decision makers with tools to assist in building community resilience to rapidly changing climate conditions.

“These data and products will be a lasting resource for land managers, local government and the scientific community as we grapple with the challenges of building community resilience in a time of rising sea level,” said Perroy. 

Mari-Vaughn Johnson, PI-CASC’s federal director, said, “I love the way it showcases how community-based solutions to climate change can work. This project’s deepening of the relationship between UH Hilo and county planners, and contribution to the capacity of the next generation of climate adaptation scientists and managers, is as valuable as the scientific literacy this tool creates.” 

Vulnerable U.S. communities

The video illustrating the project was part of a presentation by Doug Beard, Chief of the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Climate Adaptation Science Centers, at a virtual COP26 event sponsored by the Resilience Hub, called “Communities on the front line and local leaders that support them.” The event highlighted vulnerable U.S. communities that are impacted by climate change, featuring a panel of community adaptation and resilience leaders discussing adaptation projects from across the country. 

“I was deeply moved by the unique balance achieved in this session of agency leads and high-level expression from experience, alongside wide-ranging voices across communities and across the nation,” said Scott Laursen, co-developer of the Manager Climate Corps. “In each case, on-the-ground voices demonstrated strength through union and empathy, amid vulnerability and great challenges.”

Read also on UH News.

A groundbreaking publication that seeks to build more just and generative relationships between researchers and community members was recently updated to better reflect the nuances and complexities of community-researcher partnerships.

Kūlana Noi‘i was initially developed in 2017 through a partnership between university researchers and place-based stewards to ensure equitable and reciprocal relationships with those connected to, and caring for, the ahupuaʻa of Heʻeia. It outlined a set of ideas, values, and behaviors that served as a resource to facilitate open conversation and clearly articulated expectations.

Hundreds of research projects are conducted each year focused on Hawai‘i’s upland, coastal, and marine ecosystems, and these natural resources are integral to the livelihoods, cultural practices, and religious traditions of the surrounding community. Kūlana Noi‘i arose from a practical need to establish non-extractive research partnerships and provide best practices to conduct place-based research in Indigenous spaces with a focus on Hawaiʻi.

Kūlana Noiʻi version 2.0 includes an enhanced introduction with guidance on using the publication as a starting point to spark deeper conversations. It also includes updates to each of the kūlana to reflect lessons learned in previous/ongoing partnerships.

Since Kūlana Noiʻi was first released, over 600 researchers, community members, and resource stewards have been trained through more than 40 workshops on building and nurturing pilina (relationships) and A‘o aku, a‘o mai / Aloha aku, aloha mai (knowledge given, knowledge received / Love given, love received. It has also had far-reaching impacts beyond Hawaiʻi, and has been shared nationally through peer-reviewed journal articles, the NOAA Sea Grant  Traditional and Local Knowledge vision document, the Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange website, as a resource in creating the Arctic Science Summit Week 2021 Code of Conduct, and more.  

Dr. Rosie Alegado, director of Hawai‘i Sea Grant’s Center for Integrated Knowledge Systems, noted “This guidance document also has resonance for other academic institutions that strive to center justice and equity in their work.”

Next, the Kūlana Noiʻi Working Group intends to focus on developing additional curricula to train STEM faculty and graduate students in this process. “A key starting point for University of Hawai‘i becoming a Native Hawaiian place of learning is for our researchers to adopt a praxis of working in partnership and active engagement with local communities,” said Dr. Alegado.  

Although Kūlana Noiʻi was initially envisioned through partnerships among the University of Hawai‘i Sea Grant College Program, Kuaʻāina Ulu ʻAuamo (KUA), the Hawaiian Islands Sentinel Site Cooperative, and the He‘eia National Estuarine Research Reserve, importantly, it does not belong to any single organization, institution, or community. It is rooted in the collective knowledge, insight, and many years of effort contributed by communities, organizations, and experts across Hawai‘i.

To learn more about Kūlana Noiʻi and the other projects featured in Hawai‘i Sea Grant’s Center for Integrated Knowledge Systems, visit: https://seagrant.soest.hawaii.edu/integrated-knowledge-systems/

Read more on UH News

Two research projects involving University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa scientists, Bruce Howe and Justin Stopa, have been endorsed as part of the United Nations (UN) Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (the “Ocean Decade”) program. The projects focus on the deep sea—a dynamic, poorly known realm that is a vast repository for biodiversity, provides critical climate regulation, and houses a wealth of hydrocarbon, mineral, and genetic resources.

The UN proclaimed the Ocean Decade to support efforts to reverse the cycle of decline in ocean health and gather ocean stakeholders worldwide behind a common framework that will ensure ocean science can fully support countries in creating improved conditions for sustainable development of the ocean.

According to UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission announcement, the endorsed actions “were selected for their focus on solutions and their ability to accelerate the generation and uptake of ocean knowledge for sustainable development; for their use of innovative technology; their transdisciplinary efforts to co-design solutions between scientists and users of ocean knowledge; and their respect for inclusivity, empowering women, early-career professionals and indigenous knowledge holders.”

SMART subsea cables

Howe, a research professor of Ocean and Resources Engineering at the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), is the chairperson of the Joint Task Force for Science Monitoring and Reliable Telecommunications (SMART) subsea cables, one of the endorsed projects. The Joint Task Force is facilitating the integration of environmental sensors into commercial telecommunications cables that crisscross the globe on the seafloor. The project goal is to connect a worldwide array of sensors that monitor the sparsely observed deep ocean environment, ocean climate, and sea level rise.

“In addition to climate and ocean monitoring, the network will revolutionize real-time warning systems for earthquake and tsunami disaster mitigation,” said Howe.

The SMART subsea cables task force provides coordination between the program and ocean science, operational oceanography, hazard early warning centers, industry, and relevant government agencies. It is presently funded by NASA through the Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The first major SMART project is underway in Portugal, with others in various stages of planning.

Implementing a Deep Ocean Observing System

Also endorsed through the UN Ocean Decade is a new National Science Foundation-funded project to implement a Deep Ocean Observing Strategy – iDOOS, with Howe and Stopa contributing as co-investigators; the project is led by the University of Texas at Austin.

“Observing the deep ocean at a level required to inform sustainable development and management faces significant technical and logistical challenges,” said Stopa, Assistant Professor of Ocean and Resources Engineering in SOEST. “To address these challenges, the project will bring together U.S. and international networks engaged in sustained deep-ocean observing, mapping, exploration, modeling, research, and management to leverage each other’s efforts, knowledge, and resources.”

Through engagement with policy makers, regulators, and science coordinators, this project will raise awareness and support for deep-ocean science, and bring science into critical decisions regarding climate, biodiversity and sustainability. One of the project’s goals is to galvanize the broader communities associated with understanding and monitoring the ocean’s health and build an all-inclusive community beyond the typical sciences. Consequently, a key element of project is the mentorship and training of a diverse and inclusive next generation of deep-ocean leaders.

“Endorsement by the Ocean Decade program will help us make connections to all stakeholders, become much more an integral part of the Global Ocean Observing System, and possibly lead to funding avenues for SMART cable projects, for example, with investment and development banks, as part of the Blue Economy,” said Howe. “It is a real opportunity for us to take these efforts to the next level and to impact change in how we approach using the ocean in a sustainable manner.”

 Today, November 5, is Tsunami Awareness Day. Learn more here.

Read also on UH News and Big Island Gazette.