Building resilient coastal forests through enhancing biocultural research and career pathways

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Leah Bremer
Co-INVESTIGATORS: Tamara Ticktin, Kiana Frank, Zoe Hastings Silao
PI-CASC Graduate Scholar:
Research Track: Island Resilience and Sustainability

Well-managed coastal forests, including agroforests, provide important climate adaptation benefits, including erosion control, flood mitigation, and cultural connection to place. Yet these ecosystems receive far less attention than high elevation forests or conventional agricultural systems. This project, an expansion of a 2020-2024 Sea Grant project, responds to this gap by improving understanding of how interactions between plants, microbes, and people support restoration success and social-ecological resilience to climate change at a community agroforestry site in Heʻeia, Oʻahu. The researcher team plans to evaluate if and how companion planting with a native fern facilitates the success of coastal agroforestry restoration. Measuring soil moisture, soil carbon, relative humidity, and microbial diversity and function, they hope to establish the relative success of a culturally valuable, drought-sensitive species over time with and without co-planted ferns.

For the community, the project also includes a plan to establish a pilot climate adaptation research/management internship program for UH undergraduate students in collaboration with Kākoʻo ʻŌiwi and the Heʻeia National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) to support biocultural research and career pathways. In addition, they will design community and educational programming around ferns, including through lei workshops, and evaluate how this influences measures of social-ecological resilience, such as cultural connection to place.