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

Well-managed coastal forests, including agroforests, provide important adaptation benefits, including erosion control, flood mitigation, and 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 contribute to restoration success and social-ecological resilience to global warming at a public agroforestry site in Heʻeia, Oʻahu. The researcher team plans to evaluate if and how companion planting with a Hawaiian fern facilitates the success of coastal agroforestry restoration. Measuring soil moisture, soil carbon, relative humidity, and microbial variability and function, they hope to establish the relative success of a traditionally valuable, drought-sensitive species over time with and without co-planted ferns.

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