Raising Islands--Hawai'i science and environment

Economic chaos underway, consumers see it, the numbers tell the story.

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 20:32:00 +0000

There are fewer ships on the oceans today than a couple of months ago, a disturbing data point on the economy.

That’s thanks to the U.S. Administration’s chaotic tariff posture.

It seems clear that in the coming weeks, the Administration’s turbulent economic posture will translate to significantly higher prices. And also dramatically less inventory available to American consumers.

Consumers see it coming. Consumer sentiment has dropped to a historic low.

The value of the U.S. dollar against foreign currencies has dropped, meaning everything we buy from aboard costs more, and when we travel, our money buys less.

Investors Business Daily has a report today that China-to-North American shipping cancellations have reached 50%.

Right now, container unloading in U.S. ports is higher than normal, due to a rush of advance orders meant to beat the tariffs. But the coming drop in shipping arrivals will far outpace the temporary increase.

“Major ports like Los Angeles and Long Beach have recently seen increased activity as companies rushed goods before new tariffs. However, forward bookings indicate falling demand,” reports the British firm Containerlift.

Those kinds of drops in cargo volume will economically hit American ports, trucking companies and trains before they impact store shelves and eventually consumers.

It is not just imports to the U.S., but also exports from the U.S. American farmers are hit extremely hard. In the week of April 11-17, according to the USDA, pork exports were down 72%, soy down 50%, corn down 26%, cotton down 49%, beef down 41%. A few exports (rice, sorghum) were up, but the trend was way down.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) anticipates by the end of the year a 12.6% drop in North American exports.

U.S. manufacturing is down, and there are thousands of layoffs at manufacturing plants.

None of this is good for our country.

But other countries will continue to trade with each other without the direct impact of the American trade tariffs. That’s why, although the global economy is expected to be hit by the American trade chaos, it will be hit far less severely than the U.S. and its biggest direct trading partners.

The WTO is estimating worldwide merchandise trade to take just a .2% hit.

Food safety in U.S. at risk from draconian budget and staff cuts

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 00:16:00 +0000

The United States has the safest food in the world, but maybe not for long.

Massive cuts in the agencies that oversee the healthiness of our grocery store products are threatening the nation.

Food safety has long been protected by four major government offices: the DHHS’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Department of Commerce’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). Those agencies work together under dozens of interagency agreements to keep our groceries safe.

Food safety includes far more than just looking for toxic compounds and disease agents in food. There is safe packaging, sanitation in processing plants, pesticide residue testing, animal drug guidance, animal carcass inspections, checking for contamination from insect parts, all kinds of things.

State and local health departments play a role, but that role is widely different in differing jurisdictions. One of the main functions of those local authorities, often working with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is investigating outbreaks after the food safety system has failed. Outbreaks like communicable diseases and foodborne pathogens like Salmonella, Shigella, Campylobacter, and E. coli

The broad consistent protections of the food supply come from the actions of the national government.

And the federal government is actively in the process of abandoning the safety of our food supply.

An April 10 White House memo disclosed plans to cut 40% from the budgets of the CDC and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The DHHS is facing $40 Billion in cuts, a third of its discretionary budget. /

Staffing cuts have already significantly cut services, and the FDA just announced that it will stop testing milk.

And the Administration laid off bird flu investigators at the FDA, while they were working on an active and spreading bird flu virus.

The EPA has been charged with cutting its budget 65 percent, although EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin says the environment will be protected even with the cuts.

NOAA has been told to cut its budget 25 percent, and the NMFS (NOAA Fisheries) is looking at 28 percent.

A leaked White House document says FDA won’t be inspecting food processing any more, but that states will cover that under contracts from the FDA.

"The budget eliminates FDA's direct role in routine inspections of food facilities," says the document. "FDA will expand the current state contracts for routine food facility inspections program to cover 100 percent of all routine foods."

But with the giant budget cuts, it is not clear from where will come the money to pay the states to do that.

Indeed, it is not clear how we can keep American food safe by cutting tens of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs out of our food safety programs.

In a current case, a warning of slivers of metal in pork carnitas, it wasn’t government inspectors that discovered it. The FSIS put out the warning after the factory processing the carnitas identified the problem.

In another current crisis, there are four major listeria outbreaks underway right now, with more than 120 people sick at a dozen dead. That would be the FDA and the CDC, both of which are undergoing or facing severe staff reductions.

Food safety seems like something we’d want to support.

More and worse than ever: World Meteorological Organization new climate report

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 17:20:00 +0000

There are those—some of them in our nation’s leadership—who still deny climate science.

It’s a little like rejecting the rain forecast when the flood is already up to your knees.

The World Meteorological Organization just issued its State of the Climate report. It is no longer about predictions, because the predictions of past decades are all now coming to pass.

Here is the WMO press release about the report.

Here is the actual WMO report.

World atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels are the highest they have been in 800,000 years, and so are its fellow greenhouse gases methan and nitrous oxide.

Global surface temperatures are the highest they have been since records have been kept. Last year was the single hottest year on record, and the past decade is the single hottest decade on record. And it continues. January 2025 was the hottest January on record.

The oceans, which store massive amounts of heat, are hotter than ever. Each of the past eight years has been the hottest. Oceans take up 90% of the heat rise that is driven by greenhouse gas increases. Without the oceans taking up heat, the atmospheric temperatures would be even higher.

In part because of the heat, sea levels are rising faster than ever—both because warmer water takes up more volume and because glaciers are melting their stored water back into the sea.

The ocean is acidifying at a record pace—and changing the chemistry of the oceans will have significant effects. Says WMO: “The effects of ocean acidification on habitat area, biodiversity and ecosystems have already been clearly observed, and food production from shellfish aquaculture and fisheries has been hit as have coral reefs.”

All that warming and its impacts lead to weather disruptions, and the report says that extreme weather events in 2024 led to the highest level of human disruptions on record.

It takes all kinds of forms. One of them, for Hawai`i residents, is an ongoing drought that has produced the lowest stream flows since we started keeping records more than a century ago.

The changes in climate also lead to reductions in food and fishery production, driving food insecurity on a global scale.

The severity of the climate disruption is such that the WMO is now more about responding to the chaos than stopping it. In the foreword to the report, WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said this:

“WMO and the global community are intensifying efforts to strengthen early warning systems and climate services to help decision-makers and society at large be more resilient to extreme weather and climate. We are making progress but need to go further and need to go faster. Only half of all countries worldwide have adequate multi-hazard early warning systems. This must change.”

The World Meteorological Organization is a non-governmental international organizatioTn founded as a place where international researchers could share data. It was created in 1950, but is rooted in the International Meteorological Organization, which dates back to 1873.

It is not just WMO reporting this.

Here is NOAA’s report: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202413

And here is the European Union’s Copernicus Program report: https://climate.copernicus.eu/global-climate-highlights-2024

For Hawaiian monk seals, a glimmer of hope

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Sat, 07 Dec 2024 17:40:00 +0000

There were years when we despaired about the survival of Hawaiian monk seals.

Image: A young seal at Pearl and Hermes Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Credit: NOAA Fisheries Hawaiian monk seal research program.

Populations were dropping year after year and nothing seemed to be able to turn that around. Take a look at RaisingIslands' 2008 post on the distressing status of seals at that time.

Now, a little hopeful news. It’s a slow process, but there has been a stabilization, and a tiny, steady increase in numbers for about the last 10 years. Over that time, up from just 1,400 to a current population estimated at about 1,600.

That’s still only a third of what is believed to have been the stable healthy
population in the Islands, before they ran into humans.

And right now, that increase is in spite of incidents of people shooting them, their getting hooked on fishing hooks, getting entangled in nets, picking up disease from land animals like dogs and cats, their Northwestern Hawaiian Islands pupping grounds disappearing due to ocean changes, shark attacks, and incidents of attacks by pet dogs.

NOAA Fisheries in a 2022 release noted that the population had surpassed 1,500 for the first time in some 20 years.

“From 2013 to 2021, the monk seal population grew at an average rate of 2 percent per year, providing hope for the species’ long-term recovery. Even so, the level required for the species to be down-listed from endangered to threatened under the Endangered Species Act is more than double the current number of monk seals,” the report said.

It is an enormous task to care for the seal population. Federal officials and volunteers keep close watch on them. Sick and injured seals are regularly removed from the wild for hospital care.

In November 2024 a malnourished pup from an O`ahu beach was transported to the Marine Mammal Center’s Hawaiian monk seal hospital, Ke Kai Ola, in Kona.

In October a thin and weak pup from Lana`i and Maui was brought into care.

In September, three malnourished pups from Pearl and Hermes Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands were transported to the medical facility.

In June, a Kaua`i pup suffering multiple infectious diseases was hospitalized. He was released back into Kaua’i waters healthy in late November.

Occasionally, seals are relocated to move them from beaches with threats to beaches where they will be safer.

The effort involves NOAA Fisheries, the Coast Guard, the Department of Land and Natural Resources, the Marine Mammal Center and lots of volunteers.

Hawaiian monk seals, the most endangered seal species in the world, are found in the Main Hawaiian Islands, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and on Johnston Atoll, which is about 700 miles southwest of O`ahu.

If you see a seal in trouble, you can email pifsc.monksealsighting@noaa.gov. Or call the Pacific Islands NOAA Marine Wildlife Hotline at (888) 256-9840.

Here is a NOAA Fisheries resource page for more information about Hawaiian monk seals.

`Alala, Hawaiian crows, are flying free on Maui

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 19:30:00 +0000

Two ʻalalā. Credit: DLNR

The ʻalalā, the Hawaiian crow, is flying free again in a Hawaiian forest for the first time in years.

Five young birds have been released into the Kīpahulu Forest Reserve on Maui. For now, the birds seem to be staying close to the release site, and will be provided with supplemental food until they develop their foraging skills.

ʻAlalā were once found on several Hawaiian islands, but into the last century, the last place they were located was on Hawai`i Island. A plummeting population prompted an intensive effort to protect the species by bringing a few survivors into captivity.

Surviving birds were moved to Maui, and the captive flock was developed through a joint program of the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project (MFBRP), San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (SDZWA), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, along with the DLNR Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW).

Early efforts to re-release them into the wild on Hawai`i Island ran into problems, like crow predation by the also native `io, or Hawaiian hawk. The `io is not currently found on Maui, so wildlife officials hope the ʻalalā will better thrive there.

It has always been the goal to see ʻalalā return to the wild, not only for the birds, but also for the forest. They can play a key role as seed dispersers.

“We understand how valuable ʻalalā are as a cultural resource as well as a biological resource,” said Martin Frye, research field supervisor for MFBRP. “They play a huge role in Hawaiian culture just as much as they do in the Hawaiian forest. Those two things are linked.”

The five birds selected for the release are young, as young crows are less territorial and are expected to be more gregarious than older birds. They are three males and two juveniles

They will have automated feeder boxes available to them, which will distribute food on demand. The birds are fitted with tiny backpacks that contain Global Positioning System transmitters, which will permit tracking them.

“Our focus is currently on closely monitoring these birds to ensure they have the best opportunities to thrive in their new home in east Maui,” said Chelsie Javar-Salas, supervisory U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist for the Pacific Islands Fish and Wildlife Office.

ʻAlalā are remarkably intelligent birds, but these youngsters are several generations separated from the wild, so they will need to learn to forage and survive.

From a December 4, 2024, press release: “Success for the project relies on how the birds manage to adapt to their new home and can only be measured over time. The field team will continue to monitor the birds into the foreseeable future, supplementing their food and keeping an eye on their health and wellbeing. For now, the birds are free to roam and explore their surroundings, learning and feeling what it means to be wild.”

NatGeo film series, Tsunami: Race Against Time, debuts Nov. 24

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 17:10:00 +0000

It’s been more than a generation since the last seriously devastating tsunami hit the Hawaiian Islands, and most residents have no memory of the threat.

We should remember—so that next time we can protect ourselves and the people for whom we are responsible.

The 1946 April Fool’s Day Aleutian quake sent a tsunami that devastated Hawaiian coastlines from Hawai’i Island to Kaua’i. The 1957 Aleutian quake’s tsunami caused significant coastal property damage in the Islands. Both destroyed homes and ran up rivers, taking out bridges. The 1960 Chilean quake's tsunami swept in from another direction. Between them, those three events killed more than 200 Hawai’i residents.

The history of the tsunamis of the Hawaiian Islands is kept by Hilo’s Pacific Tsunami Museum.

Now a new series of films from National Geographic graphically reminds us of the hazard. It is a warning built on the biggest tsunami disaster in centuries—the Christmas tsunami in the Indian Ocean, which hit December 26, 2004.

The series is Tsunami: Race Against Time.

That series of waves was generated by one of the largest quakes in recorded history, undersea off Sumatra, Indonesia. It was an unbelievably massive event, calculated at magnitude 9.1. The 1960 Chile quake was larger at 9.5, but did not cause as much death and damage.

I reviewed the film series. It contains footage you’ve never seen, and graphically describes the events that killed more than 200,000 people in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and other islands and coastlines struck by the tsunami.

It contains first person interviews with survivors, heartbreaking stories, often with real-time imagery of those same people. It describes helplessness and heroism in the face of overwhelming conditions. And the desperate effort of Hawai’i’s tsunami scientists to warn the residents of a different ocean.

“The pure carnage of rushing water,” says one orphaned survivor, who lost his parents in the tsunami.

Among the most tragic images are of families holding each other and then torn apart by swirling gray water. Or of the clueless people who wait too long to run, or who watch until the water washes them away. Of bodies drifting in the water. And of wounded people who die in the aftermath, because the disruption was so severe that it was not possible to get medical care in time.

Most of us followed news footage of the quake and its tsunami in the final days of 2004 and early 2005. But that coverage could not provide the perspective of time. Twenty years later, survivors and rescuers and scientists provide that perspective.

Here is how the film’s producers describe their project:

“Marking 20 years since one of the deadliest natural disasters in history which spanned 14 countries, TSUNAMI: RACE AGAINST TIME provides a 360-degree view into the heart-stopping events of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

“The powerful series, from executive producers Tanya Winston and Danny Horan of multi-award-winning Blast Films and directed by Daniel Bogado, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker of Nat Geo’s ‘9/11: One Day in America,’ features personal accounts from survivors, scientists who raced against time to understand the catastrophic disaster and warn the world, journalists who broke the shocking news, and the fearless rescuers who risked their lives to save others.

“Told through harrowing video and gripping stories of survival and courage – some both seen and heard for the first time – the four-part series offers a comprehensive and immersive look at the destructive wave as it surged across the ocean, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.”

The four-part series premieres Nov. 24 at 4 p.m. (Hawai`i time) on National Geographic and streams starting on the 25^th on Disney+ and Hulu.

China fires missile into the South Pacific. Provocation? Islanders are concerned.

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 19:10:00 +0000

China just launched a nuclear-capable ballistic missile smack into the central South Pacific, without bothering to notify the target country.

What the heck could that mean?

The rocket didn’t come near Hawai’i. It was at little over 2,000 miles south.

But that rocket flew some 7,000 miles from China to its watery landing spot. The distance from Beijing to Hawaii is just 5,000. Beijing to San Francisco is 6,000.

Was the Sept. 25, 2024, missile a message, or, as China suggests, just a routine test? Not routine, certainly, since China hasn’t done anything like this in more than 40 years.

Hawai’i folks have expressed concern about North Korean rockets gaining the capacity to fly as far as the Hawaiian archipelago, but China has long had that capacity, and it demonstrated that with the Sept. 25 launch, which reportedly terminated within the exclusive economic zone of Kiribati, near Caroline Island.

Caroline is an uninhabited atoll south of the Equator, in the Southern Line Islands. French Polynesia is to the south and east of it. The Cook Islands are to the west. U.S.-controlled Jarvis and Palmyra are to the north.

China warned the United States and Russia of the proposed launch, which is required by treaty, but did not bother notifying the target nation, Kiribati. France, New Zealand and Australia also got notice. Japan and French Polynesia did not.

China reported the missile carried a dummy warhead.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies reports that China has three models of nuclear-weapon-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles, known as Dongfeng, or East Wind. They are the DF-5, DF-31 and DF-41. Sources differed over whether the Sept. 25 missile was a DF31 or 41.

All three of the missiles have the range to reach either Hawai’i or the West Coast. The DF-5 is silo-based while the other two are transported on mobile carriers, some of which are off-road-capable.

The nation of Kiribati, which has benefitted from Chinese investment in recent years, expressed concern about the launch of a military rocket into its waters.

French Pacific waters are just south of the rocket landing zone, and officials in Papeete also expressed concern. Radio New Zealand reports that China threw a dinner party in French Polynesia to calm the waters.

The international only news magazine The Diplomat suggested the launch was hardly “routine,” as China suggested. It was the first Chinese launch into international waters since 1980—more than four decades.

That doesn’t mean it was provocative. “Beijing’s motivation for this test launch might not have been the desire to send a political signal, but rather a need for technical data,” The Diplomat wrote.

That said, officials of numerous of the nations of the Pacific have expressed concern. China has been actively courting Pacific nations on the trade front, but until now, it has not suggested that it carries a big stick behind the open pocketbook.

Wrote The Diplomat:

“China has made progress in winning over some of the Pacific Island states, but has run into resistance from others that fear turning the region into an arena of China-U.S. strategic competition. Firing a nuclear-capable missile into the midst of the islands not only stokes that fear, it positions China as an aggressor.”

As Florida cleans up from two hurricanes, Hawai`i is dodging the bullet. Instead, we get hot and dry.

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 20:50:00 +0000

Hawai’i has benefitted in recent years from the lack of strong hurricanes, while the folks on the Atlantic coasts have taken multiple hits from big spinning storms.

Tropical storm activity can be cyclical. Sometimes it’s higher in the Atlantic; sometimes in the Pacific. That seesaw pattern has been linked to the El Nino Southern Oscillation, a climate pattern associated with ocean water temperature, air temperature, jet streams and rainfall patterns.

During El Nino events, warm water pushes into the eastern Pacific, and tropical cyclones are more likely and stronger in the Pacific. They call El Nino the warm phase. In La Nina, those waters are cooler, and the storm action moves into the Atlantic. They call it a cool phase.

Currently, we’re in a neutral period, but NOAA says we’re likely moving into another La Nina.

Back in May 2024, the National Weather Service predicted a lower-than-normal hurricane season for the Islands, anticipating that shift from neutral to a cooler phase. In a May 21, 2024 press release, NOAA reported:

“Hurricane season in the central Pacific region is likely to be below average this year,” said Matthew Rosencrans, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, a division of NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS). “A key factor influencing our forecast is the predicted arrival of La Nina this summer, which typically contributes to less tropical cyclone activity across the central Pacific Ocean basin.”

So far, only Hurricanes Gilma and Hone, at the end of August, came near enough to Hawai’i to cause significant weather events locally.

Meanwhile, the Atlantic has been ravaged, pretty much as predicted.

Nine hurricanes in the Atlantic so far this year, four of them Category 4 or greater. The Eastern U.S. has been hit by two powerful and destructive cyclones in just the past month: Helene and Milton.

And the continuing transition into another La Nina does not bode well for the Atlantic coastlines.

With two months to the end of the hurricane season, Hawai’i can hold its breath with a little hope. A storm might come, but it’s less likely than average.

So what about next year? The latest NOAA El Nino forecast suggests the incoming La Nina will last into the beginning of next year. Beyond that, it’s hard to know what will happen.

But all this is playing against a background of significant climate warming. The World Meteorological Organization notes that El Nino/La Nina is not the only climate driver. It is predicting warmer temperatures over all land areas and all oceans, besides the La Nina-impacted eastern Pacific.

As you’ll see from the World Meteorological Organiation chart below, that cooler weather is south of the Hawaiian Islands. Like most of the rest of the globe, we in the Hawaiian Islands have warmer than normal weather likelihood.

The WMO also suggests rainfall for Hawai’i will likely be lower than normal from September through November 2024.

Hotter and drier. Welcome to the future.

Anti-disease forest fungi thrive when they can hear their neighbors: a lesson in diversity

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Sat, 05 Oct 2024 18:43:00 +0000

There is such value in diversity.

We can take a lesson from a new bit of science that suggests that life performs better when surrounded by its community.

This study found that certain fungi grow faster—many times faster—in an environment that includes sound, even if the species itself does not make sounds.

In the soil, if you were to insert a sensitive microphone, you would pick up the rustle of ants, the scuffling of scurrying beetles, the whisper of larvae, the swooshing of earthworms on their liquid missions and the motion of all the other critters that normally occupy a healthy underground environment.

Fungi don’t have ears, but from this study, clearly they can sense the presence of other creatures by the impacts of their movements, and you could anthropomorphize that they appreciate the company. They certainly behave as if they do.

This particular study was published in the journal Biology Letters. It was reviewed in the New York Times here.

Wrote Times writer Veronique Greenwood: “Playing sound to Trichoderma harzianum, a green microscopic fungus that defends tree roots from pathogens, led to growth rates seven times as fast as those of fungus grown in the sound of silence. If the laboratory findings can be replicated in nature, then sound could be an unexpected new tool for improving the health of forests, encouraging beneficial microbes to take root and thrive.”

In this case, the researchers just played white noise for the green fungi, and saw dramatic increases in growth compared to the fungi grown in silence.

And here’s a leap.

A totally other piece of science, from the 13 September 2024 issue of Science magazine, expressed concern that the survival of Asian forest trees that contain anti-cancer properties is threatened. People are going into the forest and harvesting the trees to rarity and endangered status.

“Without these trees, cancer patients will lose access to a vital treatment,” wrote authors Gao Chen, Xiang-Hai Cai, Jia Tang, Guillaume Chomicki and Susanne Renner.

In Hawai’i, we have seen the impacts of loss of diversity. If you lose a pollinating bird species, you risk losing the plants they pollinate, and then the insect and fungal communities that rely on those plants. Round and round it goes.

Back to the fungus study, researchers aren’t sure how the fungi are sensing the sound.

“The mechanism responsible for this phenomenon may be fungal mechanoreceptor stimulation and/or potentially a piezoelectric effect; however, further research is required to confirm this hypothesis,” wrote authors Jake M. Robinson, Amy Annells, Christian Cando-Dumancela and Martin F. Breed.

But it was clear that in the presence of sound—all other things being equal—this little green fungus, Trichoderma harzianum, produces lots more biomass and also produces more spores, than in silence.

And they give back to their forest community. These little life forms colonize tree roots, and then protect the trees from disease and rot-causing fungi. They’re so good at it that they’re used as a natural fungicide—applied to leaves, seeds and the soil around valued plants.

Nature’s message is that a diverse community is a far healthier, more productive one.

Navy: Targeting Ka'ula Island bird refuge weekly with bombs and guns would only result in "incidental" take

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 19:02:00 +0000

The Navy’s new proposal to expand bombing and gunnery practice at Ka’ula Island seems insupportable, both morally and as a matter of federal law.

Here is the Draft Environmental Assessment that includes the Ka’ula impacts.

It expands potential military operations at the tiny island to 55 per year, more than one a week. That is on an island that is a designated state seabird sanctuary (established 1978) and contains endangered and state and federally protected plants and birds, and marine protected species in the nearshore waters.

Ka’ula is one of the four islands of of Kaua’i County (Kaua’i, Ni’ihau, Lehua and Ka’ula). The designated weaponry impact area is 11 acres at the southern end of the 130-acre island.

Ka’ula is well known in Hawaiian history and chant. The bird life there was once so dense that the island was used as an example of overcrowding.

(Hā’iki Ka’ula I ka ho’okē a na manu. There is no room on Ka’ula, for the birds are crowding. –from ‘Ōlelo No’eau by Mary Pukui.)

It has been bombed since 1952.

The Navy over the years has steadfastly resisted calls to end its bombing, from fishermen, from U.S. Congress members, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, from the Kaua’i County Board of Supervisors (1961) and Kaua’i County Council (1975), and from federal fisheries and wildlife officials.

And from the State of Hawai’i, whose attorney general in 1978 asserted the island belongs to the state. That conflict over ownership was not resolved, and state officials now say the ownership is contested but no recent efforts to assert state control have been reported.

Weapon strikes are proposed to be limited to the designated 11-acre “impact area.” But that has not always been the case: 1) A 1978 fisherman’s report saw bombs exploding both in the water and among seabirds; 2) The Draft EA says there are likely live munitions on the island outside the impact area; 3) On one occasion in 1965, bombs intended for Ka’ula landed on Ni’ihau, more than 20 miles away.

The new proposal says only inert weapons will be deployed in the future.

The birds and seals of Ka’ula, as well as passing whales and dolphins, are protected by the US. Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act as well as the island’s designation as a State of Hawai’i bird refuge.

The Draft EA proposes that the impact of bombing, gunnery exercises, helicopter landings and other activities are acceptable. There are Hawaiian cultural sites, including stone temples and habitation sites, but they are outside the designated impact zones and so, “impacts on cultural resources would be less than significant.” (Page 3-86)

The Navy’s legal justification for harming wildlife is contained in a federal law, the 2003 National Defense Authorization Act. It “gave the Secretary of the Interior authority to prescribe regulations to exempt the Armed Forces from the incidental taking of migratory birds during authorized military readiness activities,” the Draft EA says.

Based on that, the Draft EA argues that targeting a wildlife refuge and protected bird nesting site with bombs, shells and landing helicopters would result in takes that are merely incidental. The Draft EA says (Page 3-30) that the Department of Defense has a responsibility to minimize and mitigate its impacts. But it seems at least problematic to argue incidental and minimized when the wildlife refuge is the target.

The Draft EA argues that health, safety and noise are not issues because there are “no human sensitive receptors” nearby. This, of course, does not address the impacts on the health, safety or hearing of protected sooty terns, threatened black-footed albatross or endangered Hawaiian monk seals.

The Navy asserts that it owns Ka’ula. That position has long been challenged by Hawai’i.

The island was set aside by the Territory of Hawaii for use by the U.S. Department of Commerce under the U.S. Lighthouse Service in 1924 as a lighthouse reserve. Commerce conveyed it to the Coast Guard, which operated a navigational light there until 1947, when it was permanently shut down.

Instead of returning the island to the territory, the Coast Guard in 1952 authorized the Navy to conduct bombing exercises, apparently without the authorization of territory.

Kaua’i County residents began regularly protesting the activity within a few years, at the behest of anglers who said the bombing was impacting birds, which the fishermen depended on to locate schooling fish.

U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink in the early 1960s urged the island’s inclusion in the Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge, and the Department of Interior started but failed to complete that inclusion.

The Navy rejected the Hawaiian ownership arguments, and in 1965, U.S. Rep. Spark Matsunaga reported that the Coast Guard had transferred its authority over the island to the Navy.

The comment period for this Draft EA is ending. Comments go to pmrf-lbt-ea-comments@us.navy.mil.

John J. Berger''s new climate book: A comprehensive approach to saving the planet

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Sat, 21 Sep 2024 19:43:00 +0000

The top-of-mind responses to the climate crisis tend to be few and simple.

Use less fossil fuel and switch transportation to electric vehicles, restore forests, recycle, eat less meat.

But a serious response requires a broad rethinking of everything about how we live on the planet. And that’s complex.

John J. Berger’s new book runs through a lot of the approaches that are already underway and makes recommendations for how to proceed. The book is Solving the Climate Crisis: Frontline Reports from the Race to Save the Earth.

Berger is the author of Climate Myths, Beating the Heat, Forests Forever and more. He is a noted environmental writer and climate policy expert, and in his latest book he conducts a comprehensive review of strategies to address our warming climate.

Some possible solutions are underway right now or at least starting. Manufacturing steel that doesn’t depend on massive fossil fuel inputs. Replacing oil-based products with ones made from plants. Electric and fuel cell aircraft.

There’s green concrete, new approaches to recycling, buildings that produce more power than they use, hydrogen cargo trucks and so much more.

There are examples of farmers who have turned problematic fossil-fuel-reliant businesses into thriving green enterprises that restore the soil and entrain carbon. He outlines the benefits of saving and expanding forests.

He reviews some of the geoengineering approaches, like sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, and seeding the skies with compounds that reflect solar radiation.

He takes a realistic look at the issues associated with decarbonizing planet-wide.

There’s clearly lots to be done at the legal, policy and international affairs levels, Berger writes. His to-do list starts with a national recognition that we are in an emergency, and that we need a National Clean Energy Transition Plan.

But it would all be so very costly, right? Maybe not.

“Various studies have found that a clean-energy transition would cost no more than 2 percent of gross domestic product in the United States,” Berger writes. He says he worries about the accuracy of those estimates, but even so, “that’s a pretty good deal, given all the other economic, environmental, and health benefits the United States would also receive.”

Berger’s book is a little overwhelming in its scope, but it’s well-written and anyone interested in how we need to approach this crisis will find lots to chew on. That, and some hope. It may be complicated, but it's possible, is Berger's message.

It does occur to me that, given the topic of the book, an actionable strategy for Berger would have been making the ebook dramatically less expensive than a paper copy of the book, but it’s close to $20 for the electronic version. Here, here, here and here are a some ways to find Solving the Climate Crisis.

Polynesian voyaging driven by resource shortages

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 18:29:00 +0000

A lot of the research into Polynesian voyaging looks at how it was accomplished and when, but less work has been done on why.

Why would groups of individuals, living in Pacific paradise islands, expend enormous treasure and energy to build great canoes and outfit massive voyaging missions?

The answers are coming.

This blog first looked into the issue in 2007.

That article reviewed a paper that suggested that sea level changes between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago, which created resource shortages, could have launched the Polynesians eastward into the Pacific from the islands near Asia.

And now, there’s new research that suggests a second period of resource shortages 1,000 years ago drove the final exploration phase—the one that led to the inhabitation of Hawai’i, Tahiti, the Marquesas, the Cooks, and eventually Rapa Nui and Aotearoa.

The suggestion is that a huge, multi-century central Pacific drought, from about AD 900 to 1200 drove settled populations out of the central Pacific and led them to locate new homelands that could feed expanding populations.

A team of Hawai’i, United Kingdom and New Zealand researchers in 2020 published a paper saying the signs of that drought can still be located in lake sediments in the Pacific Islands.

Their work answers that nagging question about Pacific voyaging: Why? Why would islanders in rich environments expend vast resources to build and provision voyaging canoes, and then sail into the uncharted ocean?

The paper’s authors are David A. Sear, Melinda S. Allen, Jonathan D. Hassall, Ashley E. Maloney, Peter G. Langdon, Alex E. Morrison, Andrew C. G. Henderson, Helen Mackay, Ian W. Croudace, Charlotte Clarke, Julian P. Sachs, Georgiana Macdonald, Richard C. Chiverrell, Melanie J. Leng, L. M. Cisneros-Dozal, Thierry Fonville, and Emma Pearson. Morrison is a senior archaeologist with Honolulu’s International Archaeology, LLC.

Their research paper, “Human settlement of East Polynesia earlier, incremental, and coincident with prolonged South Pacific drought,” was published in 2020 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

That prolonged drought was detected in sediments in Efate in Vanuatu, ‘Upolu in Samoa, and Atiu in the Southern Cook Islands. Other data from Tahiti and Kiribati also supports the drought hypothesis. It lasted from about AD 900 to AD 1200.

Their suggestion is that exploratory voyagers sailed out initially around 900, that they located islands and brought that information home, but that actual colonization took place generations later.

But once again, the message is that Polynesians voyaged because they had do.

Biological control for Coconut Rhinoceros Beetles?

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Mon, 09 Sep 2024 20:29:00 +0000

Researchers across the world are looking for some kind of bug or disease that can control the coconut rhinoceros beetle, (CRB).

Beetle infestations elsewhere were controlled a few decades ago with the release of a biocontrol virus called Oryctes rhinoceros nudivirus. But in Hawai’i we have a new strain of CRB that seems to be resistant to that virus.

Hawai’i’s biotype of the beetle, also found in Guam and some other Pacific areas, is called CRB-G (clade 1.)

As scientists scramble to look for predators, parasites or disease that might help, research is now focusing on a fungus called Metarhizium, which, when it is effective, kills the CRB beetle larvae and then covers the beetle larva with white fuzzy hairs that later turn green.

There is still more work to be done, but “biopesticides containing Metarhizium spp. are the strongest candidates for inundative biological control against the emerging CRB threat,” said this paper, which will be published in the November 2024 issue of the journal Fungal Biology.

(Adult CRB, image courtesy Hawaii Department of Agriculture)

That work is being done by researchers from Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Colombia, and New Zealand, and was funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The lead author of that paper is biocontrol researcher Laura Villamizar of AgResearch Ltd. in New Zealand.

One particular isolate of one species of the fungus, Metarhizium majus, appeared to kill CRB (S and G haplotypes) larvae within three to four weeks of application.

“Under field conditions, this isolate demonstrated its ability to infect CRB, dispersal up to 100 m from treated artificial breeding sites, and persistence in soil for at least four months,” the authors said.

That’s all good, but it is early research, and before a biocontrol can be released into a new environment, work needs to be done on what the unwanted impacts might be…like, does this fungus also attack the larvae of valued pollinating insects?

(Larval CRB, image courtesy Hawaii Department of Agriculture)

Meanwhile, we are approaching the infestation with conventional means.

This giant horned beetle is devastating Hawaiian coconut palms and threatens many other species. Entire coastal palm landscapes on O’ahu, where the beetle was first spotted in 2013, have been destroyed. The creature is actively spreading on other islands, having been identified on Kaua’i, Maui and Hawai’i islands.

The website of Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle Response has extensive information on the threat.

https://www.crbhawaii.org/

The beetle is known commonly as CRB, and science calls it Oryctes rhinoceros. The armored adult is up to two inches long and bores into the hearts of palms to feed on their forming leaves. The beetle larvae are the size of your thumb, and feed on decomposing plant debris—characteristically in compost and debris piles.

In addition to coconuts, they will go after other palms, including the threatened native loulu fan palms, as well as bananas, hala, kalo and sugar cane. Even some hardwood trees have been targeted.

Infected coconut palms are easily recognized by the jagged vee-shaped cuts in their fronds, caused by the feeding beetles when the fronds are still forming.

(Adult CRB. Note the horn. For more info see https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/invasive-species-profiles/coconut-rhinoceros-beetle/. Image courtesy Hawaii Invasive Species Council.)

Control measures have include putting netting around the palms to block beetle entrance, and using insecticides. But for many palms and in many environments, neither is a feasible solution. (Some of the palms are too tall to realistically treat.) Furthermore, some insecticides can render the coconuts inedible.

Using attractants like pheromones in traps has been another approach. Here is a paper on the pheromone research done on the beetles. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261219423002235

You will see pheromone-infused hanging insect traps at various locations around the affected islands.

Here’s a trap system folks have used in Guam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47ZQddcvFHk

There is a product called Palm Tree Weevil Killer, PTWK, which claims to be a non-toxic treatment that will kill beetles in the tree. We have not seen independent tests of this system and how well it works. Here are a couple of links: Link 1, Link 2. https://www.hawaiipalmguard.com/uploads/b/58101110-0675-11ef-8f26-0d8569411a43/d9f82fe0-1094-11ef-b96b-3ffeb1dc7cd9.pdf

https://www.alohatreesavers.com/our-product

Voyaging: Nailing down when the first canoe pulled up on a Hawaiian beach.

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Mon, 02 Sep 2024 18:37:00 +0000

Your grandfather might tell you otherwise, but it is increasingly clear that the first humans set foot in Hawai’i in the year AD 1000, give or take a few decades.

Archaeologists and other researchers have been honing on that period for a couple of decades as their tools have improved for determining the age of human-related activities and artifacts. Early, widely varying carbon-14 dates have been adjusted and refined, and several new technologies have been added to the tool kit.

This isn’t brand new information, but I still hear older Hawai’i people advocating for dates they remember being taught as little as 30 or 40 years ago.

Until and into the 1980s, the common assumption was that the Hawaiian Islands were first inhabited early in the first millennium after Christ, and a few folks still still argue for AD 500, 300 or occasionally even earlier.

In his seminal 1985 book Feathered Gods and Fishhooks, leading Pacific archaeologist Patrick Kirch reflected the wisdom of the period: “It is clear that colonization parties from the Marquesas were responsible for the settlement of Easter Island by about A.D. 400 and of Hawai’i by possibly by A.D. 300.”

But the science has improved much since then, and the errors of the early dating have been corrected. By the 2023 revision of Feathered Gods and Fishhooks, Kirch and Mark McCoy had moved the number to closer to 1000.

Why? Wrote the authors: “No one could have foreseen…the major technological advances that would come…the use of GPS and GIS in settlement archaeology, AMS radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modeling…high-precision dating of corals, stable isotope analysis of faunal remains or XRF geochemical analysis of stone artifacts.”

Professional archaeology now assumes there weren’t any humans in the eastern Pacific as early as CE 300 or 400. (Maybe a lost fisherman or an intrepid sailor who left no evidence.) It is more likely that Polynesian voyaging canoes around AD 900 began pushing—probably from the Samoa islands—into eastern Polynesia.

Why did those Polynesians voyage? There have been many theories, but one recent one is that they were driven out of their home islands by drought. David Sear and co-authors Melinda Allen, Jonathan Hassall and Emma Pearson said that drought may have lasted 200-400 years, certainly from before AD 900 to after 1100.

Whether or not drought alone was enough to coerce people to abandon their homes, there’s an associated stressor. Population pressure would have been a big factor as expanding island families began outgrowing their small islands’ ability to feed them.

Science now generally presumes that on departure from the central Pacific islands, some of the eastern Pacific islands south of the Equator were populated first. Perhaps the Cook Islands, which are just to the southeast and downwind of Samoa. Then the nearby islands and finally then canoes came north to Hawai’i, east to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and then west to Aotearoa (New Zealand.) The chronology could change with additional findings and new technologies.

But all of that voyaging may have occurred in a pulse of only a few generations. The voyaging canoes left Samoa around 900 and would have populated all those other islands within just a couple of hundred years.

“The archaeological and paleoenvironmental estimates of the colonization date show a striking convergence, indicating that initial settlement (of Hawai’i) occurred at A.D. 940–1130…and most probably between A.D. 1000 to 1100,” wrote pollen expert Stephen Athens and Timothy M. Rieth and Thomas S. Dye, in a 2017 article in the journal American Antiquity, entitled, “A Paleoenvironmental and Archaeological Model-Based Age Estimate for the Colonization of Hawai’i.”

They cited updated radiocarbon dating and pollen from archaeological coring data.

One of the best resources for dating first human activity on Kaua’i was developed by David Burney and William “Pila” Kikuchi at Makauwahi Cave on the swampy south coast of the island. Their 2006 paper, based on flooded sediments in the cave floor, estimated first Polynesian activity at between AD 1039-1241.

A lot of the earliest archaeological dates in Hawai'i are now settling in on that time period.

What is amazing, given the compressed period of Hawaiian occupation, is the extent of the great public works that were completed: the many hundreds of fishponds, the massive stone temples, the remarkable waterworks for flooded kalo fields and the vast dryland field agricultural systems.

Global temperature estimates are way low; newest data shows the pace of change is accelerating

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 21:12:00 +0000

Global temperature will rise far faster than current UN estimates, even if we don’t keep dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. A lot of the projected heating is already baked in.

That will lead to temperatures higher than the human race has experienced in its few hundred thousand years of existence, according to new research published in June 2024.

For coastal areas like the Hawaiian Islands, that also means dramatic changes in sea level estimates. Changes in terms of several feet rather than inches. In some areas, even rock walls won’t protect from that. Retreat to higher ground may be the only option. The cost, for low-lying facilities like airports, harbors, resorts and high-end beach communities may be unsupportable.

Here’s the threat, in jargon:

“We calculate average Earth system sensitivity and equilibrium climate sensitivity, resulting in 13.9 °C and 7.2 °C per doubling of pCO2, respectively. These values are significantly higher than IPCC global warming estimations, consistent or higher than some recent state-of-the-art climate models, and consistent with other proxy-based estimates.” (Those numbers in Fahrenheit are 25 and 13 degrees.)

That quote is from a paper by a team of Dutch and British researchers who tracked global temperatures against atmospheric carbon dioxide over 15 million years, using proxy sources including deep ocean core samples.

You can read what the journal Phys.Org wrote about the paper, in plainer language, here.

The authors are Caitlyn R. Witkowski, of the Department of Marine Microbiology and Biogeochemistry at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, and Anna S. von der Heydt, Paul J. Valdes, Marcel T. J. van der Meer, Stefan Schouten and Jaap S. Sinninghe Damsté.

Another team last year had more modest estimates, but they were still higher than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They argued that doubling CO2 could result in 5-8 degrees Centigrade in warming, or 9-14 degrees Fahrenheit.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has gone up 30 percent in just the last 60 years or so, according to Keeling Curve records at Mauna Loa on Hawai`i. Before the Industrial Age, there were 280 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere. That number now is 419. That’s a 50 percent increase. And it continues to rise faster.

The CO2 numbers are the catalyst for catastrophic change.

There is an estimated 50-year lag between when the CO2 enters the atmosphere and when the temperature responds.

So it’s going to keep getting hotter for generations, based on what we’ve already done to the atmosphere.

And there is an additional lag between temperature increase and sea level rise, because of the thermal inertia in melting glaciers and thermal inertia in the oceans.

What does that mean for my favorite beach, surf break, coastal restaurant or shoreline hotel?

In the most recent estimates, the best case, according to an article in MIT’s Climate Portal, is 8 to 20 inches of additional sea level rise by 2100. That’s still catastrophic for low-lying areas. But the worst case is six feet.

The National Ocean Service estimates by 2100 we will have between 1 and 8 feet of sea level rise, a little higher at the top end.

CO2 is not only rising, but the rise is accelerating. New data from this month.

Temperature is not only rising, but accelerating.

The melting of Antarctic glaciers is accelerating, too. And another source on that.

Ocean temperature increases are accelerating.

Sea level is not only rising, but the that rise is accelerating.

It’s a bad trajectory, and as a species, we’re not taking it seriously.

Stone adzes traveled widely, perhaps as a lubricant for Polynesian trade networks

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 20:33:00 +0000

How valuable was high-quality stone in a stone-age culture?

So important that the valuable stone found its way long distances from home.

This isn’t news to the archaeological community. It has found a Kaho`olawe-sourced basalt adz in the Tuamotu Islands. Mauna Kea adz quarry stone tools in the Marquesas. Marquesan Eiao Island adzes throughout what is now French Polynesia. The longest adz in the Bishop Museum’s collection was found in the ocean off O’ahu, but came from the Pu‘u Pāpa‘i quarry on Molokai.

Quality stone tools traveled. Maybe as trade items. Maybe a gifts between chiefs. Maybe because a stone tool from afar had a special prestige, or a mana, a perceived spiritual power.

They were part of what archaeologists call “interaction networks” between the spread-out islands across the Pacific.

The Museum of Stone Tools has some adz images here.

Most volcanic islands had at least some good quality stone, although the quality varied. New Zealand and Australian researchers Christopher Jennings, Marshall Weisler and Richard Walter last year in the journal Archaeology in Oceania published a comprehensive report on stone quarries across the Pacific. It is entitled, “An archaeological review of Polynesian adze quarries and sources.”

They argue that stone tools were more than just useful implements, but a significant part of cultural activity in Polynesia. They hold that “the adze industry played a much more significant and complex role in Polynesian cultural history than is currently realized.”

Early Pacific residents could make tools from readily available sources near home, but if they found exemplary qualities in remote sites, they would go to great lengths to get that material—such as quarrying in the frigid heights of Mauna Kea, or an isolated island like Eiao.

Adzes, they say, were “the most distantly exchanged items in the Neolithic world.”

But why? “We can establish a relationship between large scale quarry production, fine grained stone, highly skilled flaking technology and long-distance exchange, but we still do not know what drove these associations,” they wrote.

A good quarry would be used continuously over long periods of time. The Pu‘u Pāpa‘i quarry on Molokai is one of the oldest in Hawai’i, perhaps because it had high quality stone and was near an early settlement site at Kawela.

Researchers Marshall I. Weisler, John Sinton, Quan Hua, and Jane Skippington reviewed that quarry in the Journal of Pacific Archaeology, a 2024 paper with the ponderous title, “Indirectly Dating one of the Oldest Adze Quarries in the Hawaiian Islands Provides Insights into the Colonisation Process and Community Network.”

Adzes made from stone at this specific Molokai quarry are readily identified because it the unique chemical characteristics, high in strontium and phosphate. The unique chemical makeup of quarry stones is how adzes are sometimes linked to their home islands.

One suggestion from a lot of recent work is that adzes were a key component of exchange networks. It is not clear whether adzes were a lubricant that facilitated trade between distant islands, or whether voyaging canoes were simply early Snap-On tool trucks, hauling quality tools to customers.

One thing that seems clear is that hauling valuables between island was a long-standing practice in the Pacific. It dates back at least to the Lapita culture of thousands of years ago, according to paper from May 2024 by Nicholas W. S. Hogg, Scarlett Chiu, Patrick V. Kirch and Glenn R. Summerhayes.

That paper, in Archeology in Oceania, reviews early exchange networks involving adzes and pottery in the Lapita era of far western Polynesia.

Are we seeing more flight turbulence, and is it linked to climate change? Yes and yes.

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 22:12:00 +0000

We have seen numerous reports of airliners suddenly plunging hundreds or thousands of feet midflight.

And a fair amount of suggestion that atmospheric turbulence is the cause, along with some guesswork that turbulence is increasing due to climate change.

Could that be true? The answer seems to be, yes.

There does seem to be a fair amount of turbulence-related airline drama this year. Here is a review of one kind, clear-air turbulence.

There is also thunderstorm-related turbulence, and other kinds.

In February 10, 2024, a United flight experienced “moderate turbulence” between Newark and Los Angeles. Several passengers were injured.

On May 20, a Singapore Airlines flight experienced severe turbulence over Myanmar, which caused significant injury.

Also in May, a Qatar Airways flight between Dohar and Dublin was knocked around, apparently by turbulence May 26.

To be clear, a review of many recent incidents of bumpy plane rides suggests that a lot of them have little or nothing to do with climate or turbulence.

An April 11, 2024, Southwest flight had a sudden drop while approaching Lihue Airport, leveling off at about 400 feet above the ocean. That, investigators said, was due to mistake at the controls by a pilot.

In a Latam Airlines incident in March 2024, a plane apparently went into a dive when the cockpit crew briefly lost control of the aircraft. The pilots brought the plane back into control. Latam called it a “a technical event during the flight which caused a strong movement.”

A 2022 United flight event involving a sudden drop was determined to be pilot error, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

In 2019, Psychology Today published an article about a Delta flight, on the fear generated by these kinds of events.

In that case, the incident was a controlled descent apparently associated with a cabin pressurization event. The article decries media sensationalizing and mischaracterization.

But there are plenty of occasions when actual turbulence, rather than equipment or human error, are involved.

Hawaiian Airlines had such an incident in December 2022, 65 miles north of Maui. The National Transportation Safety Board report said, “A cloud shot up vertically (like a smoke plume) in front of the airplane in a matter of seconds, and there was not enough time to deviate.”

No previous flights in the area that day had reported turbulence, but the NTSB report said: “Postaccident examination of the weather in the area revealed that there was an occluded frontal system with an associated upper-level trough moving towards the Hawaiian Islands. Satellite and weather radar imagery, and lightning data depicted strong cells in the vicinity of the flight.”

An article in Smithsonian Magazine argues that climate change may be causing increases in turbulence, and therefore in aircraft-involved incidents.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg in May said turbulence is increasing, and that climate change is a big factor. The Smithsonian article said that technology is also improving, and will help moderate risk, but that bumpier flights may be in our future.

Many of the injuries in such incidents involve people being thrown around the aircraft. It’s a reminder to keep those seat belts fastened.

Finally, a thorough tally of Hawaiian canoe plants, including pa'ihi and kamole.

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 21:38:00 +0000

Which Hawaiian plants are canoe plants, the plants that Polynesian voyagers carried on their voyaging canoes to support new lives in new islands?

Some folks will say there were as few as 23. Others say as many as 32, Most are in between. Where’s the truth? Come on along for this investigation.

In most parts of the world, plants are conveniently divided into native and introduced. And among the natives, there are the endemics that are found nowhere else and the indigenous, which somehow got here without human assistance, but are also found in other parts of the world.

Canoe plant kukui (left), alongside hala, which might be but was already here.
Jan TenBruggencate photo.

In Hawai’i, we had another classification: canoe plants or Polynesian introductions—the plants the Polynesian canoe voyagers carried with them to support their lives on newly found islands.

The late Lynton Dove White, in her book Canoe Plants of Ancient Hawai’i, lists 24 canoe plants.

Art Whistler has more.

“The farther into the Pacific from the center of dispersal (Western Polynesia), the fewer successfully introduced canoe plants there were (e.g., ca. 60 in Tonga, c. 27 in Hawai‘i). Only about six canoe plant species were successfully introduced to New Zealand by the Maoris, mainly because canoe plants are tropical, and did not survive or thrive in temperate New Zealand,” wrote ethnobotanist Art Whistler. He is the author of “Plants of the Canoe People.”

They are probably both low in their counts.

There were certainly somewhere between two and three dozen of them.

At a minimum, these: `ape elephant ear, `awa kava, ‘auhuhu wild indigo or fish poison plant,`awapuhi shampoo ginger, ipu Lagenaria gourd vine, kalo taro, kamani Alexandrian laurel, ki ti leaf, ko sugar cane, kukui candlenut, mai`a banana, niu coconut, noni Indian mulberry, `ohe bamboo, `ohi`a `ai mountain apple, `olena turmeric, pia arrowroot, `uala sweet potato, uhi yam, `ulu breadfruit, and wauke paper mulberry.

That’s 21.

Many think hau or sea hibiscus and milo or portia tree were likely canoe plants, but could also have already been on the Islands.

That’s 23

Hala or pandanus used to be on the canoe plant list, but then fossils of hala were found in rocks erupted 100,000 to 500,000 years ago, and later ancient pollen was found in sediments that predate human arrival in the island.

The orange-flowered Kou (Cordia subcordata) also used to be placed on the list, but again, ancient pollen showed there were forests of it already there to greet the first canoes.

That said, the quartet of hala, hau, milo and kou were such valuable plants in Hawaiian and the larger Polynesian culture that they might have been on the first arriving canoes as part of the Polynesian survival kit, even if they turned out to be already in the Islands.

They would make 25.

There are problems with the list we’ve made so far. It is as far as most tallies go, but it is incomplete. For example, it lists banana as mai’a, but there were at least two quite different species of mai’a, and it lists one but there were three species of yam. And there are other plants that are not on the most common lists at all.

The yams: not only the uhi or winged yam, but also the hoi or bitter yam and pi’a Hawai’i, or five-leaf yam, Dioscorea pentaphylla, which is different from the Polynesian arrowroot that is also known as pi’a, Tacca leontopetaloides.

There appear to have been not one but two bananas, the more common mai’a , but also the fe’i banana, he’i, Musa troglodytarum.

The Bishop Museum’s Plants of Hawai'i program lists 32 canoe plants, some of which are so obscure they most people won’t know them. This Bishop Museum botany site seems to be the most thorough list out there, although (as I write this) it is missing the Hawaiian names of a couple of the less common species.

Plants of Hawai’i includes the popolo, or American nightshade, which clearly was an early arrival in the Islands, and is not commonly included in canoe plant lists.

Another canoe plant on its list is the Oxalis corniculata, yellow wood sorrel, has several Hawaiian names, ‘ihi ‘ai, ‘ihi ‘awa, ‘ihi maka ‘ula, ‘ihi mākole. It is edible, used medicinally for several ailments and made a dye.

Plants of Hawai’i cites two canoe plant species without Hawaiian names, although other sources do identify the Hawaiian names of those plants.

One is the Mexican primrose willow, Ludwigia octovalis, which other sources call water primrose, and in Hawaiian kamole or alohalua. It is said to be edible, but seems primarily to have been used medicinally, often in the form of a tea.

Another is pa’ihi, Polynesian cress, Rorippia sarmentosa. It is both edible and medicinal. Plants of Hawai’i lists this cress, as well as the primrose willow and wood sorrel, as possible accidental introductions—which suggests that perhaps seeds were on the canoes, but that they were not intended canoe plants.

The upshot is that while some folks will tell you there were precisely 23 or “more than 24” or 27 or exactly 30, or 32 canoe plants, nobody can be entirely sure. Here’s our comprehensive list—including the ones that might have been canoe plants but were also here already, and the ones that might have hitchhiked on canoes.

‘Ape, ‘auhuhu, ‘awa, ‘awapuhi, hala, hau, hoi, ‘ihi’ai, ipu, kalo, kamani, kamole, ki, ko, kou, kukui, mai’a, mai’a he’i, milo, niu, noni, ‘ohe, ‘ohi’a ‘ai, ‘olena, pa’ihi, pi’a Hawai’i, pi’a, popolo, ‘uala, uhi, ‘ulu, wauke.

And that’s 32 canoe plants.

Unique Hawaiiian farming system being revived: kalo growing in kukui mulch

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 04:26:00 +0000

While early Hawaiian agriculture clearly grew out of Polynesian farming systems, these islands developed a unique food-production structure quite different from those elsewhere in the Pacific.

Ethnobotanist and forest ecologist Noa Kekuewa Lincoln reviewed that uniqueness in a book chapter, “Pakukui: The productive fallow of ancient Hawaii,” printed in the book Farmer Innovations and Best Practices by Shifting Cultivators in Asia-Pacific.

Kukui (left) and Hala trees.
Jan TenBruggencate photo.

“The Hawaiian Islands, one of the endpoints of Polynesian settlement of the Pacific, saw the development of unique agricultural advances that have not been seen anywhere else,” he wrote.

While flooded taro paddies (kalo,) hilled sweet potato fields (‘uala) and garden plots with sugar cane (ko) and fiber plants like wauke and mamaki are well understood, the importance of tree crops—agroforestry—has perhaps been overlooked, he argues.

“Although a robust literature and investigation of Hawaiian agriculture exists, arboriculture is severely underrepresented. This had led to a simplified understanding of Hawaiian arboriculture with an emphasis on permanent, breadfruit-dominated arboricultural systems.”

It may be that Western viewers look at agroforestry through shaded lenses, missing key features. For example, focusing only on foods, oils, medicines and fiber may miss key contributions of some tree crops, he suggested.

“In some regions, it may be that Hawaiians planted trees specifically to accumulate fertility. In these systems, very fast-growing woody plants that decomposed quickly, such as candlenut and hau, were cultivated,” he wrote.

Candlenut or kukui (Aleurites moluccanus) is and was an immensely useful tree, providing food for humans and livestock, oil for many purposes, dyes, medicine and much more.

Less well understood is its value as a mulch. In a culture without Western fertilizers, mulches were of inestimable value. Mulches of kukui and other plants were stamped into the muds of kalo fields, where they rotted and improved fertility.

“In a recent experiment we grew taro in pure mulches of candlenut, sugar cane, and hau (Hibiscus tiliaceus), and the growth in candlenut mulch was by far the largest (by ~150%), despite it having the lowest nitrogen content of the three treatments,” Lincoln wrote.

Kukui leaves, branches and logs could also be used to create soils on solid lava. A mulch pit filled with kukui was called a pakukui.

“In these situations, litterfall was gathered into relatively impermeable pits in the lava and composted in order to create a growing medium. Local organic waste and small amounts of soil that could be excavated nearby was added to these enclosures, or pa, to aid in the rotting of composts.”

The system is similar to but larger than the manavai planting technique in Rapa Nui, where circular walls of stone protected small planting areas in rugged windswept environments. Manavai were also used for taro, as well as banana and sugar cane.

The use of the pakukui led, Lincoln said, to a shifting agricultural pattern, in which farmers would be growing crops in some fields while other were composting. That contrasted with areas with breadfruit forests, which would be harvested year after year.

Kukui helped to make poorer soils much more viable for agriculture, though only for intermittent use. With the decline in Hawaiian population, the practice appeared to have died out.

“Following European contact in Hawaii, several forms of traditional agriculture rapidly declined, primarily due to the population crash that accompanied the introduction of foreign diseases. Among the practices that declined rapidly was the pakukui,” he wrote.

But the agricultural system still has value, and should be revived, he said. He is working with partners in Hamakua to convert “a long-established pasture back into a candlenut forest to reinitiate the practice of nutrient accumulation and natural fertilization to realize significant taro productivity.”

Lincoln works with Indigenous Crops and Cropping Systems in the Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences Department, College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, University of Hawaii at Manoa. His pakukui chapter was published in December 2023.

Fire-prone invasive grasslands need intense work to restore native species

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Sat, 08 Jun 2024 22:42:00 +0000

Invasive grasslands, like those linked to the destruction of Lahaina, are remarkably stable systems, and will be difficult to change.

That’s a conclusion of a new report by federal foresters.

They determined that active and intensive wildland management will be required to restore native-dominated landscapes. The alternative is a continued dominance of fire-prone grasslands.

The study, in the journal Ecology and Evolution, is entitled “Invasive-dominated grasslands in Hawaiʻi are resilient to disturbance.” The authors are Stephanie Yelenik and Eli Rose of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Pacific Island Ecosystem Research Station and Susan Cordell of the U.S. Forest Service’s Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry.

The conclude that once a native Hawaiian ecosystem is converted to an alien grassland, it becomes difficult to change to another system, such as one dominated by native species that might be less fire-prone.

They did the research by disturbing six 100-square-meter plots with different vegetation mixes.

“We implemented a disturbance experiment to assess how plant communities would reassemble,” they wrote. They included in each plot plantings of two native species, ‘a’ali’i (Dodonea viscosa) and a native bunchgrass known as Hawaiian lovegrass (Eragrostis atropioides.)

The plantings were done on Hawai'i Island, in the Keʻāmuku Maneuver Area of the Army’s Pōhakuloa Training Area.

They found that competitive invasive grasses tended to become dominant after disturbance. They generally do better than native species in disturbed habitats. And once they have taken over, they tend to stay in charge.

“Our results highlight that the altered post-agricultural, invaded grassland landscapes in Hawaiʻi are stable states,” they wrote.

Some of those invasive non-native species they found include buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris,) Kikuyu grass (Cenchrus clandestinus,) fountain grass (Cenchrus setaceus,) Natal red top (Melinis repens,) and a toxic daisy called fireweed or Madagascar ragwort (Senecio madagascariensis.)

This study involved bulldozing the land, but the reaction to this disturbance seems similar to that found after fires, they said.

“While the disturbances that we imposed differ significantly from fire, wildfire resulting from invasive grasses are increasing in Hawaiʻi,” they wrote. “Past research in Hawaiʻi shows that fire in invaded grasslands generally results in the return of the same grass species across various ecosystems including those dominated by invasive grasses…”

They conclude that active management is needed if the goal is to return alien-dominated grasslands to native-dominated ecosystems.

“If the desired management goal is native-dominated ecosystems, such stable states will likely take large inputs of time and resources to alter,” they wrote.

Gray-backed terns produce a second keiki at Palmyra since rat removal at the atoll

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 02:32:00 +0000

A second gray-backed tern chick has been spotted at Palmyra Atoll, several hundred miles south of Hawai`i.

Gray-backed tern chick at Palmyra.
TNC photo.

The first was raised last year.

The birds were killed off on the atoll by rats, but have begun to return since The Nature Conservancy, which manages Palmyra with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, eradicated the invasive rat population.

Many seabirds nest at Palmyra and many of the other remote atolls and islands of the central Pacific. But eight species known to the region were absent from Palmyra, and rats, which take both eggs and chicks, were believed to be the reason.

Rats were wiped out in 2011, and the island’s managers quickly began to see changes in vegetation and wildlife. In 2020, they began experiments to try to attract seabirds that might be flying by, using both recorded calls and decoy birds.

Last year, the first gray-backed terns nested at the atoll, and this year, more did.

“Our science volunteers Oliver (Dunn) and Cass (Crittenden) saw 5 adults in the last month and three adults in the area near the chick. They also saw an adult feeding a chick. Thanks to their efforts, we have more data to show that our seabird attraction efforts are working,” said Katie Franklin, Island Conservation Strategy Lead for The Nature Conservancy, Hawaiʻi and Palmyra.

Alex Wegmann, lead scientist for The Nature Conservancy’s Island Resilience Strategy, said it is a milestone for TNC’s efforts.

“It also emphasizes the value of decades of conservation and management by TNC, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and our many partners, as well as the efficacy of seabird social attraction methods,” Wegmann said.

Adult gray-backed terns at Palmyra.
TNC photo.

Gray-backs are one of eight species of seabird now missing but which may once have nested there. The grays are the first to return after the rat eradication. They are known in Hawaiian as pākalakala and their scientific name is Onychoprion lunata.

Oxygen deprivation will accompany warming for Hawai'i oceans

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 16:26:00 +0000

The ocean waters around the Hawaiian Islands are likely to become less productive as climate warming reduces their ability to hold oxygen.

Some ocean species may be unable to survive the depleted oxygen levels. And yes, that could translate to less sashimi on Island platters.

It is a silent crisis, driven by two linked inevitabilities: Climate change is driving warmer temperature that is being absorbed by the seas; and warmer water loses its ability to hold oxygen.

We have already seen fish kills in areas with high temperature waters with low dissolved oxygen.

And various other places are already seeing reduced oxygen levels in warming deep waters, like this example in the Sea of Japan.

A wide range of changes is occurring in the oceans as a result of both warming and the increased uptake of carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere, which results in acidification of the seas. That’s another thing that’s not good for much marine life.

This paper reviews some of the changes that are already occurring or soon will. It is ponderously entitled “An Overview of Ocean Climate Change Indicators: Sea Surface Temperature, Ocean Heat Content, Ocean pH, Dissolved Oxygen Concentration, Arctic Sea Ice Extent, Thickness and Volume, Sea Level and Strength of the AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation).”

The upshot of this for us is that things in Hawai’i’s oceans are going to be different. The consequences of lower oxygen levels are far-reaching.

Big game fish like tuna and marlin, which require high levels of oxygen, are particularly vulnerable. They may be forced to move to waters away from the Hawaiian Islands where temperatures are cooler, or to shallower waters where oxygen levels are higher, making them more susceptible to overfishing. Neither is good for Hawai’i anglers and seafood eaters.

Creatures like jellyfish, which do better in low-oxygen conditions, may become more common.

This article reviews many of the ways climate change is impacting key habitats for marine life.

“Driven by climate change, marine biodiversity is undergoing a phase of rapid change that has proven to be even faster than changes observed in terrestrial ecosystems,” the authors say.

Some species may be able to respond by moving toward the poles where water is cooler and has more oxygen. Some may be able to abandon oxygen-deprived deep waters and move to shallower waters. But some may completely lose core habitat, the paper says.

And as long as climate change keeps going, the problem keeps getting worse. “Our study highlights that the degree of range contraction and loss of suitable habitat will critically depend on the realized greenhouse gas emission pathway.”

Why does smooth pāhoehoe lava suddenly change to crystal-filled ‘a’ā lava? A new theory.

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 18:58:00 +0000

When water flows down a gradual stream over a generally flat bottom, it’s clear and transparent, but when it hits a steep slope like rapids and waterfalls, it turns white and frothy.

Still wet, but very different.

Similarly, newly-erupted molten volcanic rock flows smooth and sinuous as pāhoehoe lava, and then sometimes changes to an entirely different look, broken-up, chunky, rough ‘a’ā lava.

We know what’s causing the water to change—turbulence and increased speed. But what’s happening with molten rock?

A team of Stanford researchers think they have an answer. They are Cansu Culha, Sam Spinner and Jenny Suckale, and in May 2023 Geophysical Research Letters published their theory under the title, “The Yih Instability in Layered Lava Flow May Initiate the Pāhoehoe to ‘a‘ā Lava Transition.”

You find both kinds of lava at volcanoes everywhere there are basalt-erupting volcanoes, whether the Hawaiian volcanoes or those erupting through the snows of Iceland.

Most lava flows start as pāhoehoe, and then occasionally some of them suddenly change form. Instead of flowing like water down a quiet river, they change dramatically. You can even hear the change, as the ‘a’ā tinkles and pings like broken glass as it tumbles rather than flows downslope. And ‘a’ā has far more crystals in it.

The change in form, the authors write, is a big deal to volcano scientists: “These fundamental differences in flow characteristics have made understanding the transition a classic question in volcanology.”

Others have suggested that turbulence may be a factor, that if you stir up pāhoehoe, it will change to ‘a’ā.

But how does that happen? How does smooth, internally blended lava change to rough crystalline lava?

The authors looked to the work of Chia-Shun Yih, who in 1967 wrote a seminal paper on fluid dynamics. Yih noted that when there are different viscosities in a moving liquid—meaning they flow more or less easily—that can cause instability in the fluid. That concept is now called Yih Instability.

When a lava flow starts as pāhoehoe, over time, the surface is exposed to cooler air and starts to harden. And so, soon, there is molten rock flowing at different rates of speed within the same flow.

“A key assumption in our model is that pāhoehoe flows may have internal layers,” the authors write.

And that difference between layers can cause instability, which can provoke the change from smooth lava to rough chunky lava, they propose.

But it’s complicated.

Sometimes a change in speed can prompt ‘a’ā transformation, like when pahoehoe flows over a cliff. But not always.

Sometimes just a fast-moving flow down a steep slope can prompt the change. But not always.

And sometimes, a hardened surface appears to protect the still-moving lava below from making the change. That might be what happens in a lava tube—when the surface has hardened over, and the pahoehoe lava beneath can flow long and fast without the internal viscosity layers.

With Kīlauea erupting again, the new suggestions provide volcano scientists with new ways of looking at what’s going on.

If you’re interested in a less complex review of the data than is in the Geophysical Research Letters piece, Maya Wei-Hass has a review in the journal Science, under the title “Lava comes in two flavors…”

Hawai'i ocean levels inches below normal--what's going on?

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Mon, 29 May 2023 19:22:00 +0000

Sea levels around Hawai’i are unusually low, and have been for some months.

Experts aren’t sure why. They are pretty sure they’ll come back to normal, and higher. But because they’re not sure precisely why, they also can’t be sure when.

My canoe paddling clan in recent month has noticed that low tides have seemed really low. Like, mud flats where there’s normally water. Others may be seeing reefs where there's normally water. And seeing beaches bigger than they were last year.

To figure this out, I called Chip Fletcher, who didn’t know, but knew who would. Fletcher is the interim dean at the University of Hawai’i Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. He’s the go-to guy on impacts of sea level rise in the Islands.

He suggested calling the university’s Sea Level Center, where associate director Matthew Widlandsky confirmed what we’d been seeing.

“You are right about the sea levels this year around Hawaii being lower than in recent years,” he wrote.

But while he and his colleagues have a theory about the reasons, nobody’s actually gone out and done the work to prove them. “We have not yet studied this event in detail,” Widlansky said.

One theory is that it’s associated with cooler water in the central Pacific, in connection with our just-ended three-year La Niña. Cooler water is denser, meaning it takes up less volume.

One of the several drivers of sea level rise is warmer water expanding, and this would be the reverse, a temporary situation in which cool water contracts.

But there might be more to it than just that.

We’ve experienced this kind of condition before in connection with El Niño (warm conditions) and La Niña (cooler conditions) climate cycles. A study in 2020 reviewed a 2017 period when we were having super-high tides.

Widlansky was a co-author of an article on that study, published in the Journal of Climate. Other authors were Xiaoyu Long, Fabian Schloesser, Philip R. Thompson, H. Annamalai, Mark A. Merrifield and Hyang Yoon.

“Hawaii experienced record-high sea levels during 2017, which followed the 2015 strong El Niño and coincided with weak trade winds in the tropical northeastern Pacific,” the authors wrote.

“During August 2017, the Honolulu Harbor tide gauge recorded the highest monthly average water level since records began in 1905.” That record was 17 centimeters, or more than half a foot higher than expected.

That said, high sea levels don’t always follow strong El Niño events, and didn’t after the strong 1997 event. So there’s something else also going on. Maybe winds. Maybe other stuff.

“The processes controlling whether Hawaii sea levels rise after El Niño have so far remained unknown,” they wrote.

In 2017, "the high sea levels were caused by the superposition, or stacking, of multiple contributions.”

The high sea levels associated with the 2015 strong El Niño lasted from 2016 until the end of summer in 2017, and then tapered off.

The current low water is just a couple of inches lower than normal, and it's different in different locations.

It is not clear how long the current low stand of Hawaiian water will last.

Gray-backed tern returns to Palmyra Atoll

noreply@blogger.com (Jan T) — Sat, 20 May 2023 20:14:00 +0000

The Nature Conservancy has attracted gray-backed terns back to Palmyra Atoll after they were lost to the island, likely due to rat predation.

(Image: Gray-backed tern chick. Credit: The Nature Conservancy.)

Researchers used wooden decoys and recorded bird calls to try to convince the terns--and seven other seabird species--to land and to nest on Palmyra. A single gray-backed tern was raised on this island this season, the first in recent memory.

Gray-backed terns, formerly Sterna lunata and recently recategorized Onychoprion lunata, are pākalakala in Hawaiian. They are one of eight seabirds known to the part of the ocean that contains Palmyra, but which have not been found nesting there in recent years. They likely were preyed on and their breeding colonies removed by rats that came during World War II.

Rats were eradicated from the island in 2011. In 2020, The Nature Conservancy began trying to call the missing seabirds back to the island with loudspeakers playing recorded nesting calls, and with wooden bird decoys. These techniques have successfully called in birds in other projects.

Gray-backed terns are the first to respond.

These birds are speckled as chicks--as shown in the photo above--but as adults they have white bottomsides, gray backs, and a black head with a white stripe over the eye.

Palmyra Atoll, roughly 900 miles south of Hawai'i, is jointly managed by The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.