Overview
Hawaii begins its first Research Infrastructure Improvement grant with great energy and a spirit of "imua": to go forward, a very purposeful and powerful concept in the Hawaiian language. This acronym fits perfectly with the intent of Hawaii's EPSCoR program: Investing in Multidisciplinary University Activities (IMUA) through Hawaii EPSCoR.
Under the overarching theme of Biodiversity in an Integrated Island Environment, Hawaii has identified three research infrastructure improvement thrusts: Evolutionary Genetics, Ecosystem Studies, and Information Technology for Environmental Research. Hawaii's highly diverse subtropical environments, endemic and invasive introduced species, and coastal zone watersheds provide the natural laboratory in which these thrusts are being researched. Science education is the common thread that unites all three thrusts in order to achieve the highest impact on Hawaii's student population and ultimately its workforce and economy. Partnerships with the Kamehameha Schools and the Hawaii Department of Education will serve to increase the flow of students to the pipeline of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics curriculum. Participation in the EPSCoR program will enable Hawaii to improve its preeminent position as the center for Pacific and tropical research and education in the United States and beyond.
Research Focus Areas
Evolutionary Genetics
Among the most important questions that the Evolutionary Genetics thrust area attempts to answer are: What are the patterns of genetic variation within and among populations and species, and what are the forces responsible for maintaining genetic variation within populations? In Hawaii, the islands' geological time-series marks the evolution of ecosystems, so we can determine the rates of speciation for native plants and animals. Hawaii is isolated from large continental landmasses, and all of its native animals and plants have migrated from these landmasses. The speciation of these migrants after they reached Hawaii is the subject of many evolutionary genetic studies at the University of Hawaii (UH). Unfortunately, Hawaii is also a center for invasive species in the terrestrial and marine environments. Scientists at UH are using genetic analyses to study the impact of foreign species on the survival of native species in different ecosystems. They are developing tools to ask where Hawaii's fishes and insects came from and what controls their distribution.
Ecosystems Studies
The Ecosystems Studies thrust area focuses on establishing a network of field stations within natural "ahupua`a" to enable long-term ecological monitoring that will provide important information to enable assessment of ecosystem health. Ahupa`a are Hawaii's unique "mountain to the sea" catchments, which are characterized by their distinct natural geologic and ecologic boundaries, as well as their human community boundaries. These ecosystems represent microcosms of the most intractable environmental problems found everywhere else in the world. There is growing international recognition that solving such problems as deforestation, fisheries depletion, soil erosion, degradation of marine ecosystems, etc., requires an integrated catchment-to-sea research and management approach. Hawaii's ahupua`a provide a perfect opportunity to develop cutting-edge management technologies for maintaining healthy ecosystems. Using wireless ecomonitoring sensors, we will collect important datasets that can be used to make predictions of long-term ecosystem health and develop more effective management plans to sustain our precious natural resources.
Information Technology for Environmental Research
The Information Technology for Environmental Research thrust area will apply spatial and temporal analysis techniques to large-scale ecological data originating from satellite imagery and ground-based collection to capitalize on the highly fragmented habitats in Hawaii. We will focus the research around two major thematic areas: developing and using spatial techniques for long-term monitoring of ecosystems health, and community- and species-level modeling of interactions between native and invasive species. This requires integrating a wide variety of biotic and abiotic data by collecting and databasing geospatial data to develop and implement models of ecological processes. Effective management and modeling of environmental systems is strongly interrelated with accurate and reliable data describing how variables in a system interact when disturbed. One goal of the Information Technology for Environmental Research thrust area is to apply geographic information system methods that mine biologically relevant information from the cellular/molecular level to organismic, population, and ecosystem levels to create models that test scientific hypotheses relating to evolution, conservation, ecosystem function, and even the relationships between ecosystem and human health.
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