Hawaiʻi Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities
Measuring the impact of conservation practices
Climate-Smart Agriculture in Hawaiʻi
Our project’s technical staff receive training to conduct measurements of soil health, carbon sequestration, and GHG emission. We provide data access and educational outreach to participating producers at no cost to support informed decision-making of Hawai’i’s farmers and ranchers to the benefit of our islands’ economies and ecosystems.
Human practices affecting ʻāina
Increased Carbon Sequestration
Agricultural practices affect carbon inputs into the soil and the duration for which the soil retains that carbon. Much of the research to understand these effects has focused on temperate continental land use systems and conditions. In this project, we will implement conservation practices across multiple soil orders of the Hawaiian islands. This requires new approaches to data analysis compared to those designed for continental systems. Our team of modelers on the project will use the data to develop robust models for soil carbon dynamics in tropical and subtropical land use systems which will serve as decision-support tools for Hawaiʻi’s farmers and ranchers.
Increased carbon in soil means less carbon in the atmosphere and a reduction in carbon dioxide levels, helping to mitigate global warming. The benefits of enhanced carbon sequestration extend beyond our island boundaries.
ʻĀina affecting human resilience
More Soil Carbon and Connected Practices
Caring for ‘āina also means caring for our human communities. By implementing climate-smart strategies, we expect to see a wealth of co-benefits for our communities, including improved water quality, greater soil fertility, stabilized crop yields, revitalized cultural practices, and additional benefits yet to be identified. In this project, we will develop a holistic framework tailored to Hawai‘i’s specific context to support the decision-making of both land managers and policymakers.
Placing Hawaiʻi soils in temperate contexts
Predicting agricultural management impact on soils in Hawaiʻi
Soils in Hawai‘i are unique. Our legacy of lava and ash means that minerals in the soil bind to organic carbon in ways not commonly seen in older continental soils. This requires us to analyze the data in new and different ways. In this project, we are employing several approaches to build new mathematical models and extend existing temperate zone models to describe how these special soils interact with our agricultural practices in Hawai‘i.
