RESEARCH PROJECT

Landscape prioritization for climate-resilient conservation of over 400 T&E species in Maui Nui

Landscape prioritization for climate-resilient conservation of over 400 threatened and endangered species in Maui Nui

Looking up a broad Hawaiian valley, the foreground shows a bay with an inlet to a medium-sized estuary that disappears into a lush forested valley floor; small waterfalls are visible at the back of the valley in the distance
Landscapes across Maui Nui, like Halawa Valley on Molokai, are home to many ecologically and culturally important at-risk species.

This project aims to apply a novel spatial prioritization approach to develop a comprehensive, climate-informed conservation blueprint for recovery planning of over 400 endangered and at-risk species across the islands of Maui Nui, Hawai‘i. Key activities include: (1) compiling and refining species distribution models and other spatial datasets; (2) conducting iterative, expert-driven spatial prioritizations to identify optimal landscape-scale recovery networks; and (3) developing interactive web tools and user-friendly products to support conservation decision making.

The primary outcome of this work will be a set of spatially-explicit, climate-informed conservation blueprints for each of seven focal taxonomic groups, identifying optimal landscape-scale recovery networks for over 400 at-risk species. Other key products include an open-source R package for implementing the team’s optimization approach, an interactive web portal for dynamically exploring prioritization outputs, and a flexible expert elicitation framework for participatory modeling.

PROJECT DETAILS

FUNDED:

FY2024

PI:

Lucas Fortini
Research Ecologist, USGS Pacific Islands Ecosystem Research Center

Co-Is:

Christina Leopold
Conservation Ecologist, Hawaiʻi Cooperative Studies Unit, UH Hilo
Chad Wilhite
Quantitative Spatial/Research Analyst, HCSU, UH Hilo