The Hawai`i Conservation Alliance held its annual conference in July, providing an embarrassment of riches to our two reporters in attendance. Here’s the second, and final, installment taken from our reporters’ notebooks.
Avoiding Beach Loss: A century from now, people wanting to attend the 114th annual Hawai`i Conservation Conference may find the Hawai`i Convention Center defended by a moat. According to Zoe Norcross-Nu`u of the University of Hawai`i's Sea Grant Program, if sea level rises a meter over the next hundred years, as it well might, the ocean would reach the center's doorstep....
Ladies in Red: Why do some females of one species of endemic damselfly, Megalagrion calliphya, dress themselves up as males? That question puzzled Idelle Cooper of Indiana University...
Damsels in Distress: Studies such as Cooper's are important for understanding Hawaiian damselflies, but what's the point if they go extinct? Entomologist Dan Polhemus warned that despite the solid foundation of scientific knowledge about these animals, "it's been a long time, nothing has happened, and we are still losing populations."...
No Water, No Rainforest "Is Water a Limiting Resource in a Hawaiian Rainforest?" The question, which was the title of a poster displayed at the Hawai`i Conservation Conference, appears to be a little silly on its face. Of course, if you have no water, you have no rainforest.
On second glance, however, the work of Colleen Cole, Susan Cordell, Rebecca Ostertag and Jene Michaut is a serious study of the ways in which the presence of alien species in lowland wet forests can limit the availability of water for native plants...
Snowflake Coral Invasions: The presence in Hawaiian waters of the invasive soft coral Carijoa riisei, nicknamed snowflake coral, was first noted in 1972 at Pearl Harbor. Unitil recently, most of the populations found since then, including the colonies that threaten commercially valuable stands of black coral in the `Au`au channel, were thought to descend from that initial invasion...
Snowflake Coral Control: Native or not, C. riiseii has recently shown up in places where it is unwelcome. As a means of controlling it, Dan Wagner proposes using a nudibranch predator...
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Article Keywords
environment hawaii hawaii conservation alliance conference global warming sea level rise beach loss zoe norcross-nuu chip fletcher damselflies idelle cooper androchromes endangered megalagrion dan polhemus rainforest colleen cole susan cordell rebecca ostertag jene michaud university hawaii hilo snowflake coral carijoa riisei greg concepcion sam kahng rob toonen dan wagner nudibranch biocontrol
