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two people standing in lab next to a counter with tree trunk samples
Professor Patrick Hart with Shea Uehana, a graduate student in the Tropical Conservation Biology and Environmental Sciences Program.

Climate change is on everyone’s radar and the need to figure out the environmental impacts caused by human consumption has been pushing the scientific community. Several research projects stimulated, conducted, and maintained at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo are working on this challenge by focusing on innovative methods and ideas that contribute to that field of study and expertise.

Patrick Hart, professor and chair of biology at UH Hilo, has kick-started a few projects in his department that have been ongoing for years.

“We are in a very key place for looking at climate change issues and looking at issues related to biodiversity,” says Hart. “We have this extinction crisis going on in Hawaiʻi while being in this incredible region of diverse plant and animal species which is fascinating. This dendrochronology research is instrumental in how we will predict future climate shifts on all levels along with being able to prepare for these changes while preserving some of our world’s most amazing plants and animals.”

a graduate student holds a measuring instrument over a sliced diameter of a tree trunk
microscope shining a light over a slice of tree trunk
mamane specimens on lab table
These māmane specimens are ready for study in Hart Lab, UH Hilo.

Tree rings

Various graduate students have worked on this research alongside Hart, contributing to substantial strides in the science community. Shea Uehana is the current graduate student involved on the project—before him, Kainana Francisco and Tishanna Ben also partook in this inquiry.

Tree rings are used in a variety of ways—they are used to calculate the age of a tree, climate conditions throughout the lifespan of the plant, health of the soil, previous precipitation, etc.

Until very recently, it was believed that trees native to and living in tropical climates did not produce rings or did not produce them at the same frequency or accuracy as others in non-tropical climates.

However, Uehana and Hart have discovered that some indigenous trees and nonnative trees surviving in Hawaiʻi do in fact produce rings in areas of high elevation. According to Hart, the most surprising thing was finding annual rings in a tropical tree in Hawaiʻi.

“One of our main goals as an ecology lab is to find out how to preserve species,” says Hart. “We are interested in finding out how long it takes to restore certain trees. This study gives us information on how fast they grow, how old they get, and how long it takes them to mature and be useful.”

The māmane and the palila

Hart also conducts bird research that uses algorithms to identify bird songs and sounds, which allows scientists and researchers to identify birds in a particular area by just sound alone. The preservation of the endemic palila (Loxioides bailleui) bird is one of the focuses of this research.

The māmane (Sophora chrysophylla), an endemic tree, provides food and habitat for the palila, hence the spawn of the tree ring research project.

“This tree ring study has farther reaching impacts beyond environmental, it is also ecological,” says Uehana. “This study can help us learn how to predict things in the future. If we know the next ten years will be drought years and we know that the optimum conditions for the māmane are just the opposite, then we can deduce that it will not only be a bad decade for the māmane but also a bad decade for the palila.”

The usefulness of prediction, Uehana says, is being able to take measures to counteract the bad cycles.

—A UH Hilo Stories article written by Anne Rivera, a public information intern in the Office of the Chancellor, and photos by Zoe Coffman

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