Also available are the distribution of corals in the bay, as well as the types of fish and their prevalence at various sites.
By CAROLYN LUCAS-ZENK
Stephens Media
A new website bursting with dynamic, interactive content has been launched to engage the public in conservation and restoration efforts at Kahaluu Bay.
The Hawaii Institute for Marine Biology and the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Center for Conservation Research and Training have contributed significantly to The Kohala Center Portal, available at portals.intelesense.net/tkc.
Users can find various water, weather and cultural resources, including a baseline assessment of the ocean habitat, watershed and reef health indexes, an inventory of marine species, a map of historical sites, and moolelo about Kahaluu and Keauhou. There’s also data from The Kohala Center’s Citizen Science Program, which regularly collects water quality data at the bay.
The goal of the portal is to bring science and education together to provide site visitors with a better understanding of this critically important resource.
“Data is only data unless it is used by the community,” said Kaipo Perez III, a University of Hawaii student who is pursuing a doctorate in zoology and doing his dissertation at Kahaluu Bay.
This sets the foundation for future monitoring, empowers the public to help make changes or decisions in the future and allows for community-based management, he added.
The public got a glimpse of the portal during a presentation Wednesday evening inside a packed ballroom at the Keauhou Beach Resort. They also listened to kupuna Mitchell Fujisaka’s stories of his childhood at Kahaluu, the environmental changes he witnessed, and how he helped noted kahuna Henry Kekahuna map the culturally significant areas along the coastline.
The Kohala Center Portal is part of a three-year project, funded by the National Science Foundation, that provides the cyberinfrastructure required for tracking and understanding the impact of climate change scenarios on water resources in Hawaii and Alaska. It’s also part of an objective to develop a “model system” for improving the community’s capacity to mitigate and adapt to climate change impacts. The project ends in August, but UH plans to ask for a no-cost extension, said Ken Kaneshiro, Center for Conservation Research and Training director.
Perez has been conducting a baseline survey of the water-based resources at Kahaluu Bay. He said more than 200 key features, such as flora and fauna, observations and geographic coordinates have been recorded, placed on an interactive map and uploaded to the portal. Water levels, salinity, temperature, pH (a measure of a solution’s acidity) and dissolved oxygen have been tracked.
Also available are the distribution of corals in the bay, as well as the types of fish and their prevalence at various sites.