*8.3. On the Model of the Hawaiian Social-Ecological System*

Islands are ideal models for system study because they possess all of the biological and physical processes needed to understand complete systems, yet they exist at a scale where complexity is comprehendible. A relatively good understanding of the Hawaiian social-ecological system exists due to a large body of research conducted by native Hawaiians over the last two centuries, and the existence of well-established research institutions. This makes reasonable speculations about structure and function of this system plausible. While rigorous examination of the original Hawaiian social-ecological system can be challenging—as it is largely associated with an era in the past—due to the large body of information associated with it, creative methodologies can be employed to give insights into its structure and function.

### *8.4. Biocultural Restoration of the Hawaiian Social-Ecological System*

In the post-contact era (1778 A.D. onward) Hawaiian culture has been under severe sociocultural pressures such as changes in government, land tenure, religious institutions, economies, language, and others. As a result of these processes native Hawaiians are no longer functioning as the top-level managers of the large-scale social-ecological system that currently exist in Hawai'i. These processes and events are analogous to disturbance, uncertainty, and surprise events [35,43]. Despite these potentially catastrophic events, nearly all aspects of the Hawaiian social-ecological system persist into contemporary times. This may be due, at least in part, to the resilience of key biocultural functional groups associated with Hawaiian culture, particularly those which were shaped around flooded-field system agriculture for the production of *kalo*, waterfowl, and fish. This supports the notion that flooded-field *kalo* cultivation is the foundation of a Hawaiian cultural landscape; and is, therefore, the key to the biocultural restoration of the Hawaiian social-ecological system. Provided that cultural landscapes are the outward appearance of social-ecological systems, focusing on keystone and redundant elements found within a culture's "portable biocultural toolkit" may provide a pathway for maintaining and/or restoring cultural landscapes. We content that while the pre-colonial state cannot be re-created exactly, by looking to the past we can understand and re-create productive and resilient cultural landscapes. Such cultural restoration goes hand-in-hand with ecological restoration.

#### *8.5. Future Research*

The theories explored in this paper are not new, but this manuscript puts forth some novel applications of them in the context of social-ecological systems. While the methods presented herein demonstrate some level of credibility to this approach, these notions would need to be assessed in other ways to further test their validity. Some possibilities for future research could include:


Until more rigorous testing can be done, the concepts explored in this manuscript should still be considered theoretical at best.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, K.B.W.; Methodology, K.B.W. and N.K.L.; Validation, N.K.L, and F.B.; Formal Analysis, K.B.W., and N.K.L; Investigation, K.B.W., and N.K.L.; Resources, K.B.W.; Data Curation, K.B.W., and N.K.L; Writing—Original Draft Preparation, K.B.W.; Writing—Review & Editing, K.B.W., N.K.L, and F.B.; Visualization, K.B.W., and N.K.L.; Supervision, F.B.; Project Administration, K.B.W.; Funding Acquisition, K.B.W.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding. The APC was funded by Hawai'i Community Foundation.

**Acknowledgments:** We express our gratitude to Will McClatchey, Peter Vitousek, Mary Power, and Kim Bridges who have contributed to our research by providing direction for this paper; and to Joshua Diem, who provided the image used in Figure 3. We also thank National Tropical Botanical Garden, and Department of Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences (University of Hawai'i at Manoa) for supporting this research. ¯

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no competing interests as defined by *Sustainability*, or other interests that might be perceived to influence the results and/or discussion reported in this paper. The founding sponsors had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript and in the decision to publish the results.
