**Linking Land and Sea through Collaborative Research to Inform Contemporary applications of Traditional Resource Management in Hawai'i**

**Jade M.S. Delevaux 1,2,\*, Kawika B. Winter 3,4,5, Stacy D. Jupiter 6, Mehana Blaich-Vaughan 4,7, Kostantinos A. Stamoulis 8, Leah L. Bremer 9,10, Kimberly Burnett 10, Peter Garrod 4, Jacquelyn L. Troller <sup>11</sup> and Tamara Ticktin <sup>1</sup>**


Received: 22 July 2018; Accepted: 28 August 2018; Published: 3 September 2018

**Abstract:** Across the Pacific Islands, declining natural resources have contributed to a cultural renaissance of customary ridge-to-reef management approaches. These indigenous and community conserved areas (ICCA) are initiated by local communities to protect natural resources through customary laws. To support these efforts, managers require scientific tools that track land-sea linkages and evaluate how local management scenarios affect coral reefs. We established an interdisciplinary process and modeling framework to inform ridge-to-reef management in Hawai'i, given increasing coastal development, fishing and climate change related impacts. We applied our framework at opposite ends of the Hawaiian Archipelago, in Ha'ena and Ka' ¯ up¯ ulehu, where local communities ¯ have implemented customary resource management approaches through government-recognized processes to perpetuate traditional food systems and cultural practices. We identified coral reefs vulnerable to groundwater-based nutrients and linked them to areas on land, where appropriate management of human-derived nutrients could prevent increases in benthic algae and promote coral recovery from bleaching. Our results demonstrate the value of interdisciplinary collaborations among researchers, managers and community members. We discuss the lessons learned from our culturally-grounded, inclusive research process and highlight critical aspects of collaboration necessary to develop tools that can inform placed-based solutions to local environmental threats and foster coral reef resilience.

**Keywords:** ridge-to-reef; groundwater; land-use; nutrients; bleaching; scenario; resilience; collaboration; scientific tools; management

#### **1. Introduction**

Pacific Islands are ideal systems to understand land-sea links in the context of social-ecological system resilience [1–3], defined as the capacity of the system to cope with disturbances without shifting to an alternative state while maintaining its functions and supporting human uses [4,5]. Around the Pacific Islands [6,7], local knowledge and associated management practices (e.g., agroforestry, fisheries management) have been recognized to play a key role in building resilience to disturbances [8–10]. These local ecological knowledge systems (henceforth LEK) are customary knowledge-practice-belief systems passed down orally over generations, through adaptive management [8]. This knowledge is formed through historical resource-use practices and long-term, qualitative observations over a restricted geographical area. LEK continues to be modified under rapidly changing social, economic and ecological contexts. Where indigenous peoples depend on local environments for resources, they have also adopted conservation practices, which in some cases can enhance abundance or/and biodiversity [11]. For instance, traditionally managed community fisheries in Hawai'i have exhibited equal or higher biomass than even no-take marine protected areas [9,12]. Because of the long-term and place-based understanding embodied in LEK systems, there is increasing recognition of the importance of integrating LEK into management strategies to build resilience [13–15], especially in Pacific Islands, where environments are unpredictable and highly vulnerable to climate change [16].

Awareness of natural resource decline has contributed to a cultural renaissance across the Pacific Islands, where local communities seek to revive local customary and place-based management approaches [17], such as customary *moku* (ridge-to-reef) management approaches [18,19], *kapu* (traditional closures) and *pono* (sustainable) practices to protect biocultural resources and foster social-ecological resilience [17,20]. These social-ecological systems can be defined as Indigenous and community conserved areas (ICCA), where "natural and/or modified ecosystems containing significant biodiversity values, ecological services and cultural values, are voluntarily conserved by indigenous, mobile and local communities, through customary laws and other effective means" [21]. In ICCAs, local people, who are intimately connected to the environment, culturally and/or through their livelihoods make decisions over how resources are used and have the capability to enforce regulations, which can lead to effective conservation outcomes (even if conservation is not the primary objective) [22,23]. Ridge-to-reef management systems that integrate LEK can enhance social-ecological resilience through reducing impact from climate disturbances and strengthening governance systems with capacity to quickly organize and act [2]. These types of ICCAs offer lessons in integrating traditional knowledge and management practices into sustainability and conservation planning but require national level legal and policy changes to accommodate and empower the ICCAs operating at the watershed-reef level [8,24]. The restoration of local management is challenging, because users have often grown in number and shifted in character from small, homogenous resident populations using resources for subsistence, to transient, global tourist populations using the same resources for recreation [25,26].

After nearly two centuries of decline of the Hawaiian biocultural resource management system, there has been a resurgence of interest—from within academia and the policy realm, as well as at the community level—in reviving that system to restore biocultural resource abundance [27]. This renaissance has inspired an attempt to align traditional Hawaiian biocultural resource management with contemporary frameworks of ecosystem-based management that re-establish the cohesive links between terrestrial and marine systems, encompassing integrated ecological and social processes from ridge-to-reef [28–30]. There has been a growing focus on a land-division scale known as *moku* to revive traditional resource management in a localized context as a means for communities to engage in biocultural restoration. *Ahupua*'*a* are social-ecological communities nested within *moku*, which are delineated as land-divisions that often extend from the mountains to the sea and exist within the context of the Hawaiian system of governance and biocultural resource management [27]. Motivations by Hawaiian communities to employ contemporary ICCAs include access to and restoration of biocultural resources, security of land and resource tenure, security from

outside threats, financial benefit from resources or social-ecological system functions, participation in management, empowerment, capacity building and cultural identity and cohesiveness [8,11,31]. Perpetuating ancestral practices related to food systems provides roles for community members of all ages, while maintaining relationships and balance with the natural world in specific areas [32,33].

Despite management challenges, declining resource health and conflicts over access, two *ahupua*'*a* (social-ecological communities) embody this cultural renaissance [34]. Ha'ena on the windward side ¯ of Kaua'i Island and Ka'up¯ ulehu on the leeward side of Hawai'i Island have successfully maintained ¯ control of a critical component of their food system by enhancing the management of their coastal resources through the creation of innovative ICCA's (Figure 1). Both places have become the first, officially sanctioned ICCAs in the U.S. State of Hawai'i. Coral reef fish caught near shore with nets, pole and line, or spears, are a very important component of community food systems [6,35]. Therefore, both communities in this study initiated marine closures of different sizes to protect fishery species, many of which are also known to feed on algae (herbivorous fishes). Without these herbivorous species, algae blooms can cover the reef when excess nutrients flow into the sea from the land. By eating the algae, these protected fishes create space for new corals to settle and ensure the persistence or resilience of the reefs.

**Figure 1.** Locations of Ha'ena and Ka' ¯ up¯ ulehu ¯ *ahupua'a* on Kaua'i and Hawai'i along the main Hawaiian Island chain, with island age and the direction of the prevailing north-east trade winds and ocean swell indicated.

These local communities are also interested in reviving the *ahupua'a* approach by better understanding how land-based sources of pollutants from golf courses, lawns and cesspools affect their marine ecosystems to inform alternative land-use options [36]. Even with healthy herbivorous fish populations, these pollutants take a toll on coral reefs, especially with increases in ocean temperature and acidity as a result of climate change. Therefore, it is important to these communities and the health of all marine ecosystems, to ensure that future coastal planning takes land-based impacts into account. Effective ridge-to-reef management requires improved understanding of land-sea linkages and tools to evaluate the effects of land (e.g., nutrients carried through groundwater) and marine (e.g., wave power and reef topography) drivers on coral reefs to inform resilience management in the face of climate change. In response to these gaps, we adopted the traditional *ahupua'a* framework to study the effect of coastal development on coral reefs under projected climate impacts and identified place-based management actions that can boost system resilience. Here, we provide an overview of: (1) the renaissance of the traditional resource management system of Hawai'i, with a focus on two communities with ICCAs; (2) how applied collaborative science can support management; and (3) the development of decision support tools grounded in place-based management.
