Constellating cultivation: texturing agroecological legacies with a mixed-methods approach in Hawaiʻi
Indigenous agroecological practices have been identified as sustainable place-based practices supporting community resilience and revitalizing biocultural landscapes in Hawaiʻi. In areas where traditional knowledge and practice have been fractured because of colonial practices, new tools, such as sp...
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Resilience Alliance
2025-03-01
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| Series: | Ecology and Society |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol30/iss1/art11 |
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| Summary: | Indigenous agroecological practices have been identified as sustainable place-based practices supporting community resilience and revitalizing biocultural landscapes in Hawaiʻi. In areas where traditional knowledge and practice have been fractured because of colonial practices, new tools, such as spatial modeling, can aid in understanding the distribution of pre-colonial land use. Currently, spatial models of traditional agriculture do not capture the type of systems that supported populations in the Hilo and Puna districts on Hawai‘i Island before European arrival in 1778. We utilized a mixed methods approach to address these limitations by considering Kalapana in the Puna District on Hawaiʻi Island as a case study. First, various forms of agriculture within Kalapana were identified and characterized based on written documentation in both English and ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi. We then reconstructed spatial patterns of the distinct forms of cultivation by incorporating historic maps, archaeological reports, and botanical data from contemporary ground and remote survey data. Finally, we approximated environmental thresholds for agroecological adaptations in the under-studied Kalapana geography. Our findings suggest that the role of cultivated lava and forest systems would have provided substantial contributions necessary for supporting the populations that resided within the Puna district, spanning a time period of pre-European contact onward well into the 20th century. This study highlights the resilience and ingenuity of rural Hawaiian communities that supported themselves within sustainable, place-based practices and actively stewarded their biocultural landscape over time. |
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| ISSN: | 1708-3087 |