Abstract

The Hawaiian Islands are home to a variety of native species that have been subject to numerous threats including development of habitat for human use, predation by introduced herbivores, and competition with invasive plant species. In addition to these threats global climate change is expected to increase temperature and alter patterns of precipitation in Hawaii. This project models the relative vulnerability of native plant species to the effects of climate change, in order to assist resource managers in effectively allocating limited resources to efficiently preserve and protect current and future habitat for native plants.



We modeled vulnerability by creating an expert system – a network model linking biological traits of various plant species with the projected changes in species ranges under the effect of climate change. A panel of experts in Hawaiian plant species participated in the model design, identifying factors expected to affect a species’ ability to successfully respond to climate change. Once the model results were available, this same panel verified that the model results agreed with their own expert opinion on a sample of species with which they were familiar.



The results are relative vulnerability scores for 1,056 native Hawaiian plant species. Due to limitations of the modeling process and the available data, the exact vulnerability scores are less important than the general ranking, and can be used to identify categories of species with high, middle, and low vulnerability to climate change.