RENEWABLE RESOURCES EXTENSION FOR HAWAII

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: COMPLETE
• Funding Source: RREA
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 1011724
• Project Start Date: Dec 12, 2016
• Project End Date: Sep 30, 2021
• Program Code: [(N/A)]- (N/A)

Recipient Organization
UNIV OF HAWAII
3190 MAILE WAY
HONOLULU,HI 96822

Performing Department
Natural Resources & Environmental Management

Non Technical Summary
Hawaii's forests protect the islands' watersheds, provide habitat for scores of rare and endangered species, and produce some of the most valuable timber in the world. At the same time, forests are threatened by disease, invasive species, conversion to non-forest uses, and wildfires. Invasive plants such as Miconia are difficult to control in remote areas, but the development of Herbicide Ballistic Technology, applying herbicides from paintball guns shot from helicopters, has allowed treatment of remote populations with a minimum of herbicide. Tracking applications and success using GPS and spatial data analysis allows mangers to optimize operations at minimum cost.Wildland fire is a prevalent, yet largely overlooked, disturbance on the dry sides of Hawaii and US-affiliated Pacific Islands such as Guam, Palau, Yap, and the Northern Marianas. Unlike the continental US, however, the capacity and resources available for fire risk assessment, fire suppression and, more importantly, fire hazard mitigation are extremely limited. Extension in wildfire science and management can provide regionally relevant, science-based information and support for improving fire management and to build partnerships and collaborations among stakeholders through development of the Pacific Fire Exchange. Unique among most extension programs is a focus on linking the interests of landowners and managers with the needs of emergency response agencies including Federal, State, and County fire responders. The program will focus on improving the accessibility of geospatial analyses of fire risk, development of cutting edge remote sensing and mapping tools related to fire and drought, and expanding the program's scope to support the integration of climate information and forecasting into the work plans of stakeholders and fellow extension programs in the Pacific Island region.While state and federal governments manage large portions of the Hawaiian forest, many small to medium-sized private landowners own and manage forests as well. With the disappearance of the sugar plantations, large areas of former agricultural land have been put into forestry use by private landowners. Forestry extenson reaches out to these landowners, teaching them how to protect their forests, restore native ecosystems, or plant and manage trees for timber. The end results will be healthy forests providing both timber and ecosystem services.The sustainability of the livestock industry in Hawaii depends on the sound and wise use of the State's range and pasture resources. Poor management of land resources leads to loss of soil through erosion, infestation of weeds, decreased forage production and poor performance of grazing animals. Rangeland extension offers research-based educational programs in grazing and livestock management the number of poorly managed range and pasture lands can be dramatically reduced.

Animal Health Component

(N/A)

Research Effort Categories

Basic

(N/A)

Applied

(N/A)

Developmental

(N/A)

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
213	0699	3020	17%
122	0699	3020	17%
121	0799	3020	16%
212	0699	3020	30%
123	0699	3020	20%

Knowledge Area
212 - Pathogens and Nematodes Affecting Plants; 122 - Management and Control of Forest and Range Fires; 213 - Weeds Affecting Plants; 123 - Management and Sustainability of Forest Resources; 121 - Management of Range Resources;

Subject Of Investigation
0799 - Rangelands and grasslands, general; 0699 - Trees, forests, and forest products, general;

Field Of Science
3020 - Education;

Keywords

forest stewardship

rangeland stewardship

invasive species

wildfire

ecosystem services

climate variability

economic opportunities

peer to peer learning

ecosystem restoration

wildland fire

forest health

ceratocystis

miconia calvescens

herbicide ballistic technology

unmanned aerial systems

operations research

Goals / Objectives
The Hawaii RREA program will focus on Goal 1: Ensuring Healthy Ecosystems and Goal 3: Enhancing Resource Management on Working Forests and Rangelands.For Goal 1, we plan to focus on invasive species and wildfires. For the invasive species program we will focus on developing new, cost-effective methods to control Miconia calvescens, one of Hawaii's worst weeds, in remote forested watersheds. Our objectives are to:Develop an adaptive spatial-temporal system for optimizing cost effective management with maximum target impact reduction.Develop and validate Herbicide Ballistic Technology (herbicide delivery through paintaballs) - Unmanned Aerial Systems capabilities for target elimination.The overarching goal of the CTAHR Wildland Fire Extension Program is to provide technical support for the agencies and stakeholders involved in pre-fire mitigation, fire suppression, and post-fire response in order to reduce the impacts of wildland fire on Pacific Island communities and ecosystems. The primary objectives of the program are toDevelop trust-based relationships with stakeholders;Identify and fill fire science information gaps for the Pacific region.Improve the availability, accessibility and quality of local fire history data collection.Communicate fire issues and management needs to leadership and decision-makers.Develop and increase the accessibility and application of best management practices for pre-fire hazard reduction and post-fire response and rehabilitation.Develop and support fire science communication and public outreach efforts.Identify and integrate relevant climate science knowledge and tools to promote adaptive management of fire risk and other hazards across multiple stakeholder groups.For Goal 3, we will focus on Forest Stewardship and Health and Rangeland Stewardship and Health.The goal of the Rangeland Stewardship program is to protect the ecological and economic integrity of Hawaii's rangeland resources. This will be accomplished through research-based education and outreach opportunities in range and livestock management for Hawaii's livestock producers, state and federal land management personnel, Cooperative Extension Service extension agents, and others.Our objectives are:Livestock producers will learn and implement improved grazing methodologies to improve production.Range management professionals in Hawaii will be better able to advise livestock producers on sustainable management of pastures and rangelands.Hawaii rangelands will improve in health and productivity through better grazing management.The Forest Stewardship program will focus on outreach to forest landowners, managers, and professionals in the management of both natural and planted forests. We will focus on forest health and forest restoration, especially on management of forests threatened by the new disease Ceratocystis wilt of ohia (Metrosideros polymorpha), also called Rapid Ohia Death. Our objectives are:Forest landowners and forestry professionals will learn the causes of Ceratosystis wilt of ohia and learn how to reduce the spread of the disease.Forest landowners will continue to form peer-to-peer networks and learn from each other's experiences.Natural resource professionals and private land owners will learn about silviculture of the native tree Acacia koa, including growth, yield, genetics, diseases, agroforestry uses, and financial analysis of koa forestry.Natural resource professionals and private land owners will learn how to restore native forests, including how to propagate and outplant both common and rare native species, obtain planting stock of appropriate genotype, control invasive species in native ecosystems, and manage native forests for wildlife habitat.Natural resource professionals and private land owners will learn how to establish and manage plantations of high value timber trees, including how to select species, obtain seedlings of superior genotypes, plant trees, control weeds and pests, fertilize, thin and prune stands, and measure trees.Nursery growers will learn how to produce healthy planting stock of superior genotypes economically.Loggers and millers will produce koa lumber from young, second-growth trees and woodworkers will begin selling products made from young koa timber.Our program will address several cross-cutting issues. Climate Variability affects invasive species, wildfires, and forest and range health. The dry areas of the Hawaiian Islands, in particular, are predicted to become drier with climate change, increasing the risk of wildfires and making fire management more important. Rangelands are more prone to overgrazing in times of drought. Invasive species, including weeds, pests, and diseases, are expected to increase in range in a warming climate, affecting both forest and range. Forests and rangelands are important in providing ecosystem services, in particular watershed protection. Wildfires are a threat to the forest's ability to protect the watersheds, and in Hawaii wildfires are often followed by severe erosion and siltation of nearby reefs. Reforestation, on the other hand, will help increase ecosystem services. Invasive species are often the most important threats to forests and rangelands in Hawaii. While part of our program explicitly addresses invasive plants in forest and rangelands, the forest extension program will also address invasive fungal pathogens.

Project Methods
For the invasive species program, we will take an operations research approach with the incorporation of research and science into landscape-level operations. Basic methods rely on capturing high-resolution GPS data in operational deployments to be put through geospatial processing to analyze operational metrics of performance, e.g. search effort, herbicide use rate, as well as biological responses of the target species, e.g. recruitment rates, dispersal rangeThis program is designed to work directly with practitioners in conservation and invasive species management where shared responsibility in data management and development of novel analytics lead to more science-based decision support. All management data are easily and accurately converted into economic values teaching us new ways to think about optimizing long-term strategies by minimizing consequences in opportunities lost and avoided costs. We are further integrating our program with practitioners through skills training in UAS technology with online instruction and live practical experience towards the development of certified aerial management teams.Through our direct collaborations with practitioners, management becomes data output, becomes short-, medium- and long-term outcomes. Success with the number of participants gaining new knowledge and learning new skills comes through the deployment of the latest technologies. We anticipate real growth in this area due to an overwhelming expression of interest.Increasing awareness of wildfire issues in Hawaii has been one of the primary short-term goals of the program. The Wildland Fire Program will continue to maintain and develop professional, trust-based relationships to increase program recognition as a valued resource for the fire management community. This includes participation in wildfire meetings, media updates, technical assistance with data and information needs, and regular consultations on fire mitigation, feedback on fire-related components of land management plans, and assistance with post-fire assessments and recommendations. The program will continue to facilitate the development of Wildfire and Drought Look Out! (www.hawaiiwildfire.org/lookout) - a statewide, multi-agency wildfire education campaign to address increased fire risk with El Niño-driven drought.The program will continue the development and improvement of tools for assessing fire risk, integrating fire into long-term management planning, assessing post-fire impacts. In particular, the program will develop probabilistic models of fire occurrence based on fire histories and existing geospatial layers such as land cover, climate, and ignition density. These models have great potential to identify the degree to which landscape factors contribute to fire risk at large spatial scales without relying on fuel models that poorly reflect Pacific vegetation types. They also have utility in contributing to scenarios for ecosystem service assessment to understand how changes in climate and land cover will affect future landscape flammability. The Wildland Fire program will also use Google Earth Engine, a powerful platform for manipulating and analyzing remotely sensed imagery, to develop tools for fire perimeter and severity mapping and real-time monitoring of vegetation response to drought. Several of these tools are already under development, and RREA funds will be used to increase tools their accessibility for field practitioners and develop methods for ground-truthing that contribute to land manager/fire responder information needs (e.g. fire severity mapping).Finally, by integrating the best available climate data and projections for the Pacific region, the Wildland Fire program is also well positioned to integrate climate monitoring and communicate climate forecasts to support the work plans of land management practitioners and other extension programs. As such, the program will continue to increase emphasis on developing 'climate literacy' among its stakeholders and fellow extension faculty by developing regionally relevant climate change and climate variability curricula and integrating these concepts into informational products and activities.The wildfire program will regularly conduct product- and activity-based evaluations to assess changes in stakeholder awareness and behavior over the short-term. The program also participates in annual Joint Fire Science Program stakeholder evaluations to assess the use of Pacific Fire Exchange products and the degree to which knowledge exchange among researchers, managers, and fire responders is changing. Medium-term outcomes will be evaluated by the assessing the number of regionally relevant fire science publications, increases in the number of researchers participating in science communication efforts, and at a broader level, the level of funding to fire-related programs (mitigation and suppression) in the region. Finally, the program is well positioned to track long-term impacts through tracking wildfire number and area burned region wide over time.The primary effort of the rangeland stewardship project will be on providing workshops and field days on grazing and livestock management with a focus on improving range and pasture condition. Pre- and Post-course evaluations will be provided to track participant learning and technology adoption. Opportunities for direct consultation and grazing management plan evaluation will provide additional encouragement for adoption of improved management practices.For the forestry extension program, our methods will include both traditional face to face communication and remote/web-based methods. We will continue to work with landowners on an individual basis and face to face in monthly meetings and field days. In addition, we will continue to develop our landowner's social networks through a peer to peer learning program. Remotely, we will continue to communicate through our websites (www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/forestry and www.RapidOhiaDeath.org) and through social media (www.flickr.com/photos/jbfriday and www.Facebook.com/HawaiiForestryExension).We will evaluate use of social media through digital tracking of visits to websites and views of photos and videos. We will keep track of events organized by cooperators through our Forest Stewards network, the number of attendees at their events, and outcomes they report. We will survey and track changes in behavior of workshop participants, especially in regards to adoption of ways to prevent the spread of Ceratocystis wilt of ohia. For long term outcomes, we will monitor whether Ceratocystis wilt of ohia spreads beyond current areas. We will survey land managers to assess acres of forest planted or restored. We will survey wood millers to assess use of young or plantation grown koa.

Progress 12/12/16 to 09/30/21

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience for the Hawaii Renewable Natural Resources Program includes forest, range, and wildland landowners and managers and natural resources professionals, including those from federal, state, and county agencies and the private sector. The target audience for the wildfire extension program include emergency responders. Changes/Problems:We have continued to focus on online and virtual extension education because of the ongoing COVID epidemic. We have worked to make programming more interactive and have held several virtual field days using video. In late FY21, the lead for the wildfire program lead took a new Extension position within the UH NREM department and is consequently developing a new program focused on ecosystem conservation and restoration more broadly. The program will still lead and support the Pacific Fire Exchange, however the direct involvement with that program will necessarily be limited. The new program aligns with many of the key goals of the RREA program and will continue to contribute to that effort moving forward. The UH Invasive Plants program has been put on hold since the departure of Dr. James Leary, the former invasive plants specialist, although the wildfire, range, and forestry programs all work with issues caused by invasive plants. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?For the forestry program, we conducted a series of five train-the-trainers outreach workshops for other agency staff who are doing outreach on ohia, Rapid Ohia Death, and native forests in general. Each workshop included both scientific information and how-to knowledge and skills on conducting outreach programs. About 80 people attended. In a post-workshop survey, 97% of the people who participated in the Rapid Ohia Death outreach workshop reported that they "likely, very likely, or absolutely" would use the information they learned in the workshops in their own outreach programs. In a survey given six months after the Rapid Ohia Death outreach workshop, the average respondent reported contacting 33 new people with the information and using the skills taught at the workshop. In the face of Covid-19 in person workshops and field days remain challenging. However, this project continued to provide educational outreach opportunities to stakeholders in the form of online workshops/webinars (6), online meetings (Livestock Producer's Pau Hana, 11), and presentations (8). Additionally, 43 livestock producers received individual training and support in grazing plan development and management, monitoring of range and pasture condition, and improved livestock production practices and also received training in selecting, planting, and utilization of improved forages including grasses, Leucaena, and other legumes. In response to fire responders' desire for a wildfire "curriculum," the PFX developed wildfire modules across 12 different topical areas, including the following subjects: wildfire basics (fuels and behavior); hazardous vegetation, overview of wildfire (both in Hawai`i and the Pacific); preventing and containing the spread of wildfires; an identification guide to wildfire hazards; what to do after wildfire (a post fire guide); "myth busters" (how to identify common misperceptions of wildfire); and wildfire education basics ("it's up to all of us"). Land managers and wildfire practitioners also expressed a desire for a greater understanding about how a warming climate and fuels buildup affects wildfire risk and community response. As a result, we published two fact sheets: (1) Changing Climate and Fire: a Crisis Brewing in the Pacific and (2) Wildfire Review Series: Abandoned Agriculture in 2019 is Hawai'i's Fire Problem. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The forestry program responded to over 950 direct requests for assistance. On line, the program continued to reach out to communities affected by Rapid Ohia Death through Facebook (both www.facebook.com/HawaiiForestryExtension and facebook.com/RapidOhiaDeath), Instagram (www.instagram.com/james_b_friday and www.Instagram.com/ohialife), and Flickr (www.flickr.com/jbfriday). Over 380,000 people interacted with the program's social media posts. For the program on forestry and conservation nurseries, we worked remotely with forestry agencies in Guam, Rota (CNMI), and Yap to write up reforestation trials that we had established earlier in conjunction with those agencies. We published an open-access paper on these trials and distributed the results to other forestry agencies in the Pacific. We worked remotely with Guam Forestry to set up a trial to test the effects of biochar on tree seedlings on a degraded upland site. We worked with the Forest Service to publish an open-access paper on forestry containers for nurseries with the goal of moving Pacific Island nurseries to use proper forestry containers to produce healthier seedlings. The range management program responded to 1,823 direct requests for assistance. In addition to direct assistance, dissemination of project information, outreach materials, and other content have been achieved through two websites: Hawaii Rangelands (https://rangelandsgateway.org/states/hawaii), and Tropical Pasture and Livestock Management Academy (https://manoa.hawaii.edu/ctahr/tpalm/index.html), a You Tube channel, UH Livestock Extension https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzybVKzCpGt3Q-eVqGGpTPg, a newsletter (Hawaii Range and Livestock Management News), and through workshops/webinars, presentations, and regular meetings (Livestock Producer's Pau Hana). The wildfire program fielded more 523 direct requests/contacts in FY21 with over 4,000 interactions via social media and our list-serve. The program reached hundreds of thousands of people through extensive media coverage in FY21. The project also experienced significant increase in website traffic and access to wildfire-related information. In total, the PFX website (pacificfireexchange.org) received 12,697 page views (averaging about 1 minute) in FY21 compared to the 7,603 page views in FY20. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The RREA program in Hawaii includes forestry, wildfire, and range programs. Because of the ongoing COVID epidemic, our programming was largely online in 2021. The Hawaii forestry extension program focused on forest health and forestry and conservation nurseries for Hawaii and the American-affiliated Pacific Islands. For forest health, we focused on educating forest users and communities about Rapid Ohia Death, a new disease which is devastating ohia (Metrosideros polymorpha), Hawaii's most common and most important native tree. We conducted a three-day online educational event for community members which included presentations on identification of ohia varieties, ohia seed collection, and growing plants for use in making Hawaiian lei, along with cultural features such as Hawaiian chants. A total of 533 people attended the workshops. In addition, we conducted five on-line workshops on how to make ohia-free lei and wreaths in order to move people away from cutting ohia. One hundred and fifteen people attended these. Almost all of the approximately 115 people who attended the ohia-free wreath and lei making workshops reported making their own wreaths and lei. We continued to maintain forestry demonstration sites, although we did not host any field days in 2021. The Hawaii rangeland extension program focused sustainable grazing management, integrated pest management strategies for weeds, insects and diseases affecting Hawaii rangeland forages, and engagement with national and international rangeland programs. Educational programing and outreach to inform and engage Hawaii livestock producers about sustainable grazing management practices included regular online meetings (Livestock Producer's Pau Hana, 11), presentations (1), and workshops/webinars (3), along with direct support through pasture evaluations, assistance in grazing plan development and management, monitoring of range pasture condition, and evaluation and recommendations in livestock production practices. Two-lined spittlebug (TLSB) is a recently introduced pest that has caused significant damage to Hawaii rangelands and other natural areas. Research is underway to understand the pest's biology, ecology and impacts on Hawaii's rangeland forages, and test different grasses for host-plant resistance and damage thresholds from adult TLSB feeding. Outreach to stakeholder groups that include livestock producers, private and state land managers, several watershed management advisory groups, and the general public included 7 invited presentations, 3 webinars, and project data and information were made available on the Hawaii Rangelands Website. Across these 25 separate events a total of 319 individuals were trained in sustainable grazing management, integrated pest management strategies for invasive weeds, insects, and diseases. As a result of the workshops and demonstration/trials carried out by this project over 91% (291/319) producers reported changes in knowledge, attitudes, skills and/or awareness as a result of their participation and another 81 indicated adoption of at least one or more technologies or management practices. Program participants gained awareness in the use of improved forages including grasses, and leucaena and other legumes in sustainable livestock production, grass-finished beef programs and mitigation of pasture pests like TLSB. This project has raised awareness among producers of various pasture pests, including two-lined spittlebug. Where TLSB impacts are significant (180,000 acres), 23 producers have adopted recommended integrated pest management strategies. The total estimated value of Hawaii's livestock industry on an animal unit production basis is about $600/acre year. The adoption of improved grazing management strategies, improved forages, and integrated pest management strategies results in increased stocking rates, improved animal performance, and reduced losses in grazable land. Thus, each additional animal unit production has a $600/acre annual return to the producer. Through this project we have also worked to raise awareness of rangeland issues in Hawaii through national and international efforts. At the national level this project provides support for the development and maintenance of the University of Hawaii's contribution to the 19-western state partnership WERA 1008 (Rangelands West Partnership) Hawaii Rangelands (https://rangelandsgateway.org/states/hawaii). In March PI Thorne participated in the annual Rangelands Partnership meeting held virtually due to the COVID-19 travel restrictions. This meeting provided opportunities for collaboration, resulting in a successful collaborative grant award to the University of Hawaii as a subaward for the inclusion of extension publications on a new searchable science literature database for rangelands. Additionally, PI Thorne serves on an international (U.S., Canada, and Mexico) working, with other global partners to secure a United Nations designation for an International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. The Hawaii wildfire extension program continued to focus on outreach among land managers, conservation programs, and the wider public through the Pacific Fire Exchange, part of the Joint Fire Science Program's national network of Fire Science Exchanges. Due to the COVID pandemic, we focused on improving program communications. In December 2020, the four-member PFX project staff and eight-member Steering Committee (twelve total) invited hundreds of colleagues and members of the public with diverse expertise from across Hawai`i and the Pacific to sign up for a unified wildfire contact database. Another positive achievement has been the sustained, and active engagement of our Steering Committee, while expanding our subject matter, audience reach, and new methods of communication. The wildfire program also served as a hub for growing media inquiry in FY21 regarding wildfire risk in Hawaii and the broader Pacific. This included coverage from the NY Times who interviewed PI Trauernicht and others and cited PFX publications in the article ("Even Hawaii is Battling a Wildfire Surge," NY Times). Local news organizations including Hawaii Public Radio, Honolulu Civil Beat, and KHON News also covered the fire issue in FY21, interviewing PFX PI and Steering Committee members and using statistics published in PFX fact sheets. The 40,000 acre Mana Road Fire in August 2021 received global coverage with articles including interviews with PFX Steering Committee members and use of PFX published statistics (e.g., "Record wildfire burns at least 40,000 acres on Hawaii's Big Island, sets up mudslide danger," Washington Post; "Here's why wildfire is a growing threat to Hawaii, one of the wettest places on earth," NY Times; " 'A perfect storm': Hawaii firefighters confront Big Island's largest wildfire in history," The Guardian). The Associated Press also reached out to PI Trauernicht and integrated PFX fact sheets and information into an article and video segment on wildfire across the Pacific region, which was reprinted by more than two dozen news outlets including the LA Times, Fox News, US News, ABC news, and MSN News ("Climate-fueled Wildfires Take Toll on Tropical Pacific Isles; Pacific islands not immune from wildfires"). Finally, the interest in fires at the regional scale prompted The Hill to ask PI Trauernicht to write an Op-Ed piece, in which he was able to highlight PFX contributions and frame regional context for wildfire for a general audience (Pacific Island Wildfires highlight vulnerability to climate change and what to do about it).

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Friday, J.B., D. Haase, R. Estoy, J. Manglona, and R. Talken. 2021. Reforestation of degraded landscapes in Micronesia. Land 10(9), 926; https://doi.org/10.3390/land10090926.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Haase, D. L, K. Bouzza, L. Emerton, J.B. Friday, D. Lieberg, A. Aldrete, and A. S. Davis. 2021. The high cost of the low-cost polybag systems: A review of nursery seedling production systems. Land 10: 826. https://doi.org/10.3390/land10080826.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Cannon, P., J.B. Friday, F. Liyag, and D. Greenberg. 2021. Forest restoration on degraded soils in Yap, Federated States of Micronesia. Tree Planters Notes 64(1): 39-46. https://rngr.net/publications/tpn/64-1
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Zhu, T.R., Litton, C.M., Giardina, C.P., Trauernicht, C., 2021. Moisture availability and ecological restoration limit fine fuels and modeled wildfire intensity following non?native ungulate removal in Hawaii. J. Appl. Ecology 58:.2207-2219.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Bremer, L.L., Nathan, N., Trauernicht, C., Pascua, P.A., Krueger, N., Jokiel, J., Barton, J. and Daily, G.C., 2021. Maintaining the Many Societal Benefits of Rangelands: The Case of Hawaii. Land, 10:764.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Selmants, P.C., Sleeter, B.M., Liu, J., Wilson, T.S., Trauernicht, C., Frazier, A.G. and Asner, G.P., 2021. Ecosystem carbon balance in the Hawaiian Islands under different scenarios of future climate and land use change. Environmental Research Letters 16:104020.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Melone, A., Bremer, L.L., Crow, S.E., Hastings, Z., Winter, K.B., Ticktin, T., Rii, Y.M., Wong, M., Kukea-Shultz, K., Watson, S.J. and Trauernicht, C., 2021. Assessing Baseline Carbon Stocks for Forest Transitions: A Case Study of Agroforestry Restoration from Hawai?i. Agriculture, 11(3), p.189.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Trauernicht, C., M. Chimera, E. Pickett, N. Baretto. 2021.Changing Climate and fire: A crisis brewing in the Pacific. Pacific Fire Exchange Fact Sheet. http://www.pacificfireexchange.org/
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Trauernicht, C. and M. Chimera. 2021. Wildfire Review: Abandoned Agriculture is Hawaiis fire problem in 2019. Pacific Fire Exchange Fact Sheet. http://www.pacificfireexchange.org/
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Lucas, M.P., Trauernicht, C., Frazier, A.G. and Miura, T., 2020. Long-Term, Gridded Standardized Precipitation Index for Hawaii. Data 5:109.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Nugent, A., R. Longman, C. Trauernicht, M.P. Lucas, H.F. Diaz, T.W. Giambelluca. 2020. Fire and rain: the legacy of Hurricane Lane in Hawaii. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Published online: https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0104.1
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Trauernicht, C. 2021. Pacific Island wildfires highlight vulnerability to climate change and how to address it. Op-Ed, The Hill.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Trauernicht, C. and M. Chimera. 2020. 2019 Wildfire Summary for the Western Pacific. Pacific Fire Exchange Fact Sheet. http://www.pacificfireexchange.org/
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: http://www.pacificfireexchange.org/
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: https://cms.ctahr.hawaii.edu/forestry
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: https://cms.ctahr.hawaii.edu/ROD
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: https://rangelandsgateway.org/states/hawaii
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: https://manoa.hawaii.edu/ctahr/tpalm/index.html

Progress 10/01/19 to 09/30/20

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience for the Hawaii Renewable Natural Resources Program includes forest, range, and wildland landowners and managers and natural resources professionals, including those from federal, state, and county agencies and the private sector. The target audience for the wildfire extension program include emergency responders. Changes/Problems:The COVID-19 epidemic put an end to all in-person workshops and most field visits starting March 2020. Our programs pivoted to working on line as much as possible and gave many webinars and virtual workshops. We are planning more virtual events in the first half of 2021 but anticipate being able to return to more traditional methods later in 2021. It is clear, however, that we will not be returning to business as usual after the pandemic. We are developing ways to integrate both virtual and real extension so as to retain the benefits of each. The UH Invasive Plants program has been put on hold since the departure of Dr. James Leary, the former invasive plants specialist, although the wildfire, range, and forestry programs all work with issues caused by invasive plants. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The forestry program held a two-day workshop for 26 local extension professionals on how to communicate with forest managers and landowners regarding best practices with Rapid Ohia Death. The workshop included both updates to the science and training in Logic Models for extension. Participants in the workshop reported that their knowledge about Rapid Ohia Death increased from 5.9 to 7.5 overall on a scale of 1 to 10. Twenty-five out of 77 reported that the workshops were "very useful" and 100% expressed a desire for future ROD workshops. The program also held a field day on koa (Acacia koa) forestry in cooperation with Purdue University and the Tropical Hardwood Tree Improvement and Regeneration Center (www.TropHTIRC.org). After the COVID epidemic hit, the forestry extension program developed three series of webinars in collaboration with scientists and forest managers. The first series of eight webinars was on Rapid Ohia Death. Each webinar drew between 23 and 103 participants, not only from Hawaii but also from California, New Zealand, and South Africa. The second series of webinars, developed in collaboration with the USDA Forest Service Regeneration, Nurseries, and Genetic Resources program, was on forestry and conservation nurseries for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. These webinars were based on the forestry program workshops over the past eight years in the American-affiliated Pacific Islands. The webinars were very well attended, with a total of 252 attendees for all webinars combined. Individual webinars drew between 42 and 109 participants. In addition to attendees from Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, we had participants from California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Oregon, Utah, Washington DC, Washington State, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Liberia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Philippines, and Trinidad and Tobago. In post-workshop polls for the Puerto Rico nursery webinar series, 99% of the participants said that the webinar was useful to them or their organization. Eighty-five percent of respondents rated the webinars as either 3 or 4 on a scale of zero to 4. The third set of forestry webinars was on the science surrounding Rapid Ohia Death and was organized as a part of the annual Hawaii Conservation Conference. Eleven talks were presented, each of which drew between 71 and 105 attendees. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The forestry program responded to over 700 direct requests for assistance. On line, the program continued to reach out to communities affected by Rapid Ohia Death through Facebook (both facebook.com/HawaiiForestryExtension and facebook.com/RapidOhiaDeath), Instagram (Instagram.com/james_b_friday and Instagram.com/ohialife), and Flickr (flickr.com/jbfriday). Over 300,000 people interacted with the program's social media posts. Working in collaboration with the Hawaii Cattlemen's Council Managing Director, the range management program established a bi-weekly, virtual meeting via Zoom, for livestock producers, extension faculty, state and federal representatives and policy makers. The "Livestock Producers Pau Hana ("after work" in Hawaiian)" as it is titled, provides a venue for livestock stakeholders to discuss the impacts of COVID-19 on their operations. For policy makers it became an important venue for them to hear and understand the plight of their constituents during the crisis. Over 130 individuals registered for the Livestock Producer Pau Hana meetings and attendance averaged over 50 through July 2020. In an effort to maintain engagement with stakeholders during the COVID-19 pandemic an electronic newsletter was started (Hawaii Range and Livestock Management News) in April of 2020. The newsletter is currently circulated to over 125 listserv members. The newsletter has been well received with circulation increasing by 25 members since inception. A virtual Livestock Extension Field Day was held in September. The field day highlighted the work of ten CTAHR extension and research faculty and six guest speakers across 24 presentations (https://globalrangelands.org/state/hawaii/livestock-extension-virtual-field-day-2020). The presentations were pre-recorded and uploaded to a You Tube channel (UH Livestock Extension; https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzybVKzCpGt3Q-eVqGGpTPg ) where registered participants (68) could view the presentations between field day program dates (September 28 - October 1). Across all presentations there were 368 views; from 138 unique viewers. A post-field day evaluation revealed that participants felt the virtual field day was well organized, presented content relevant to them, and given the COVID-19 situation, a good alternative to face-to-face meetings. Participants of the Hawaii Grazing and Livestock Management Academy are offered opportunities for direct consultations after attending the course. During the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak travel restrictions and University policy made these consultations difficult. As a result, the program offered virtual one-on-one consultations via online teleconference services to course participants. While many producers prefer personal contact, twelve did take advantage of the online consultations. Two websites are maintained as part of the range and livestock management program. The first, the Hawaii Rangelands website (https://globalrangelands.org/state/hawaii) is the University of Hawaii's contribution to the Rangelands Partnership (WERA 1008) and the second, the "Tropical Pasture and Livestock Management Academy website (http://manoa.hawaii.edu/ctahr/tpalm/index.html) provides outreach material to producers throughout the Pacific Basin. For wildfire science and management, the PFX website (www.PacificFireExchange.org) remains the primary platform for dissemination of written extension products and other fire-related resources. The program tackles the issue of the vast and culturally diverse geography by leveraging relationships and external funding sources to maintain contacts and check in with partners in the region. The Program is actively developing the information and findings from climate science and adaptation workshops held in 2018 in Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa, and the northern Mariana Islands into an interactive website https://pacificclimateexchange.org to increase accessibility and information sharing. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The forestry program worked with the Hawaii Division of Forestry and Wildlife to secure funds for an economist to work with local foresters and develop a financial model and decision support tool for private landowners interested in reforestation with Acacia koa (koa) and Santalum paniculatum (sandalwood), Hawaii's most valuable timber trees. This year the program will work with the economist, professional forest managers, and landowners to develop and test the model. Even after the COVID-19 epidemic subsides, the Livestock Producer's Pau Hana sessions continue to be a popular venue and opportunity for participants to connect and discuss issues facing the Hawaii Livestock Industry. The climate extension program is actively developing the information and findings from climate science and adaptation workshops held in FY18 in Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa, and the northern Mariana Islands into an interactive website https://pacificclimateexchange.org to increase accessibility and information sharing.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The RREA program in Hawaii includes forestry, wildfire, and range programs. Our programs in the first part of 2020 held the usual workshops and field days, but these all came to an end in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, we have pivoted to on-line webinars and interactive workshops. The forestry program focused on forest health in Hawaii and, by distance learning, nurseries for forestry and conservation in the American-affiliated Pacific Islands and the Caribbean. The main forest health program was on management of Rapid Ohia Death, a new and virulent disease of ohia (Metrosideros polymorpha), the dominant tree in most of Hawaii's native forests. The program conducted three in-person workshops on ohia forests and trained 60 volunteers on collection of ohia seeds. The seeds will be used for conservation and research. The range management program provided educational opportunities via the Hawaii Rangelands Website, webinars, a monthly discussion series (Livestock Producers Pau Hana), an online newsletter (Hawaii Range and Livestock News), a virtual field day (Livestock Extension Virtual Field Day), development of a Livestock Extension You Tube Channel, development of video presentations, and one-on-one virtual consultations through online teleconference services. The Hawaii Rangelands website (https://globalrangelands.org/state/hawaii) is the University of Hawaii's contribution to a 19-western state partnership through WERA 1008 (Rangelands West Partnership). This year we added a Twoline Spittlebug information webpage, and the Livestock Extension Virtual Field Day Event Schedule and access to presentation videos. Range and livestock management webinars presented over the past year included a mineral supplementation webinar (http://hawaii.erightrisk.com/minerals/), and four national RREA professional development webinars (Strengthening RREA Programing Through Enhanced Connections: A Web-based Conference Series; https://globalrangelands.org/rreasp/webinars) held in February, March, April and September. These webinars were attended by over 350 participants from all over the United States. The UH wildfire program is titled the Pacific Fire Exchange (PFX; PacificFireExchange.org) and is part of the Joint Fire Science Programs National Fire Science Exchange Network (www.firescience.gov). Written products included: 1) the 2019 Annual Wildfire Summary for the Western Pacific; 2) a technical guide and accompanying 2-pg "Quick Reference" (next page) on fuels management strategies for Pacific Island (ranked as a top product for website visitors); and 3) a research brief on long-term ecosystem recovery after fire in Hawaii. The project also expanded PFX's series of practitioner interviews, "Partner Perspectives", of audio and written interviews with land managers versed in both fire and Hawaiian cultural stewardship. The PFX contributed to two in-person events: 1) a 2-day training workshop on a newly developed wildfire curriculum for the Guam Department of Education with 78 participants in January and, 2) an outdoor community meeting following a large fire in West Oahu in July 2020. With COVID restrictions, the program also presented five online webinar/workshops: 1) Dealing with Your Own Backyard During Covid-19; 2) Challenges in Wildland Fire Management in the Face of Climate Change at the Hawai`i Conservation Conference; 3) Fire Management for Farmers; 4) Post-fire Restoration for the Hawaii Alliance of Watershed Partnerships; and 5) Invasive species and Climate change with the USGS Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center. The online events increased in numbers compared to prior years' webinars, with participant numbers in the events listed above ranging from 60-120 participants. Event-based evaluation data illustrates 70-90% participants are increasing their knowledge of webinar/workshop topics and 20-40% agreeing that they will change or adopt a new practice in their professions based on what they've learned. Online traffic to program resources (www.pacificfireexchange.org) increased from ~6,000 pageviews to 7,603 page views in 2020 while maintaining an average of 2 mins. per visit, indicating good engagement. Following the Fire Management for Farmers online workshop and subsequent community meeting in after a large fire on Oahu in July 2020, the program was invited to a stakeholder meeting and an open Town Hall on fire risk (viewed by >700 people)hosted by Hawaii state legislators. These events provided opportunities to point decision-makers and wider public to the program's educational resources. In addition, the workshop and community meetings have resulted in an informal "Wildfire task force" comprising stakeholders who are now using $22,000 in seed funding from the US Forest Service for on-farm fuels management demonstrations (sheep grazing and green strips) that will be integrated into future field trips and workshops. The Guam Wildfire Curriculum also has wide-ranging impact, with 78 teachers introduced directly to the curriculum, and adaptations by educators in Palau and Yap with support from the US Forest Service. The climate extension program completed two Extension Climate Forums in January 2020, each consisting of a 2-day workshops for extension professionals on Pohnpei and Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia to improve the use of science for adapting to climate-related hazards. Each event hosted over 40 participants, involving local experts in presentations and panel discussions, facilitating group activities, and hosting field trips to identify locally climate impacts and the ways in which extension programs support local communities in adapting to climate-related hazards. Before/after survey questions showed 30-60 point increases in the percentage of participants agreeing they were knowledgeable about climate change impacts and 20-40 point increases in those agreeing they were confident to communicate about climate change. In addition, 70-100% of Climate Forum participants indicated they were likely to incorporate climate change into their existing programs. One of the important outcomes of the climate forums included the realization by event participants that more effort is required to coordinate cross-agency climate adaptation work. In addition, many program and participants stated the Forums were useful in helping them to understand how many current programs and activities already promote climate-ready practices such as water conservation, waste management, and household health. Each forum also resulted in a joint-drafted statement on the centrality of local food production to the broader visions of climate adaptation at the community and national levels.

Publications

• Type: Book Chapters Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Frazier, A.G., J.L. Deenik, N.D. Fujii, G.R. Funderburk, T.W. Giambelluca, C.P. Giardina, D.A. Helweg, V.W. Keener, A.Mair, J.J. Marra, S.McDaniel, L.N. Ohye, D.S. Oki, E.W. Parsons, A.M. Strauch, and C. Trauernicht. 2019. Managing Effects of Drought in Hawaii and U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands pages 95-121 in J.M. Vose, D.L. Peterson, L. David, C.H. Luce, T. Patel-Weynand, editors. Effects of drought on forests and rangelands in the United States. Gen. Tech. Rep. WO-98. Washington, DC: U.S.D.A. Forest Service.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Hauff, R., L. Keith, R.F. Hughes, C. Giardina, J.B. Friday, R. Peck, R. Stormont, C. Martin, and J. Price. 2020. Rapid Ohia Death Strategic Response Plan. Hawaii State Dept. of Land and Natural Resources, Honolulu, HI. https://gms.ctahr.hawaii.edu/gs/handler/getmedia.ashx?moid=66598&dt=3&g=12
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Hewlett, J.P., M.S. Thorne, J. Parsons, and J. Tranel. 2019. Risk Scenario Planning: Evaluating the potential benefits of adopting a commercial mineral mix supplementation program. RightRisk Technical Guide. TG #19-12018.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Hewlett, J.P., M.S. Thorne, J. Parsons, and J. Tranel. 2019. Risk Scenario Planning: Evaluating the potential benefits of free-choice mineral supplementation program. RightRisk Technical Guide. TG #19-12013.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Katulski, S., M.S. Thorne, J. Odani, and M. Oshiro. 2020. Copper supplementation for beef cattle in Hawaii. University of Hawaii at Manoa, CTAHR Publication LM-36, pp. 10.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Krishnapillai, M.V., S. Young-Uhk, J.B. Friday, and D.L. Haase. 2020. Locally Produced Cocopeat Growing Medium for Container Plant Production. Tree Planters Notes 63 (1): 29-48. https://www.rngr.net/publications/tpn/63-1/locally-produced-cocopeat-growing-media-for-container-plant-production
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Nugent, A., R. Longman, C. Trauernicht, M.P. Lucas, H.F. Diaz, and T.W. Giambelluca. 2020. Fire and rain: the legacy of Hurricane Lane in Hawaii. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Published online: https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0104.1
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Thorne, M.S., M. Wright, S. Wilson, J. Mack, and M. Oshiro. 2020. Changes in vegetative community composition following Twoline spittlebug (Prosapia bicincta) infestations in Hawaii Rangelands. 73rd. Annual Meeting of the Society for Range Management. Denver, CO. February 16-20, 2020.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Trauernicht, C. 2019.Vegetation-Rainfall interactions reveal how climate variability and climate change alter spatial patterns of wildland fire probability on Big Island, Hawaii. Science of the Total Environment 650:459-469
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Trauernicht, C. and E. Pickett. 2019. Wildfire mitigation project mapping for Hawaii State. Hawaii Conservation Conference. Honolulu, Hawaii.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Trauernicht, C. and M. Kunz. 2019. Fuel breaks and fuels management for Pacific Island grasslands and savannas. University of Hawaii Cooperative Extension Service, Forest and Natural Res. Mgmt, Series RM-22. https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/RM-22.pdf
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Trauernicht, C. and M. Chimera. 2019. Pacific Island Fuel Breaks Quick Reference. Pacific Fire Exchange Fact sheet. http://www.pacificfireexchange.org/research-publications-1/
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Trauernicht, C., M. Kunz, and M. Chimera. 2019. 2018 Wildfires in Hawaii. PFX Annual Summary. Pacific Fire Exchange Fact Sheet. http://www.pacificfireexchange.org/research-publications-1/
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Hawaii Rangelands: http://globalrangelands.org/state/hawaii
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Marianas Grazing Management Academy: http://manoa.hawaii.edu/ctahr/tpalm/index.html
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: UH Livestock Extension You Tube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzybVKzCpGt3Q-eVqGGpTPg
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Hawaii Forestry Extension: https://cms.ctahr.hawaii.edu/forestry
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Rapid Ohia Death: https://cms.ctahr.hawaii.edu/rod/
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Pacific Fire Exchange: https://www.pacificfireexchange.org/
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Hawaii RREA YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/HawaiiRREA

Progress 10/01/18 to 09/30/19

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiences for the forestry extension program include foresters, natural resource managers, nursery operators, landowners, and communities. The target audiences for the wildfire extension program include forest and watershed managers, private landowners, natural resource professionals, environmental outreach and education organizations, and emergency responders at county, state, and federal levels. Changes/Problems:Ongoing wildfires have been challenging for reforestation programs in the Pacific. One of the main goals of the program is to increase growth rates of outplanted seedlings so that the can shade out the grass understory that is the main fuel for wildfires. Hurricanes have also damaged nurseries in the region. The UH Invasive Plants program has been put on hold since the departure of Dr. James Leary, the former invasive plants specialist. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The forestry program ran a two-day workshop for natural resource managers in forest health. Hawaii's most important native tree, ohia (Metrosideros polymorpha), is threatened by a new vascular wilt disease caused by the fungus Ceratocystis lukuohia. Participants at the workshop learned about the disease and what is being done to understand it, how to avoid spreading it, and what they can do on lands they manage. A workshop on nurseries and reforestation on Guam brought in 31 participants representing 16 agencies on eight different islands. Participants learned about species selection, potting mixes and containers, pests and diseases, site preparation, and record keeping, among other topics. The program visited several nurseries and outplanting sites. Follow up visits to nurseries on Guam, Yap, and Rota allowed the extension forester to give recommendations on management at those nurseries. The Wildland Fire Program continues to produce professional development opportunities that target direct contacts with its audience such as workshops, field tours and webinars. At the start of FY19, the Wildland Fire Program facilitated workshops in collaboration with the non-profit Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization to collaboratively map current and desired wildfire hazard mitigation projects across four counties of Hawaii State. This effort involved direct input from more than 130 stakeholders in land management, conservation, and emergency response agencies, in addition to private landowners. It also resulted in spatial database of mitigation and management activities that impact fuels, and thus fire hazard, across the state. The program continued hosting the PFX webinar series, with the first webinar of FY19 on herbicide control of nonnative grasses had one of the program's highest attendee count at 48. The second webinar, on erosion impacts and management, was novel in that it was co-presented by a scientist (the PI), a firefighting instructor and retired NPS Fire Management Officer, and a private industry forester. The program also facilitated two PFX workshops. The first was part of the Pacific Island Foresters Meeting sponsored by the US Forest Service in Honolulu and took advantage of the presence of Foresters and Agricultural Department professionals from Hawaii and across the US-Affiliated Pacific Islands. The workshop presented educational content on drought indicators and fire impacts specifically related to erosion and included group break out and reporting sessions on key regional needs tied to drought response and public alerts. The second workshop extended the theme of knowledge co-development by working to bring fire science into grade- and high school classrooms on Guam through a 5-day intensive curriculum design "writeshop" with 11 participants. The workshop included multiple site visits across Guam, the development of lab activities, and the integration, in real time, of published research and fire history data into student learning outcomes across multiple subject areas, including natural history, physics, biology, and Chamorro studies. The workshop lends itself well to medium-term impact assessment, with USFS collaborators planning track metrics such as classroom/school adoption of final curricula. Finally, the PFX organized and facilitated three field trips. The two described above brought policy-makers together with the consortium's typical audience of land managers to discuss solutions for reducing wildfire impacts and were organized in direct response to unprecedented large fire incidents on Oahu and Maui. The third field trip was a wildland fire "equipment tour" in which land management/conservation professionals in the Three Mountain Alliance, Hawaii's largest watershed partnership, were introduced to the equipment and tactical strategies employed by the Hawaii Division of Forestry and Wildlife for fire suppression. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Community engagement has been critical to slowing the spread of Rapid Ohia Death. The extension program gave presentations at 28 events and held two half-day symposia on the disease. The largest event was an environmental fair called the "Ohia Love Fest" that drew 1,400 people. All told almost 6,000 people were directly contacted. The program also used social media such as Facebook (www.facebook.com/HawaiiForestryExtension and www.facebook.com/RapidOhiaDeath), Flickr (www.flickr.com/jbfriday), and Instagram (www.instagram.com/james_b_friday) to reach over 400,000 people indirectly. Citizen volunteers with the Forest Stewards participation reported hosting 70 forest tours and presenting at 23 community events. In total they directly contacted over 3,000 people. The PFX website (www.PacificFireExchange.org) remains the primary platform for dissemination of written extension products and other fire-related resources. Web traffic has remained steady since with an average of 2,500 users, whereas page views increased from an average of 6,000 page views per year to 7,600 for FY19. Although funding places constraints on direct contacts across the Pacific Island Region, the program tackles the issue of the vast and culturally diverse geography by leveraging relationships and external funding sources. The PFX network, especially via USFS and Guam Forestry representation on the Steering Committee, have provided opportunities to maintain engagement with the relatively underserved Western Pacific portion of the region. In addition, the Program lead continues to leverage external grants (via WSARE and USGS) to maintain contacts and check in with partners in the region. The Program is actively developing the information and findings from climate science and adaptation workshops held in FY18 in Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands into an interactive website https://pacificclimateexchange.org to increase accessibility and information sharing. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The forestry extension program will continue to focus on forest health and in particular contacting key stakeholders including eco-tour operators, sawmill owners, and utility maintenance agencies who could inadvertently spread of Rapid Ohia Death. The nursery program will follow up the 2019 training in Guam with visits to Guam, Rota, and Yap and will add a follow up visit to Palau. Field trials will be established at all four sites. Similar workshops will be given for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands in 2020. The Forest Stewards program will run for the 7th time in 2020. In FY19, the wildfire program began planning a series of knowledge co-development workshops for FY20 that will work with county firefighting agencies in Hawaii to develop an initial attack size-up 'cheat sheet' to collect preliminary observations of fire, fuels, terrain, access, etc. to better determine the causes of success and failure to contain fires during initial attack. This concept emerged from discussions with fire responders and fire managers on our Advisory Panel and Steering Committee in FY17-FY18 about the opportunities for involving firefighters in fire science and the need to derive more consistent information and lessons learned from incident after action reviews. As stated above, the program will be expanding its climate science delivery to the Federated States of Micronesia in FY20 using funding from WSARE. The program has also received funding from NRCS and Hawaii Sea-Grant to expand the impact of its agroforestry project by the development of on-farm workshops and landscape planning tools that scale ecosystem service benefits up to the landscape scale.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The forestry program continues to work on forest health issues, forestry and conservation nurseries, and peer-to-peer learning for forest landowners. The forest health program reaches out to professionals and landowners regarding Rapid Ohia Death, a new and virulent disease of ohia (Metrosideros polymorpha, Hawaii's most important native tree). The program worked with professional natural resource managers, landowners, and the general public. Because the disease can be moved by people moving wood products or contaminated soil from infected forest, messaging concentrated on ways people can decontaminate and avoid spreading fungal spores. Because the pathogen needs a wound to infect a tree, the other main message was about avoiding wounding ohia. The extension program worked with local mills and with UH and Forest Service pathologists to develop ways to heat-treat wood so that it could be safely moved without spreading the disease. Short-term impacts of the program include increases in knowledge about Rapid Ohia Death and biosanitation in general by workshop participants. Eco-tour operators, one key group of stakeholders, have implemented decontamination protocols following specific workshops for that industry. Utility companies have also adopted sanitation protocols for use while maintaining utility lines. Both state and federal managers of hiking trails have installed boot brushes at trailheads for hikers to use. A local mill has installed a new kiln to heat-treat ohia wood and another mill has adopted a protocol to heat treat wood using an existing kiln. The nursery extension program ran a three-day workshop on tropical nurseries and reforestation in conjunction with the University of Guam and followed up previous trainings with visits to nurseries in Guam, Rota (Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands) and Yap (Federated States of Micronesia). Nursery managers reported increases in knowledge in all topics covered after the workshop. Results from previous workshops and field demonstrations include the increased use of fertilizer in degraded sites on Rota, CNMI; increased use of forestry containers (dibble tubes) and potting mix in Yap (FSM); and construction of a new nursery in the Marshalls. The peer-to-peer landowner education program ("Forest Stewards") ran for its sixth year. In total 75 landowners have graduated from the program. Graduates of the Forest Stewards program hosted 70 different groups on tours over the past year and reached 328 people. Other Forest Stewards gave 12 school presentations and 14 community presentations, reaching an estimated 2,000 people. The wildfire science and management extension program includes work by the Pacific Fire Exchange (PFX; PacificFireExchange.org), part of the Joint Fire Science Programs National Fire Science Exchange Network (www.firescience.gov). The first long-term desired outcome in the PFX Logic Model is an informed clientele that integrates fire science knowledge into decision-making. Outputs have continued to target and include policy-makers along with the typical land management and conservation audience of the program. The program hosted an informational briefing and legislative field trip in December 2018 to examine the impacts and active mitigation approaches in response to one of the largest fires on record on the island of Oahu. Similarly, county and state level policy makers participated in another field trip in September 2019, organized within weeks of a series of large fires that burned more than 20,000 acres on Central Maui and specifically designed to introduce policy-makers to wildfire impacts and solutions from partners and stakeholders. Written PFX products include the quarterly newsletter, sent to a list-serve of 170 subscribers.Educational outputs included a fact sheet on the Grass-Fire Cycle on Pacific Islands. The PFX also published a related, more in-depth research brief on a study of the long-term impacts of the grass-fire cycle at the site in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. In addition to these, the PFX produced an updated informational brief for its legislative field trip in December 2018 and published a summary of key lessons learned from the PFX field trip to Central Maui September 2019 in the local online news outlet, Honolulu Civil Beat (https://www.civilbeat.org/2019/10/recent-maui-fires-require-proactive-statewide-response/). The PFX reported outcomes from the 2018 JFSP National Survey in FY18 and the results indicate a progressive increase in the proportion of stakeholders agreeing that the consortium is improving fire science application, fire management policy, and communication between researchers and managers. Awareness of the PFX as an information resource is also evident through continued requests for and citation of PFX products by policy-makers and local media. For instance, the 2018 Annual Wildfire Summaries are one of the most frequently accessed resources on the PFX website and have been requested by Hawaii's Congressional staffers and cited in multiple instances by local media outlets. Most recently, the PFX "Wildfire in Hawaii" fire history synthesis was featured as part of a series of articles covering climate change in Hawaii by the online news service Honolulu Civil Beat (https://www.civilbeat.org/2019/08/hawaii-is-losing-as-much-of-its-land-to-wildfires-as-any-other-state/). This is clear evidence that fire-related information produced by the PFX is having an impact on the understanding and decisions made by local and national leadership, as well as awareness among the general public. The effort to directly link policy-makers and other PFX stakeholders also continues to have impact. Following the December 2019 Legislative Field Trip on Oahu highlighting the impacts and response to large, disastrous fires in 2018, stakeholders at Kaala Farms and Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization both received legislative support for State Grant-in-Aids for fire risk mitigation and fire-related public outreach efforts, respectively. A majority of participants rates the PFX field tours as useful or extremely useful and place the highest value on "the learning environment", "learning something new that I can use in my job", and "the interactions provided by field tour". Direct quotations included: "I enjoyed the variety of perspectives." "The knowledge gained from this trip was extremely useful." "I liked the diversity and balance of the field trip participants" Webinars were similarly valued in terms of the quality and practical utility of the information. For example: "I liked the knowledgeable and relaxed presenters with extensive experience in the subject matter" "The information was real world applicable" In addition to the topic of fire, the Program continues to address the issue of climate science literacy, across the region. For FY19, this has included planning trips to initiate workshop planning in collaboration with Cooperative Extension Programs on the islands of Chuuk and Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia. Finally, the program has expanded into examining ecosystem service benefits of rangeland and farm management. This includes agroforestry design based on requests for information on the multiple benefits derived from ecosystem restoration and how integrating non-invasive, non-native economic species may incentivize these efforts. The program has been actively collaborating with researchers at the University of Hawaii College of Social Sciences and the non-profit Kakoo Oiwi farm to restore 10 acres of second-growth, alien forest into a working agroforestry demonstration site that mixes economic species with native Hawaiian plants. This project presents large opportunities for public engagement and education as evidenced by the first volunteer planting day that had 200 attendees.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Trauernicht, C. 2019.Vegetation-Rainfall interactions reveal how climate variability and climate change alter spatial patterns of wildland fire probability on Big Island, Hawaii. Science of the Total Environment 650:459-469
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Trauernicht, C, Ticktin, T., Fraiola, H., Hastings, Z., and Tsuneyoshi, A. 2018. Active restoration enhances the recovery of a Hawaiian mesic forest after fire. Forest Ecology and Management 411:1-11
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Trauernicht, C. and Pickett, E. 2019. Wildfire mitigation project mapping for Hawaii State. Hawaii Conservation Conference.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Trauernicht, C. 2018. University of Hawaii Wildland Fire Extension Program. 90 Years of Hawaii Cooperative Extension/100 years of Hawaii 4-H Celebration.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Trauernicht, C. 2018. Wildland fire and erosion. USGS Drought in the US-Affiliated Pacific Islands Workshop.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Trauernicht, C. 2019. Recent Maui fires require proactive state-wide response. Honolulu Civil Beat Community Voice Article.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Trauernicht, C. and Kunz, M. 2019. 2018 Wildfires in the Western Pacific. PFX Annual Summary. Pacific Fire Exchange Fact Sheet. http://www.pacificfireexchange.org/research-publications-1/
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Trauernicht, C., Kunz, M., and Chimera, M. 2019. 2018 Wildfires in Hawaii. PFX Annual Summary. Pacific Fire Exchange Fact Sheet. http://www.pacificfireexchange.org/research-publications-1/
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Trauernicht, C. and Kunz, M. 2019. Pacific Fire Exchange  impacts of fire science communication in the Pacific. Fact Sheet for policymakers.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: DAntonio, C., Yelenik, S., Trauernicht, C., and Kunz, M. 2018. Measuring Recovery 25 years after fire. Pacific Fire Exchange Research Brief.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Trauernicht C. 2018. Fire is the one Hawaii disaster we can avoid. Honolulu Civil Beat Community Voice Article.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Young-Uhk, S., Krishnapillai, M., and Friday, J.B. 2018. Using a chipper / shredder to create cocopith potting mix from coconut husk. Yap Cooperative Research and Extension, College of Micronesia  FSM. http://www.micronesialandgrant.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/COM-FSM-Yap-Cocopith-Fact-Sheet-Sept-19-2018.pdf

Progress 10/01/17 to 09/30/18

Outputs
Target Audience:Clients include federal, state, and county fire departments, state and federal forestry and natural resource agencies, rangeland managers, agricultural producers, non-profit outreach and education programs, as well as other extension programs. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Invasive Species The program conducted a semester course which covered the theoretical knowledge in 14CFR part 107, including regulations, airspace, aircraft performance, weather, and operations, and practical knowledge, including basic and advanced maneuvers, emergency procedures and aerial data collection. There were six individuals enrolled, meeting twice a week over 18 weeks. The students were tested in the first week of the course with a truncated version of the FAA examination for Part 107 certification. All six of the students received a failing grade with a 30% class average (70% is passing). A similar truncated exam was administered at the end of the course with all but one student passing with a class average over 80%. A remote pilot training course was held in summer 2018, with three weeks of online lectures to prepare students to take the FAA Remote Pilot Exam and three days of flight training. Topics covered include: sUAS regulations, airspace, aviation weather, UAS performance and operation. Flight maneuvers include: pattern flying, takeoff, landing, emergency maneuvers, and autonomous operation. Eighteen participants attended the training with five from cooperating local natural resource management organizations. As of September 1, 2018, six participants have earned their remote pilot certificates. Wildfire The second long-term desired outcome in the wildfire extension logic model is sustained collaborative relationships and trust among clients. Based largely on the cultural value placed on direct interactions in the Pacific region, the PFX has increased the number of in-person extension activities. From 2013-2015 only one PFX Field Tour with 45 people was held, whereas from 2016-2018, we organized 7 field tours with a total of 239 participants. In addition, the PFX has conducted five workshops targeting fire risk mitigation and 8 webinars on a variety of topics. Another strategy to sustain relationships and provide professional development opportunities has been to expand the diversity of contributors to PFX products over the past two years. Whereas Extension Specialist Trauernicht had been the primary contributor to PFX web and printed materials from 2013-2015, over FY18, the PFX has provided a platform for 12 researchers and land managers outside the PFX to contribute to webinars, blog posts, research briefs and fact sheets. Each of the Climate Forums have set up organizing committees on each island who have helped custom tailor the curricula which combine presentations by content experts, group activities to explore available climate-related resources and discuss potential solutions to mitigate climate change impacts on their clients, and field tours of extension facilities and demonstration sites. The committees also help identify local presenters wherever possible and decide who to include beyond Extension faculty. The Climate Forums have included representatives from local agriculture and forestry departments, Soil and Water Conservation districts, the National Weather Service, coral reef and watershed conservation groups, as well as farmers and fishers. Additional outputs tied to this effort also include a 4-page fact sheet on "Climate Smart" agriculture for the Pacific as well as an informational brief on the benefits of agroforestry for climate adaptation. Evaluations of these events were also used to identify key information and education materials that are needed to support extension efforts in each region. Based on this feedback, Dr. Fifita and Dr. Trauernicht are currently working with regional Organizing Committees and local videographers to develop a series of videos and fact sheets that will assist extension faculty in their outreach efforts. Forestry The forestry program conducted training activities for state, federal, and private land management professionals in how to manage forests threatened by Rapid Ohia Death. Two field days for management professionals were conducted with a total of 45 attendees. The program arranged two half-day symposia, one in Hilo and one in Kona, for scientists working on Rapid Ohia Death to describe their work to the public. The program also employs a full-time education specialist partly supported on RREA funds who has been trained in both the science of forest health and best practices for extension. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Fire For the wildfire extension program, direct communication has proven to be an effective means of communicating and disseminating information. The fire management community in Hawaii and the US-affiliated Pacific Islands is relatively small, which has allowed the Wildland Fire Program the opportunity to develop personal relationships and receive direct input for stakeholder needs. The decision-makers for natural resource management form a similarly small community. Again, direct contacts with forestry division leaders and coordinators in the Hawaii Association of Watershed Partnerships has facilitated the dissemination of information and helped to increase the awareness of the Wildland Fire Program. In addition to this, the program has actively sought to build its contact network through the Pacific Fire Exchange list-serve and social media, primarily using twitter. Finally, results have been disseminated to the scientific and land management communities via peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations at local, national and international scientific venues. The fire-related work is also made available via the Pacific Fire Exchange website (PacificFireExchange.org) as well as the UH Wildland Fire Program website (nrem-fire.org). Another high impact PFX fact sheet was the November 2015 "El Niño and Long-lead Fire Weather Prediction for the Pacific Islands" outlining the links between El Niño-driven drought and large fires in the Pacific produced in rapid response to the 2015-2016 El Niño forecast. The product served as catalyst in January 2016 for the first ever coordinated, multi-agency public outreach campaign in Hawaii, first marketed as "Wildfire & Drought Look Out!" and later modified to "Wildfire LOOKOUT!" This effort resulted in a multi-agency fact sheet drafted by Dr. Trauernicht with partners at Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization and the now annual coordination of press releases and media events to increase public awareness about wildfires in Hawaii. The PFX El Niño fact sheet, along with the 2014 PFX Wildfire in Hawaii fact sheet, continues to be featured on the campaign's website (www.hawaiiwildfire.org/lookout). In response to suggestions by PFX advisors, in 2017, the PFX expanded efforts to more directly target state leadership, beginning with Hawaii State Legislature. Again, working with partners at Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, the PFX developed a 1-page Informational Brief and then developed a "Legislative Field Trip" in January 2018. This trip brought together 35 people including 7 State Senators and Representatives, and 5 staffers to discuss the need for state-level support for both improved fire science and management Range As part of the RREA funding received, The Hawaii Grazing and Livestock Management Academy was held in Hawaii County in July of 2018. A total of 30 participants learned how to identify different forages, the production cycle of pasture forage, basic principles of grazing management, grazing animal behavior, range management, and monitoring tools. Forestry The forestry program gave 27 talks to local communities on Rapid Ohia Death and staffed tables at eight conservation events. Three thousand two hundred people were directly contacted through these efforts. The program hosted the second annual Ohia Love Fest and again drew in over 1,500 participant to an event that featured many educational exhibitions and activities on the Hawaiian Forest and the threat posed by Rapid Ohia Death. In addition the program directly contacted over 1,000 people by email or by phone. Indirectly, the program reaches people through social media such as Facebook and Instagram and through the program websites (www.RapidOhiaDeath.org and the Hawaii Forestry Extension website https://cms.ctahr.hawaii.edu/forestry/, and flickr.com/jbfriday). Over 275,000 indirect contacts were made. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Wildfire Through work with collaborators on Pacific Fire Exchange, the Wildland Fire Program has compiled and synthesized stakeholder needs related to fire management (www.pacificfireexchange.org/knowledge-themes/). These needs will guide the continued development of best management practice guides and fact sheets for both pre-fire mitigation and post-fire response. Targeting stakeholder priorities not only increases the 'usability' or application of available information, but will help build trust and establish the reputation of the program as a go-to source of relevant wildfire information. These needs also provide a resource for promoting the development of new science, which the program will continue to promote through direct collaboration and communication with the regional scientific community. The program will also continue to organize and facilitate Pacific Fire Exchange field trips that will bring fire responders and natural resource managers together to promote better understanding of each groups' needs and priorities. In addition, given that nearly all wildfires on Pacific Islands are started by human activities, the Program will work to facilitate and provide scientific information for use by public outreach efforts and fire prevention bureaus of federal, state, and county fire response agencies. This strategy will allow the program to focus on the quality of information and use the existing authority, reputation and outreach resources of emergency response and other agencies to reach a much broader audience. The Wildland Fire Program is also seeking to improve the co-development of knowledge through collaborative workshops that highlight the capacity of local researchers and the practical problems faced by land managers. The Wildland Fire Program has a proposal submitted to expand the geographical scope of the Pacific Islands Climate Forum project into the Federated States of Micronesia. We are also discussing the possibilities of developing a distance learning course on climate change and climate change impacts with collaborators at the University of Hawaii College of Education. Finally, Dr. Trauernicht and Dr. Fifita will be developing proposals to expand capacity among Extension programs to integrate climate information and communication to meet the needs identified from Climate Forums in Hawaii, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. Range The range extension program will continue to release the bio-control moth Secusio extensa and monitor effects on the invasive fireweed. At the conclusion of the grazing trials, the data will be compiled into extension publications and disseminated through workshops, field day events, and at various industry meetings. It is expected that these results will be used by the Hawaii cattle industry to improve the economics of grass-finish beef production practices. Forestry The forestry program will continue to reach out to key stakeholders who manage forests in Hawaii. In particular, the program held a set of workshops for eco-tour operators in early FY2019. Additional workshops are planned for ohia seed banking and for field staff working in early detection. The peer-to-peer learning program for forest landowners will be run for the sixth time.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Impacts Invasive Species The Invasive Species program focused on the application of Herbicide Ballistic Technology (HBT), application of small doses of herbicides by paintball gun from a helicopter, to target invasive plant infestations in remote areas. Working in the upper reaches of critical watersheds on Maui, they determined that every dollar invested in controlling incipient populations of weeds avoided $184 in future costs. The program worked with a private company to develop an Unmanned Aerial System (drone) for application of herbicide in remote areas. Manuals and Standard Operating Procedures for UAS application of herbicides were developed. Wildfire The Hawaii wildfire extension program is part of a Joint Fire Science program and is locally called the Pacific Fire Exchange (PFX) (www.PacificFireExchange.org). Surveys of participants after PFX events and activities indicate that the program continues to increase knowledge and awareness among participants. Across field trip and webinar surveys, 80-90% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they had learned something new about fire ecology and management. Over 80% of respondents also agreed or strongly agreed that the PFX event they attended provided them with resources to meet their fire information needs. In addition, 40% of respondents across our activities stated that they planned to make changes in their work or community based on what they learned. The most frequently downloaded PFX fact sheet, "Wildfire In Hawaii", outlines the scale of wildfire occurrence in Hawaii and the fourfold increase in area burned per year over the past century. One of the facts featured in this synthesis, namely that in many years a larger percentage of Hawaii's land area burns than the western US, is frequently used by the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources in communication with the legislature, in addition to being integrated press releases related to the statewide wildfire prevention campaign, Hawaii Wildfire LOOKOUT! (www.hawaiiwildfire.org/lookout). The program's direct interactions (field trips and fact sheet) to inform Hawaii State legislators has also resulted in medium term impacts. The Hawaii Division of Forestry and Wildlife has stated that the trip was instrumental in increasing their annual fire suppression funding from $450,000 to $800,000 in 2018. The Wildland Fire Program has also engaged in climate science education for extension personnel across the US-Affiliated Pacific Islands. Three Extension Climate Forums were held in FY2018 in Guam with 40 participants (October 2017), the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands with 85 participants (November 2017) and American Samoa with 60 participants (June 2018). The goals of these forums were to: 1) develop technical climate science knowledge among local Cooperative Extension faculty in the US-Affiliated Pacific Islands; 2) work with Extension to identify locally relevant strategies for climate change adaptation; and 3) identify opportunities to integrate these strategies into current Extension programs to increase adoption among agricultural producers and natural resource managers in the region. Evaluations of these events demonstrate positive improvements in Extension faculty's understanding of climate science and their confidence in communicating climate change issues to their clientele. The percentage of participants who agreed they were knowledgeable of "the impact of climate change" before vs. after the Forums increased from 57% to 86% in Guam and 27% to 90% in CNMI. From 70-100% of participants across the events agreed that the Forums inspired them to incorporate climate change information into their existing programs. In Guam, over 85% percent of respondents agreed that the knowledge they gained was useful in identifying actions they can take in response to climate change. Range The rangeland management program continues to release and monitor the moth Secusio extensa, which is a bio-control for the invasive fireweed (Senecio madagascarensis) invading pastures in Hawaii. Sightings of the larva and moth are being widely reported and it appears that the wild population is becoming self-sustaining. However, the population is not yet of a sufficient size to curb fireweed abundance. It appears that it will take, at a minimum, another five years of releases to achieve a wild population size that will begin to impact fireweed. Updated information on the Secusio rearing and release program can be found at http://globalrangelands.org/hawaii. Outcomes: Short term Participants have gained awareness in the use of improved forages including grasses and legumes in sustainable livestock production. They have learned about practices and procedures for planting and managing the grazing of these forages to improve forage quality and productivity, how to manage livestock grazing, and how to monitor their impacts to reduce overgrazing. They have learned and demonstrated how to evaluate forage production, stocking rate, and forage utilization level. Producers also increased awareness and knowledge regarding risk management techniques and programs available through the USDA-Farm Services Agency and Right Risk programs. Participants have learned about improving herd genetics, maintaining animal health and condition, mineral supplementation programs, and how to evaluate body condition score. Mid-term As a result of the workshops and demonstration/trials carried out by this project over thirty producers have indicated adoption of at least one or more technologies or management practices presented. Producers are making better management decisions regarding pasture condition and weed management. Long term Producers adopting better grazing management practices, improving herd genetics, and investing in improved forage varieties will sustain operations far longer than those who do not. These measures allow for better animal production, improved pasture condition, increased market opportunities, improved profitability of operations. Ultimately these producers are economically and ecologically sustainable and provide valuable ecosystem services and significantly contribute to their community's food security. Forestry With Rapid Ohia Death continuing to decimate the state's native forests, the forestry program concentrated on developing knowledge and disseminating information on how to control the spread of the disease. Methods included community meetings, hosting tables at conservation events, websites, posts on social media, and radio PSAs. The forestry extension program cooperated with the UH Lyon Arboretum to offer a set of workshops for citizens on collecting and banking ohia seeds for future use for reforestation and management. The program offered 15 workshops across the state and trained 350 people statewide. Ninety six percent of attendees rated satisfaction with the workshops as 8 out of 10 or higher. Eighty-five percent of the graduates of the program said that they were confident that they could collect ohia seeds for the program. As a result of the program 440 new collections of ohia seed were made and deposited at local seed banks. A peer-to-peer learning program called Forest Stewards was re-started after a hiatus of two years. Ten participants completed the program, joining 46 other graduates in a local network of forest landowners. Forest Stewards have been hosting field days where they visit each other's farms and forests to exchange knowledge about issues from tree planting to property taxes. In addition to outreach work on Rapid Ohia Death, the forestry program continued to work with forestry and conservation nursery growers and hosted a round table meeting and field trip attended by 20 growers. The program also hosted field days for the Tropical Hardwood Improvement and Regeneration Center (www.TropHTIRC.org) and the Hawaii Forest Industry Association (www.hawaiiforest.org).

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Rodriguez, R., J. K. Leary, K. Nolan, B. Mahnken, D. Jenkins. 2018. Performance Analysis of Consumer Grade GPS Units for Dynamic Aerial Applications. IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine. 33(10), 14-20.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Trauernicht, C. 2019. Vegetation-Rainfall interactions reveal how climate variability and climate change alter spatial patterns of wildland fire probability on Big Island, Hawaii. Science of the Total Environment 650: 459-469
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Trauernicht, C, T. Ticktin, H. Fraiola, Z. Hastings, A. Tsuneyoshi. 2018. Active restoration enhances the recovery of a Hawaiian mesic forest after fire. Forest Ecology and Management 411: 1-11
• Type: Book Chapters Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Friday, J. B., 2018. Metrosideros polymorpha. Pp. 166-169 in: Thomson, L, J. Doran, and B. Clarke, eds. Trees for Life in Oceania: Conservation and Utilisation of Genetic Diversity. ACIAR Monograph No. 201. Australian Center for International Agricultural Research, Canberra.
• Type: Book Chapters Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Gollin, L.X., and C. Trauernicht. 2018. The critical role of firefighters place-based environmental knowledge in responding to novel fire regimes in Hawaii. in C. Fowler, J. Welch, and A. Sullivan, editors. Fire Otherwise: Ethnobiology of Burning for a Changing World. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Trauernicht C. 2018. Fire is the one Hawaii disaster we can avoid. Honolulu Civil Beat Community Voice Article.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Trauernicht C., E. Pickett, P. Beimler, C.P. Giardina, C.M. Litton, E. Moller, S. Cordell, J.B. Friday. 2018. A collaborative approach to prioritizing fire management needs for the Pacific region. Fire Management Today 76: 30-35.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: DAntonio, C., S. Yelenik, C. Trauernicht, M. Kunz. 2018. The Grass-Fire Cycle. Pacific Fire Exchange Fact Sheet.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Trauernicht, C. and M. Kunz. 2018. 2017 Wildfires in Hawaii. PFX Annual Summary. Pacific Fire Exchange Fact Sheet. http://www.pacificfireexchange.org/research-publications-1/
• Type: Book Chapters Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Friday, J. B., 2018. Acacia koa. Pp. 39-41 in: Thomson, L, J. Doran, and B. Clarke, eds. Trees for Life in Oceania: Conservation and Utilisation of Genetic Diversity. ACIAR Monograph No. 201. Australian Center for International Agricultural Research, Canberra.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Fifita, P. and C. Trauernicht. 2017. Climate smart agriculture for Pacific Islands. Pacific Island Climate Change Cooperative Fact sheet.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Trauernicht, C. and M. Kunz. 2017. Wildfire in the US-Affiliated Pacific Islands. Pacific Fire Exchange Fact Sheet. http://www.pacificfireexchange.org/research-publications-1/
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Hawaii Forestry Extension: https://cms.ctahr.hawaii.edu/forestry/

Progress 12/12/16 to 09/30/17

Outputs
Target Audience:The Hawaii RREA program works with both private and public land managers, ranchers, forestry and natural resource professionals, consultants, fire responders, and invasive species management professionals. Changes/Problems:Because of increased demand we have added extension programming relating to climate change as it affects agricultural producers and forest and range managers. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Forestry The forestry program held a symposium on Rapid Ohia Death at the State Capitol for legislators and high level policy makers. Scientists and professionals talked about the current state of knowledge on Rapid Ohia Death and what needs to be done. The program participated in producing a Strategic Response Plan for Rapid Ohia Death. The program collaborated with Hawaii County to host a Rapid Ohia Death training day for Department of Public Works road crews. There were 106 attendees who each went through various training talks tailored to address ROD sanitation for their tasks and equipment. The program produced a list of recommendations for arborists to help them avoid spreading Rapid Ohia Death and distributed these to members of the local chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture. The program also worked with the University of Hawaii Lyon Arboretum staff to produce a series of workshops on seed banking for ohia, which included information on Rapid Ohia Death. Fourteen events were held, including workshops on Oahu, Hilo, Kona, Maui, Molokai, and Kauai; a total of 330 professionals and community members attended. Wildfire Professional training opportunities in wildland fire management included a field trip for the Nahelehele Dryland Forest Symposium in February 2017 in partnership with the Hawaii Division of Forestry and Wildlife, which brought 33 people on a jeep tour of Puu Waawaa dry forest reserve on Hawaii island and highlighted recently published research by Dr. Trauernicht and collaborators on the effects of forest restoration on ground water recharge and fire risk. In March, the wildfire program held a 4-hour workshop for 20 participants on wildfire risk assessment and mitigation in collaboration with the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization as part of the annual Pacific Risk Management Ohana (PRIMO) conference on Oahu. In July, an improved version of the same half-day workshop was provided to 36 participants as part of the 2017 Hawaii Conservation Conference, followed by a field tour of wildfire risk mitigation strategies at Palehua, the site of two recent large fires in the southern end of the Waianae Mountains on Oahu. The wildfire program also presented on wildfire to a statewide workshop on Drought and Societal Impacts in the Main Hawaiian Islands in Honolulu. Climate Change The Hawaii RREA program facilitated professional development opportunities for agriculture extension agents concerned about climate change. Dr. Trauernicht and his post-doctoral assistant Dr. Patricia Fifita identified and curated climate-related informational resources for the Pacific region, developed climate science education curricula with distance learning specialists at the College of Education, and organized and facilitated a 3-day "Extension Climate Forum" for Hawaii that brought together 45 Cooperative Extension specialists and agents in June of 2017. The purpose of the Climate Forum was to bring extension professionals up-to-speed with the latest climate science and projections, and facilitate discussions on how best to adapt to and communicate the coming changes and what are our knowledge and resource gaps. Dr. Trauernicht and Dr. Fifita also organized parallel forums for early FY18 in Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. They have developed a webpage pointing to climate-related resources and to document the outcomes of the forum events (cms.ctahr.hawaii.edu/climate). These events targeted Cooperative Extension Professionals but also included researchers and agriculture and natural resource professionals. Dr. Trauernicht also presented a session on "Climate adaptation and extension in Hawai'i" at the Hawaii Agriculture Conference in Honolulu. Invasive Species The invasive species program conducted a semester course in Unmanned Aerial Systems Training which comprehensively covered regulations, airspace, aircraft performance, weather, and operations, and practical knowledge, including basic and advanced maneuvers, emergency procedures and aerial data collection. There were six individuals enrolled, meeting twice a week over 18 weeks. In the first week of the course, students were tested with a truncated version of the FAA examination for Part 107 certification to quantify basic knowledge. All six of the students received a failing grade with a 30% class average (70% is passing). A similar exam was administered at the end of the course with all students, but one, passing with a class average over 80%. Range Management The range management project continues to provide support for the development and maintenance of the University of Hawaii's contribution to the 19-western state partnership WERA 1008 (Rangelands West Partnership) Hawaii Rangelands (http://globalrangelands.org/hawaii). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Forestry The forestry program organized two half-day symposia on Rapid Ohia Death on Hawaii Island (one in Hilo March 18th with 50 people in attendance and one in Kona on April 1st with 90 people in attendance). Scientists and professionals presented the current state of knowledge on Rapid Ohia Death and management recommendations to community members and landowners. Program staff coordinated with organizers of the Merrie Monarch Hula Festival, hosted a table at the festival directly reaching 482 people, provided 1675 local businesses with brochures on Rapid Ohia Death, shared information on Rapid Ohia Death with hula teachers, distributed letters to lei vendors, and participated in television and radio interviews. The program organized a day-long event in Hilo called the Ohia Love Fest. This was a community event geared to emphasizing the important of ohia to Hawaii's culture, economy, and environment. The festival drew 1500 participants, including residents and visitors. The program presented on Rapid Ohia Death at community meetings and events across the state. From October 1, 2016 through September 30, 2017 the program presented at 77 events and directly reached 5,800 people. Two Public Service Announcements promoting good bio-sanitary practices for Rapid Ohia Death have been produced and have been airing on local radio stations. Range Management In conjunction with the mineral supplementation trials, a series of producer field days were presented in May in Hawaii, Maui, and Kauai Counties with attendance across all three events totaling 45 individuals. The field day discussed the importance in mineral supplementation and various deficiencies in forages across the state. An economic decision support tool was introduced to participants designed by the cooperating RightRisk team that uses partial budgeting to help drive informed management decisions. Through this project over 60 producers received direct support through pasture evaluations, assistance in grazing plan development and management, monitoring of range and pasture condition, and evaluation and recommendations in livestock production practices. They have received assistance in selecting, planting, and utilization of improved forages including grasses, Leucaena and other legumes in sustainable livestock production. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The forestry extension program will continue outreach on Rapid Ohia Death, focusing on key groups of stakeholders such as real estate agents, arborists, and architects and builders using ohia wood. Two more half-day symposia are planned. The program will integrate new information on the pathology of the disease, detection and monitoring, treatment options for live trees, and treatment options for wood into outreach efforts. The program will seek more community input into effective methods to reach important stakeholders. The wildfire extension program is currently devising survey questions to address long-term program impacts. The program is also seeking funding to perform more detailed analyses of wildfire ignition data in order to test for direct the impacts statewide public wildfire prevention campaign in Hawaii (which was informed by and integrated science provided by the Wildland Fire Program) on fire risk. The program is also examining alternative metrics to demonstrate long-term impact, such as increases in acreage with active fire management plans and with fuels reduction projects. The invasive species program is pursuing collaboration with the Pan Pacific UAS Test Range Complex (PPUTRC) under the Test Site National Certificate of Authorization. Documentation to be sent to the FAA for Exemption under section 333 is currently undergoing editing following one round of internal review. The program is also commencing with communication with the Division Chief for Unmanned Aircraft Systems to develop an OAS compliant training and certification program. The range management program will collaborate with the Hawaii Department of Agriculture (HDOA) to quantify the extent of the infestation of the two-lined spittlebug, a new invasive pest, through field surveys, develop rancher education materials and workshops, develop pasture management protocols to control the pest, research spittlebug resistant forages, and conduct biocontrol research. Initial funding for these activities has been secured through HDOA ($300,000), the Hawaii State Invasive Species Council ($50,000), and Hawaii County ($22,000).

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Forestry The forestry program concentrated on raising awareness and encouraging community action to limit spread of Rapid Ohia Death. The program held day long events, dozens of community meetings, and created and maintained websites and social media. A statewide survey in 2017 found that 91% of respondents on Hawaii Island knew of Rapid Ohia Death, while 44% on Oahu, 30% on Maui, and 54% on Kauai did. This extraordinary awareness of a disease that was only diagnosed three years previously is the result of the program's outreach efforts. In addition to the work on Rapid Ohia Death, the forestry extension program along with the Tropical Hardwood Tree Improvement Center (www.TropHTIRC.org) hosted a symposium on Acacia koa in Hawai'i: Facing the Future. Seventy-two attendees from Hawaii and the US mainland learned about new research focused on restoring ecologically viable and economically productive koa forests. A field day was held as part of the symposium. The program also maintained two koa seed orchards. Wildfire The Wildland Fire Program has provided informational products and events to improve pre- and post-fire management and increase the level of collaboration among land users, emergency responders, and researchers. In FY17, the Wildland Fire Program Leader was awarded a 3-year project renewal from the federal Joint Fire Science Program to continue the Pacific Fire Exchange (PFX), marking nearly a decade of continuous funding for the project (2012-2020).The wildland fire program, working with the PFX, also continued to fill in knowledge gaps to increase stakeholder understanding of fire issues by providing webinars and developing written informational products. In FY17, the program responded to needs of partners and stakeholders on fire-prone islands of the Western Pacific with a fact sheet that provided first published synthesis of fire records and fire weather for the region, illustrating how prevalent wildfire can be and the factors that contribute to fire risk. Stakeholders in the region also prioritized the need for information on pre-fire mitigation, vegetated fuel breaks, and how forest restoration may contribute to reducing fire risk. The wildland fire program addressed these concerns with three products in FY17.A webinar presented 14-years of data on post-fire restoration of a Hawaiian forest, illustrating how weed management and tree-planting can reduce invasion by fire-prone grasses.The wildland fire program developed a research brief presenting the management implications for fuels and modeled fire behavior in unmanaged grasslands vs. an adjacent forest restoration site on Oahu. A second webinar for FY17 was on fire weather by collaborators at the National Weather Service and was also organized in response to direct stakeholder inquiries and questions from prior events. Invasive Species The invasive species program developed and tested a prototype unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) that is capable of targeting weeds in remote and rugged terrain through use of Herbicide Ballistic Technology: paintballs filled with herbicide shot from commercial paintball guns. Range Management The range management program is working to distribute a biocontrol to help local ranchers control two invasive pasture weeds, German ivy (Senecio mikanioides) and fireweed (S. madagascariensis). In cooperation with the Hawaii Department of Agriculture, Biological Control Division the range management project has successfully reared and disseminated over 100,000Secusio extensalarva, to 35 different Hawaii and Maui County ranchers and land owners covering approximately 250,000 acres of rangelands. The larva of this moth feeds almost exclusively on fireweed and German Ivy. The moth was approved for release in December of 2012.Over 2017 sightings of the larva and moth were being widely reported and it appears that the wild population has quickly become self-sustaining. Previous meetings with local ranchers indicated a need for better education and new research on mineral supplementation for beef cattle in Hawaii. Funding was secured in April of 2016 for a three-year integrated research and extension mineral supplementation project through USDA-WSARE.A total of five ranches are involved in the first-year mineral trials funded through the USDA-WSARE grant that began in February of 2017. The study has shown that range cattle will select among individually placed mineral components even along-side a commercial mix.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Wada, C., Bremer, L., Burnett, K., Trauernicht, C., Giambelluca, T., Mandle, L., Parsons, E., Weil, C., and Ticktin, T. 2017. Prioritizing management investments at Puu Waawaa, Hawaii using spatial changes in water yield and landscape flammability under forest restoration and climate change. Pacific Science 71:401-424.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Hawbaker, T., Trauernicht, C., Howard, S., Litton, C.M., Giardina, C.P., Jacobi, J., Fortini, L., Hughes, F., Selmants, P., and Zhu, Z. 2017. Wildland fires and greenhouse emissions for Hawaii. in P. Selmants et al. Baseline and projected future carbon storage and greenhouse gas fluxes in ecosystems of Hawaii. US Geological Survey Professional Paper 1834.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Lowell, E.I., Wilson, K., Wiedenbck, J., Chan, C., Friday, J.B., and Evans, N. 2017. Consumer preference study of characteristics of Hawaiian koa wood bowls. BioProducts Business Journal 2(5): 42-51.