Wai (freshwater) has been historically managed by Native Hawaiian communities to sustain food security on the most remote islands on Earth. In the past century, land use and socio-economic change has transformed many of Hawaiʻi’s coastal landscapes, leading to altered groundwater recharge, storage, and transport, and reduced surface water flows. To better inform biocultural restoration and future groundwater management, this collaborative research project performed an in-depth characterization of surface and groundwater flow throughout Heʻeia.

Some of the most transformative aspects of this work were the collaborative process itself and the workshops, which strengthened relationships between researchers, resource managers, and educators and fostered a more nuanced collective understanding of how wai is linked to biocultural restoration. In this webinar, the team will share two major highlights of the study, answering the questions: How does surface and groundwater flow in the Heʻeia watershed; and what does water look like entering our coastal ecosystem? The webinar will provide perspectives linked to current and future biocultural restoration activities in the Heʻeia NERR.