Resiliency in Hawaiian Irrigated Agricultural Systems : A GIS Approach

Summary

Pre-contact Hawaiian agriculturalists created irrigated cropping systems of considerable complexity across all of the Hawaiian archipelago. While many of these systems are concentrated in short but broad alluvial valleys, the windward coast of the big island of Hawaii presents a unique hydrological landscape. Here the geologic youth of the island presented Hawaiian agriculturalists with a landscape dominated by relatively small, narrow gulches with limited space for cultivation and a propensity for flooding. This paper examines issues of resilience and stability in small-valley irrigated agricultural systems using high-resolution LiDAR data and advanced techniques in GIS-based hydrological modeling. We will attempt to evaluate the role of extreme flooding events in influencing decision making and maintenance needs within the various drainages of the windward Kohala peninsula. In doing so we emphasize the utility of adopting a regional approach to landscape based analysis, as well as the analytic possibilities of high resolution GIS data for assessing ecological resiliency in agricultural systems.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Erotetics, GIS, and Data Resolution: Spatial Analysis in Archaeological Practice

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17070