Land Misuse and Hydrologic Response: Kaho'olawe, Hawai'i

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1996-01
Authors
Loague, Keith
Lloyd, D'Artagnan
Giambelluca, Thomas W.
Ngyuen, Anh
Sakata, Burt
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University of Hawaii Press
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DEDICATION: This paper is dedicated to "Ka'imipono" Rendell D. Tong (13 September 1959-4 January 1995). In his lifetime Rendell supported many environmental efforts in Hawai'i, especially the work reported in this paper, with a passion that was contagious. About Kaho'olawe he once wrote: "I'm looking forward to our continued work to restore Hakioawa ahupua'a [watershed] and to gain a comprehensive scientific observation and understanding of the hydrologic cycle on Kaho'olawe. We are invigorated and proud to be practicing that foundation of Hawaiian cultural values, miilama 'iiina [take care of the land]. So we keep working for the land, physically, spiritually ... for the people of the earth-e kupono e ka po'e honua." The spirit of Ka'imipono lives on in Hawai'i, especially on the island of Kaho'olawe, forever! ABSTRACT: This paper is concerned with the characterization of near-surface hydrologic response for the Hawaiian island of Kaho'olawe, where erosion caused, in part, by surface runoff is the major factor in landscape denudation. New sets of saturated hydraulic conductivity and sorptivity data from 110 sites across Kaho'olawe are presented and analyzed for spatial structure using statistical methods and land cover classification. At a regional scale there was no statistically characterizable spatial structure in either of the new data sets; we characterized the spatial distribution of saturated hydraulic conductivity and sorptivity based upon land cover. Also presented is a suite of runoff simulations for the entire island of Kaho'olawe, based upon the near-surface soil hydraulic property interpretations reported, for 10 separate rainfall events. The hydrologic response simulator used provides a relatively realistic representation of Hortonian overland flow. This study consisted of 700 deterministic-conceptual rainfall-runoff simulations, based upon the 10 rainfall events applied to 70 catchments that were divided into 1529 overland flow planes. Our simulations suggest, for the large events selected for this study, that the maximum island average surface runoff by the Horton mechanism is ca. 20% of rainfall.
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Loague K, Lloyd D, Giambelluca TW, Nguyen A, Sakata B. 1996. Land misuse and hydrologic response: Kaho'olawe, Hawai'i. Pac Sci 50(1): 1-35.
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