Spatially Quantifying and Attributing 17 Years of Vegetation and Land Cover Transitions Across Hawaii

Abstract

Hawaii has seen widespread land use change and large scale land cover shifts. However, this is only known either anecdotally or from a single locale studies. Therefore little information exists on the rate or extent of land cover change across Hawaii. As such, this project produced statewide annual maps from 1999 to 2016 of percent cover of forest, grass and bare earth, from LANDSAT imagery, and attributed change to a spatial dataset of land management history. Statewide net change resulted in a gain in woody cover primarily occurring in unmanaged areas and abandoned agricultural land. These findings suggest that Hawaii is going through a forest transition, primarily driven by agricultural abandonment and probable invasive species expansion, with additional inputs from forestry production in areas with potential for native forest restoration. This work is aids in a better understanding of the direct land cover consequences from land use changes in Hawaii.