Day 15

We finally had a breakthrough with vegetation today. Dr. Drake, a botanist from University of Hawaii, came out this afternoon and helped us identify all of the plants we had questions about in the valley. I felt very fortunate to have an expert come all the way to Kualoa Ranch merely to help out some undergraduates like us name some plants. We got more than just some names of plants because a graduate student named Chris gave us a brief overview about the ecology in this area. So with the combination of knowledge from Dr. Drake and Chris, we got a pretty good idea of what is happening and not happening in this valley. I found out that most of the vegetation in the valley is non-native and primarily filled with invasive species. A large part of this is due to the previous/current land uses. My theory about recent plant species changes in the valley is that after Pearl Harbor, when the government fortified a lot of the land, many native plant species were cleared away and gave invasive plants a chance to compete with the environment. And before WWII, human activity like the cattle grazing and sugar cane farming must have had a large part in the shifting the valley’s biodiversity.