The Effects of Climate Change on Wetlands in the Main Hawaiian Islands: An Initial Assessment

The Hawaiian archipelago in the subtropical central North Pacific Ocean consists of a mix of generally steep-sided, rocky high islands in the southeast and low-lying coral atolls in the northwest. Due to their topography, these islands harbor a relatively limited number of wetland ecosystems, although the features that are present are diverse, ranging from a hypersaline lake on Laysan, to acidic upland bogs such as Pepeopae on Molokai, to large freshwater marshes such as Kawainui on Oahu. Because of this diversity of wetland ecosystem types and elevation settings, the effects of future climate change on Hawaiian wetlands are wide-ranging, and specific to individual wetland systems on the various islands. The current desk study provides [...]