31 January • Coming Together to Cast a Wide Net: Coastal Water Quality Following the Lahaina Wildfire by Sean Swift. Location: Zoom (register for Zoom here).
14 February • AI Statistical Downscaling of Weather and Climate by Peter Sadowski. Location: Zoom (register for Zoom here).
28 February • Monitoring Water Quality in Coastal Areas Using New Technologies in Field Instrumentation and Satellite Remote Sensing by William J Hernández. Location: Zoom (register for Zoom here). Slides
28 March • Sustainability by Design: Advancing Water Management Through Soil Biophysics by Jing Yan. Location: Zoom (register for Zoom here).
Please check back soon for more Spring 2025 Seminars.
For more information about the Spring 2024 WRRC Seminars, please contact: Chris Shuler, cshuler@hawaii.edu
If interested in joining the seminar, please contact: wrrc@hawaii.edu
Sustainability by Design: Advancing Water Management Through Soil Biophysics
Speaker: Jing Yan
Date: March 28, 2025 (2:00 pm, HST)
The global population reached 8 billion in 2022 and is expected to surpass 9 billion by 2050. Meeting future food demands will require a 50–100% increase in agricultural production over the next 40 years, but water management remains a major challenge in sustaining crop productivity. Soil physical and hydrological processes regulate water availability, nutrient movement, and plant growth, making them central to effective soil and water management. A deeper understanding of these processes is key to developing better strategies for sustainable water use in agriculture.
This presentation will explore how insights from soil biophysics, specifically the interactions between soil minerals, plant roots, and soil microbes, can improve soil water retention and enhance plant water usage efficiency. I will share recent research on how biological processes influence soil hydraulic properties and water dynamics, with a focus on translating fundamental research into practical applications. This talk will foster discussion on bridging scientific research with real-world practices to advance sustainable water management.
Monitoring Water Quality in Coastal Areas Using New Technologies in Field Instrumentation and Satellite Remote Sensing
Speaker: William J Hernández
Date: February 28, 2025 (2:00 pm, HST)
Coral reefs and their associated mangroves and seagrass environments are among the world’s most at risk ecosystems due to increasing exposure to terrestrial runoff, which carry sediments, nutrients and pollutants, and rising ocean temperatures. Recent advances and accessibility of remote sensing and field tools such as autonomous surface vehicles with high dynamic range optical and acoustic sensors, and legacy moderate and very high-resolution satellite sensors, can provide an ideal opportunity to study changes in water quality of aquatic ecosystems at spatial scales from cm to km. Also, remote sensing can readily be used to map water quality indicators, such as total suspended sediments (TSS), chlorophyll-a concentrations (Chl-a) and downwelling light attenuation coefficients (Kd) in coastal waters. These water quality indicators, in addition to sea surface temperature (SST), can be monitored with remote sensing and in situ sensors in coastal waters to determine coral reef exposure vectors from terrestrial stressors. This talk will discuss current work in Puerto Rico combining these technologies to provide a better understanding of these dynamic ecosystems.
AI Statistical Downscaling of Weather and Climate
Speaker: Peter Sadowski
Date: February 14, 2025 (2:00 pm, HST)
Recent advances in AI for language and vision demonstrate the power of neural network models trained on large datasets. These methods are precipitating similar revolutions in the sciences. I will discuss my group's work using generative AI methods for modeling weather and climate, including our work in neural downscaling of climate models and weather forecasting.
Coming Together to Cast a Wide Net: Coastal Water Quality Following the Lahaina Wildfire
Speakers: Sean Swift
Date: January 31, 2025 (2:00 pm, HST)
In early August of 2023, a wildfire destroyed the town of Lahaina. In response to this disaster, a group of researchers at UH Mānoa from the departments of Oceanography, Marine Biology, and Sea Grant teamed up to characterize impacts of the fire on nearshore marine ecosystems. To accomplish this, our team worked in concert with a multi-agency consortium based on Maui, including non-profits, community members, the County of Maui, as well as state and federal agencies. The nearshore waters around Lahaina are dominated by coral reef ecosystems, which physically protect the coastline from waves, support local fisheries, and draw tourism to the region. Prior to this project, only a handful of studies had looked at the impacts of wildfires on coral reefs. None had examined the impact of an urban wildfire on coral reefs. Burned urban infrastructure can introduce chemically complex contaminants to the environment, and urban modifications to surface water and groundwater flow affect the transport of contaminants into the ocean. Our team measured a broad suite of water quality parameters including inorganic nutrients, trace metals, dissolved organic compounds, microbial community composition and abundance, and carbonate chemistry. We collected shoreline water samples across 9 sites within the Lahaina burn zone and at 2 distant control sites. In the year following the fire, we sampled across 7 time points including before, during, and after a major ‘first flush’ runoff event. In a complementary effort, we deployed 25 submerged sensors from November 2023 to February 2024. These sensors captured variation in salinity, temperature, current, and other parameters at 7 sites along the Lahaina coastline. The preliminary results of this study are informing our understanding of the impacts of urban wildfires on water quality and are contributing to our overall understanding of reef health in Lahaina.