Postdoctoral Fellowship: PRFB: I ka wa ma mua: Looking to the past to understand ecosystem dynamics

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2024, Broadening Participation of Groups Underrepresented in Biology. The Fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow that will increase the participation of groups underrepresented in biology. Agricultural expansion and urbanization have transformed how nutrients cycle and accumulate in the landscape which has had ecological and social consequences.

Restoring Indigenous socio-ecological systems (SES) could mitigate harmful nutrient accumulation and enhance the health and value of the ecosystem. The Fellow will use a two-eyed seeing approach to study ecosystem changes in Indigenous SES undergoing restoration. Two-eyed seeing incorporates conventional and Indigenous lenses to generate understanding beyond what either approach could determine independently.

This research will set a strong foundation for scientific advancement in understanding ecosystem change, and biology more broadly, and will also support culturally grounded research that elevates expertise of future scholars from diverse backgrounds.

The Native Hawaiian proverb I ka wā ma mua, i ka wā ma hope – moving forward into the future with eyes to the past suggests that the solutions to current social and ecological issues may exist in ancestral knowledge. Yet few studies have investigated nutrient dynamics during and after the restoration of Indigenous SES and the implications of cultural restoration for ecosystem services.

The Fellow will explore nutrient dynamics in Hawaiʻi where past plantation agriculture and urbanization have modified nutrient exchange across the landscape. Current initiatives to restore Indigenous SES make Hawaiʻi ideal for evaluating the effect of restoration on nutrient exchange at local and regional scales. Aim 1 will quantify spatiotemporal nutrient dynamics in SES using conventional and Indigenous observation techniques.

Aim 2 will generate a predictive model for primary productivity and nutrient dynamics that integrates remotely sensed and field data across diverse landscapes. This research will develop a scalable, transferable framework to enrich our understanding of nutrient dynamics and provide insight into the potential for Indigenous SES to harness modern nutrient regimes to enhance ecosystem services worldwide.

The Fellow will organize workshops for postdoctoral scholars and graduate students in biology to explore opportunities to incorporate cultural knowledge into their research. The Fellow will also mentor undergraduate students from the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander community through the Research Experience for Undergraduates: Environmental Biology for Pacific Islanders.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.