News & Events

January 29, 2019

2019 Tropical HTIRC Advisory Meeting

The annual advisory committee meeting of the Tropical HTIRC was held January 28-29, 2019 at the USDA Forest Service Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry in Hilo, Hawai‘i. The meeting brought together scientists and managers for a day of scientific presentations in Hilo addressing issues in restoration of native Hawai‘i forest species including koa, ʻōhiʻa and sandalwood. This was followed by a full day field tour to visit koa plantation research and old-growth natural forests at Keanakolu.

Agenda for Monday, January 28, 2019.  


--9:00-10:00am – Welcome.  D. Jacobs

—Introductions

—Tropical HTIRC staffing 

—Update on current projects and future work – D. Jacobs

--Progeny tests (MS student, PU)

--Seed library

--Cold tolerance (MS student, PU; post-doc, PU)

--Ecophysiology and population adaptiveness (post-docs, PU)

--Nursery propagation and soils (new MS student, UH)

--Clonal propagation (post-docs, PU, UH)

--Thinning and silvicultural systems

--Weed control and koa phytotoxicity

--Community-led forest management (PhD student, PU)

--Ohia disease resistance

--Sandalwood ecology

—Communications and website re-development

—Open discussion / collaborations

--10:00am-11:00am – Updates from partners.  DOFAW, HARC, USFS, UH, For Sol, Akaka, etc.

--11:00am-11:30am – Community-managed forests.  R. O’Hara

—Rebekah’s PhD project proposal

--11:30am-12:00pm – Adaptive and phenotypic plasticity in koa populations.  A. Sugiyama

—Anna’s post-doctoral project proposal

--12:00pm-1:00pm – LUNCH

--1:00pm-1:15pm – Cold tolerance of koa populations.  L. Ayala

—Lilian’s MS project proposal

--1:15pm-1:30-pm – Plantation thinning.  O. Burney.  

—New study at Pu‘u Wa‘awa‘a on thinning for timber and conservation  

--1:30pm-1:45pm - Clonal propagation – grafting.  K. Rose

--1:45pm-2:00pm - Clonal propagation – vegetative propagation.  A. Youkhana. 

--2:00pm-2:15pm – Koa disease resistance – update from HARC.  N. Dudley 

--2:15pm-2:30pm – Koa disease resistance – update from UH.  J. Keach 

--2:30pm-2:45pm – Sandalwood biology and ecology.  I. Sprecher

—State of knowledge, current projects, and future needs

--2:45pm-3:00pm Rapid Ōhiʻa Death.  JB Friday and C. Giardina. 

—Updates on ROD and disease resistance screening

--3:00pm-4:00pm – Koa growth modeling.  N. Koch et al.

—Koa inventory and growth modeling – opportunities and what is missing.

—Forest carbon protocols and relevance to growth modeling.  P. Cheng

--4:00pm-4:30pm - Open discussion

—New project priorities

—Partnerships / collaborations

—Funding opportunities