Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 33, Number 3, 1 March 2016 — Native silverswords on the decline [ARTICLE]

Native silverswords on the decline

Haleakalā's ieonie silversword population is being threatened by climate change, according to a University of Hawai'i Mānoa researcher. The native plant is not found anywhere else. After comparing 80 years of data on temperature changes, precipitation and solar radiation, Paul Krushelnycky from UH's Department of Plant and Environmental Protection and co-researchers found that silversword numbers have declined by 60 percent since 1990. That time period coincides with lower rainfall in the area, possibly as a result of trade wind inversion that keeps the silverswords above the cloud line on most days. This is not the first time that the silversword population has faced a significant decline, but careful management and protection from Haleakalā National Park helped bring numbers back up. "The long-term data set shows that the silversword populahon ean rebound and grow quite quickly, as it did before when it was protected from threats," Krushelnycky pointed out. However, at that time, lower rainfall was not an issue. Krushelnycky's report "Change in trade wind inversion frequency implicated in the decline of an alpine plant" is available at http:// climatechangeresponses.biomedcentral.com/articles/10. 1 186/ s40665-0 1 6-00 15-2.