A Pitt Momentum Funds grant is supporting research on land stewardship in Maui

Under a Pitt Momentum Funds Priming Grant and funding from the Carnegie Museum of Natural of History, Tomas Matza and Nicole Heller have been studying the culture, history, climate change and management surrounding the land in Maui, which a tragic wildfire thrust into the international limelight in August.

Matza, associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Anthropology in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, and Heller, a Carnegie Museum of Natural History conservation ecologist affiliated with the Dietrich School’s Climate and Global Change Center, are conducting social-ecological research about contemporary land stewardship in Maui, with an emphasis on how Hawaiian biocultural knowledge is being merged with Western conservation. They are particularly interested in how this combination is helping people reduce vulnerability to the interacting threats of climate change — such as drought, sea-level rise, storm events — and the legacies of the plantation-era land management — invasive species, water scarcity, environmental injustice, food insecurity and wildfire.

Social and ecological vulnerabilities are entangled, according to the researchers. “And solutions in, say, environmental management cannot be considered without acknowledging and addressing the history of land dispossession in Hawaii. Conversely, economic development on the islands cannot be separated from the ecological issues of restoring water flows or managing invasive species. … We can see how vulnerabilities interact in the recent tragedy in Lahaina, where Anthropocene risks — climate change, drought, invasive grasses, poor infrastructure — came together with colonial history to produce this devastating fire.”