Interview of Dr. Matthew J.

Keir by Amanda Jennings

(State of Hawaiʻi DLNR Botanist)

Amanda: First of all, do you believe, or have you seen evidence that humans have accelerated
the rate of climate change?

Dr. Keir: I have read reports that have documented evidence of that, yes.

Amanda: What effect does climate change have on rare and endangered plants in Hawaii?

Dr. Keir: So, climate change has a few effects already and we think that it will continue to.
Some of the main ways is with sea level rise, its going to affect coastal habitat. So, its going to
increase storm surge and increase the high-water mark and also lead to more catastrophic inland
flooding. So, that’s going to degrade some of the remaining coastal habitat. We also expect it to
shift the climate to be drier in some places and increased intense storms in others. So, that’s
going to have effects on plants through more intense storms and also drying and drought periods
are going to kill plants and change the environment.

Amanda: Can you think of specific areas on Oahu or one of the islands where plants have been
affected already?

Dr. Keir: I don’t think we can draw a direct correlation between what we’re seeing in the
landscape on a given day if a particular plant has died, as that is directly the result of climate
change. But, the increase in frequency of those things over time is going to be—were going to
get closer to being able to draw that correlation towards a general trend of climate change.

Amanda: How does the climate affect these plants? Are they just dying because of the heat and
dryness?

Dr. Keir: The plants will have a lot of changes in their environment. So, they’re going to have
increased storms and that’s just going to break plants and cause erosion and flooding and
rockslides, and it’s going to exacerbate those things and its going to be happening more
frequently. On the landscape, some of the climate changes is going to be a drying trend and a
reduction in the number of trade wind days. For example, we’ll be seeing on Oahu—well we
already see its trending down now, so it might turn out that that is related to climate change. So,
the drought tolerance or the number of days that a plant is able to go without water is going to be
exceeded. And then the number of days where there’s cloud cover over the mountains is
probably going to decrease. So, you’re going to have a lot more days where there’s intense
sunlight and maybe the plants that are very sunlit aren’t adapted to receiving that much sun.

Amanda: So, what can be done to lessen this impact on the plants?

Dr. Keir: The first thing we can do is pay attention to everything we do in our lives that
contributes to carbon emissions and global warming. And locally, what we can do is protect the
areas we have. Its only going to make the threats that are ongoing now, worse. So, there are
places that we can protect with fencing and there are restoration projects and wildfire prevention
things that we can do now and that’s going to help us to—well we need to allow nature to be
resilient and change on its own. So, as much as we can free it from the constraints that we put on
it with invasive species, the more likely we’ll see a better result.

Amanda: Do you think these plants can adapt fast enough to tolerate the changes and continue
to thrive?

Dr. Keir: I’m optimistic and I have faith that life will evolve and find ways to deal with it and
we’ll see the results of that with the change in the forest. It’s not going to look the same as it
does now, but we can do our best to put everything back on the landscape in places where we
think it might do well and then see what happens.

Amanda: So, for rising sea levels, do you think there’s still hope for the plants that are closer to
the seas, with the increased water surges?

Dr. Keir: I don’t know as much about that as I should. That exact typological modeling about
where the flooding is going to happen and how long the waters are going to stay there although,
in some places there are houses there and there’s development so where there are still native
plants along our beaches, they have nowhere to move and if people have to move to higher
places and plants have to move to higher places then there’s going to be some conflict there with
how we do conservation planning on less and less land in the future—how to prioritize for plants
when we need houses is our problem.
Amanda: So, with the work I’ve been doing for Lyon with the sub-culturing, how does that
benefit these plants?

Dr. Keir: Well, you’re preventing the extinction of a bunch of different species. There are
probably more plants of that species alive in that laboratory than there are out in the mountains in
the wild, so it’s a pretty special place to be able to contribute to that. So, because of the impact
of invasive species, some of the plant populations have declined so that there are only a few left
and those collections are made from those last plants and those are the ones you’ve been working
with. So, as you replicate them and make more and more, then that gives us the material we need
to go back and put it back up in the mountains. And sometimes we can make decisions, like
maybe we put it a little higher where it’s a little wetter to try to outpace and that’s called assisted
migration. And it’s something that we’re starting to talk about. How to we do that in the
landscape and move plants up? We can’t put them back in the mountains without the material
that’s at Lyon’s. That’s what you were doing.

Amanda: Although you don’t directly study climate change, how else do you see the effects of
it other than on plants?

Dr. Keir: I can see it when I talk to my eight-year old daughter. We both love to go walking in
the rain and things like that. When you talk about how there might be fewer rain days and
changes that I see out in the forest and trying to pass that along to her, I can recognize that there
actually are several examples of what I see throughout the day that are a lot different than they
will be for her. That’s been striking. And I like to go surfing and that’s going to change the reefs
and change the ocean a whole lot.

Amanda: Sorry, so back to the sub-culturing, are there other reasons that have caused those
plants to become so rare or endangered?

Dr. Keir: Yeah, they mostly center around the introduction of exotic species that become
invasive. There are big animals like pigs, goats, deer and sheep that directly trample and eat the
plants. There are introduced plant diseases like mildews and other kinds of fungal diseases that
weren’t in the islands but have come in rapidly in the last couple hundred years, so the plants
aren’t used to dealing with them. It’s like getting a cold that you’re not immune to. And there’s
also a breakdown in the mutualisms that plants have with animals. So, the birds and insects that
pollinate the flowers and the birds that disburse the seeds are mostly extinct. So, because of that
we see plants can get in-bred and they’re not as robust. And they don’t get disbursed all the time
and placed into new places. There are a lot of different reasons for the decline of those plants.

Amanda: Are there interactions between the plants themselves that cause their decline in
population? Or between different species of plants?

Dr. Keir: Certainly, with invasive species you see that.

Amanda: Is there anything between native plants?

Dr. Keir: Yes, they’re competing all the time. They’re fighting for space and water and light.
When one plant is in decline another can take its place. So, in a lot of places where there aren’t a
lot of weeds, but, for example, there are pigs or rats that eat seeds or mess up some areas of the
forest, you see a different set of native plants so they’re always fighting with each other for all
those resources.

Amanda: Can you think of specific species of plants that might be affected by climate change,
either directly or indirectly?

Dr. Keir: So that link I sent you to that really long research report, it lists a whole bunch of
different ways they can be impacted in there. One of the examples they give is on the very, very
top of the northern Koʻolau mountains, it’s the wettest area on Oahu. It’s above Hauʻula or if you
go from Haleʻiwa way straight to the top of the mountains, until you’re overlooking Lāʻie, it’s a
big flattish summit plain and it’s really, really wet. So, they think that when you’re at the tops of
the mountain and if there’s a drying trend, where the dry forest starts to move up to the middle
and the middle forest gets a little drier and the wet forest gets a little drier, everything pushes up
and, on an island, they have nowhere else to go. So, there’s a whole bunch of habitat up there
that’s really unique, it’s blasted by the wind and there are some plants that only live there so we
think that there won’t be any more habitat for those species. There’s about three or four of them
that are on that list.

Amanda: So, I’m taking AP Environmental Science and we’ve been going over how on islands,
species are even more at risk of becoming endangered because it’s an isolated habitat.
Dr. Keir: Yes, exactly. 90% of our flowering plants only exist in Hawaii. It’s one of those high
rate of endemism on islands.

Amanda: That’s all the questions I can think of for now. Thank you!