Award: OCE-2345201

Coral reefs support coastal communities by providing food, protecting shorelines, and sustaining local economies, yet they are increasingly threatened by human activities and extreme events. In August 2023, an urban wildfire occurred adjacent to coral reef ecosystems in Lahaina, West Maui, Hawaiʻi, creating an urgent need to understand how such disturbances affect coastal water quality and reef health. This project provided an opportunity to document environmental conditions post-wildfire and subsequent rainfall events.

This project produced the first high resolution measurements of seawater chemistry, trace metals, microbiology and ecosystem metabolism following a major urban wildfire directly adjacent to a coral reef. By deploying field instruments and collecting water samples across multiple time periods, the project documented short term changes in coastal water quality linked to ash deposition, runoff, and potentially altered watershed processes. These observations revealed that wildfire impacted materials (i.e., ash, soil, urban infrastructure) can be rapidly transported from land to reef environments, influencing seawater chemistry and biological processes over short timescales.The resulting datasets establish a baseline for evaluating future disturbance events and contribute to a growing understanding of how acute disturbances interact with existing environmental stressors in coastal systems.

Critically, this work advances our scientific understanding of how sudden terrestrial disturbances affect nearshore marine ecosystems. While the impacts of storms and floods on coral reefs are relatively well studied, the effects of urban wildfires on coral reefs are poorly understood. This project filled a critical knowledge gap by integrating chemical, physical, and biological measurements across multiple spatial (hours to months) and temporal (m to km) scales. The methods and framework developed through this work are transferable to other coastal regions that may experience similar disturbances, supporting broader scientific efforts to assess ecosystem responses to extreme events.

Beyond advancing scientific knowledge, this project directly supported coastal resource management and community recovery efforts. The findings were shared with local resource managers, community organizations, and decision makers to help inform post fire response strategies and long-term watershed management. As extreme events become more frequent, this project demonstrates how timely, place based science can inform recovery efforts, support coastal stewardship, and improve preparedness for future disturbances. 

 

 

Last Modified: 01/28/2026
Modified by: Andrea K Kealoha