As an intern for Professors Karen Seto and Marian Chertow’s NSF-funded exploratory research project, Human-Nature Interactions in an Urbanized Island Setting: Hilo and Kailua-Kona, Hawaii as Model Socio-Ecological Systems, I will study the dynamics of land-use and land-cover change using satellite remote sensing methods of the two cities, Hilo and Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii.
The project goal, as described by Karen Seto’s project description, is to characterize the spatial and temporal changes in urban area and land-use in Hilo and Kailua-Kona over the last forty years. Have these cities developed along agricultural fringes? What types of land have been converted to urban uses? Agricultural land loss due to urban encroachment is prevalent in large cities (Seto et al. 2000), but do the same patterns emerge with smaller cities?