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The trade winds here certainly establish the weather here, sorry to be unclear about that. And the windward sides of all shores typically, but not always, receive a great deal of rainfall. The problem is in the not always. . .
Much of that has to due by the relative lapse rate of the atmosphere in a given area. Lapse rate is the measure by which the rate of a column of rising heated air cools AS it rises. It is the principle mechanism in cloud formation.
To make a long long complicated drawn out story short--if you clear a trees a great deal, and put in a lot of hot heat absorbing infrastructure, buildings and roads, and relatively hot heat absorbing surfaces like crop land, you create a circumstance in which the hot rising air rises so rapidly that condensation does not occur in a timely manner. The trade winds simply blow the rain clean away and from the island. That's an unfair and oversimple model, but the basic mechanism. No cloud formation, no rain. The whole near everyday pattern of clouds forming in lower Puna and marching up the hill has a real possibility to be disrupted. Not eliminated of course, but I don't suspect that permanent "drought" conditions of 30 percent or less rainfall could be expected. A study is really in order on the issue.
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Ah! So, JWFITZ, if I understand you correctly then you are saying there is a tipping point for any island at which cutting down some unknown percentage of the forest and replacing transpiring trees with either sub/urbania &/or groundcrops switches off the cloud-formation mechanism?
Now, that would be a problem.
By the way, thanks for mentioning about pressure-cooking and frying in oil rendering taro nontoxic (at least in terms of oxalic acid content). I wonder what the mechanism is behind that? Probably it actually is heat decomposing the toxin. A note I found online says "Oxalic acid decomposes at 189.5 C" ...which is 373.1 F if I did the conversion correctly. In Fahrenheit water at STP boils at 212 and the average veggie oil boils/smokes at about 400 (peanut oil at 440), so that all computes for oxalic acid decomposing in boiling oil, but is a bit unclear with regard to pressure cooking. A couple online refs say the average pressure cooker creates a 257 F steam-permeated environment inside the chamber, but if I understand correctly then as long as steam is still escaping from the pressure valve the temperature should not exceed 257 F. The difference between 257 F and the temperature at which oxalic acid decomposes being 116.1 F, a considerable amount, it does not seem clear that pressure-cooking should actually decompose the toxin. Yet you say it does, and experimental evidence trumps theory every time, so.....
Sources for figures:
http://www.angelfire.com/space/smatters/broccoli.html
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Home-Cooking-...iquids.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_cooking
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Astonishing skill! This archer is a real-life Legolas and then some!
http://geekologie.com/2013/11/real-life-...rs-anc.php
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Damon, thanks for directing our attention to the excellent summary on the history of rice in Hawaii, "Reign of Rice" by Wanda A. Adams at
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/articl...taste.html
Clearly, rice can be grown and has been grown here in quantity until economic factors shifted land use patterns. I was in Waikiki just a few days ago and am startled to learn that Waikiki was once the best rice cultivation area on Oahu. No longer -nor evermore, I'd think.
I wonder if a map exists showing the locations of rice fields on the Big Island in 1907 when "rice plantings covered 9,400 watery acres" and "42 million pounds of rice was produced"? Probably the Big Island's rice fields were located right where hotels and houses are sited now. The currently fallow old cane fields are most likely where intensive starch production (whether rice, taro, potatoes, cassava, or whatever) will need to be undertaken if necessity demands. Ripping out buildings to plant starches is just not going to happen as long as tourists are coming to the Hawaiian Islands, and it probably would not be possible to do so by hand without D-9s even if one wanted to do so should the coastal resort hotels ever turn into abandoned ruins.
A terracing and irrigation system, though, seems like it would much more do-able if necessity requires or if potential profit prompts. Such may become cost-effective. Worldwide, the average price of food has tripled in the last 12 months.
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Astonishing skill! This archer is a real-life Legolas and then some!
http://geekologie.com/2013/11/real-life-...rs-anc.php
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I have no idea whether the mechanism may be linear or as you say has a "tipping" point. Probably both. What is certain is that cleared land and even agricultural land is absolutely no substitute for forest. It makes no difference whether that forest is ohia or albezia. In fact, albezia is probably better, from a climatic point of view. It's important to realize that if you take a forested price of land, cut the trees down, regardless of what they are, and put in the s****iest organic garden, you've done irrevocable damage to the climate and Hawaiian ecosystem. There is no way to put any other spin on it. As well, there is is a limit to how much abuse the island can bear. I'm a voice crying in the wilderness on this issue, and have no confidence that these changes won't happen, in fact I'm counting on it. At some point you will get markedly less cloud formation.
Think of vegetation volumetric ally rather than in terms of simple area. A forested acre of albezia is near a cube of vegetation, with trees nearly 100 feet high. A acre of lawn is only 1/1000 times as much with volume, being six inches. Not exactly, or even close, but I think that may illustrate the point.
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Now THAT was a very odd word to get blocked, any guesses out there on what it was?
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I think the blocked word probably is forshizzilist (as it applies to organic gardning).
I buy your "tipping point" theory fizz, but Pele has paved most of lower Puna in the last few hundred years and the forest has regenerated very nicely (in the absence of invasives). So unless we turn the entire district into a "forshizzle" organic garden all at once, I see the trades drenching the windward side, and us Puna Makai humans growing food with and without soil as we have done for centuries.
Back to the "tipping point"; isn't this one of the schools of thought pertaining to the non forrestation of Easter Island?
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"Back to the "tipping point"; isn't this one of the schools of thought pertaining to the non forrestation of Easter Island?"
Greg, you may have a chance to ask a renowned expert the question later this very evening. Please forgive the crosspost, but in case you missed the time-sensitive note Carey put up in a thread on palms here it is again:
Carey wrote:
Dr. Dransfield from the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in England will have a talk on "What's new in Madagascar? Recent Palm Discoveries" tonight at 7pm at UCB 100 at the University.
(Of course the Pahoa bus will get you there & back for FREE!, so why not?)
AlaskaSteven added:
'Yal are so fortunate! I so wish I was there to attend tonight's talk- this fellow really knows his topic and has great stories.
If there is a Q&A session then someone please do ask Dr. Dransfield what lessons he thinks the colorful saga of the Easter Island palm (Paschalococos disperta) holds for the Big Island, and then share a summary of his remarks with us via Punaweb, please.
Does UH record these talks and make them available later?
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Astonishing skill! This archer is a real-life Legolas and then some!
http://geekologie.com/2013/11/real-life-...rs-anc.php
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Forshizzle!
I don't mean to overly berate organic gardening or anything else--except its important to shed any variety of tunnel vision and ignore the larger repercussions of ones actions.
Sure, Pele has been doing some paving, and so has Walmart, and there are a lot of new 3000 square foot McMansions down there. All of the above have an effect. Let me point out, however, that the last time Puna was denuded in masse like it is threatened to be, the world was near 1 degree c. cooler. Small things matter, and there is a serious watchword of caution.
Or so I think. I bought property a way up the hill because of that, as I've got cooler temperatures in general and rain in abundance, or at least so far!
135 Lau Lau's later... after about 6 hours of hard work... 5 adults and 5 kids just produced enough food for 135 people.... Well minus the rice.
Damn I'm tired.
Everything caught or raised[  ]
And these were meaty buggahs! Pork, Beef and Butterfish!
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Rally For the Plan
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My gut reaction is that if the deforestation/precipitation link is valid, which I think it is to some degree, that Pele is doing more than people are. It really is hard to compete with a volcano when it comes to paving.
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