Honu'apo Park Resource Management Plan

September 28, 2009
geometrician
A S S O C I A T E S , L L C
integrating geographic science and planning
phone: (808) 969-7090 PO Box 396 Hilo Hawai i 96721 rterry@hawaii.rr.com
Bruce Tsuchida, Principal
Townscape Development
Via email
Cc: Agnes Topp
Dear Mr. Tsuchida:
Subject: Additional Botanical Data, Honuapo Resource Management Plan, Ka‘u,
Island of Hawai‘i
This letter is to provide some information on our botanical investigations of Honuapo to
supplement the information on the Kawā to Honuapo area provided in our previous submittals.
On September 15, biologist Pat Hart and I visited the site to make more detailed biological
investigations than those we had done for the broader planning area, including delineation of
general vegetation zones, 100 percent pedestrian surveys of some areas and full plant species
lists.
Based on this reconnaissance and earlier ones, as well as studies of airphotos, we were able to
classify the area into six basic vegetation types, as shown schematically on the attached
annotated airphoto. These are Lava Flow, Mixed Alien Shrub and Grass, Guinea Grass, Coastal
Strand, Pond Fringe, and Developed County Park.
As much of the Honuapo property is clearly completely covered in alien scrub vegetation and
grass with almost no native species, we focused on areas that had a higher potential for natives.
We concentrated on four specific areas:
• Shoreline zone in the northern half of the property
• Hiona‘a ‘a‘a lava flow
• Honuapo estuary
• Developed County park area
We covered almost the entire surface within each of the areas above, except for the lava flow,
over which we did a number of transects. In general, we found nothing unexpected,