Modeling Hydrologic Impacts of Land Cover Changes to the Keauhou Aquifer

The island of Hawaii is continually changing. As economic and agricultural growth in Hawaii continues, the island’s hydrology is altered. A geoprocessing tool was created to allow land managers to model how their proposed land cover changes will alter the recharge rates of an area of interest. The system dynamically produces raster outputs that visually show the alteration of Hawaii\u27s current land cover to a proposed new land cover based upon an area of interest specified by the user. In addition, the user is able to model the impacts that the proposed land cover changes will have on the hydrology of a region in the context of different climate change scenarios. The system was produced for the Redlands Institute as the engine behind a web GIS that they will create