Here, we expand on the term "ecomimicry" to be an umbrella concept for an approach to adaptive ecosystem-based management of social-ecological systems that simultaneously optimizes multiple ecosystem services for the benefit of people and place. In this context, we define ecomimicry as a strategy for developing and managing cultural landscapes, built upon a deep understanding of the structure and function of ecosystems, that harnesses ecosystem processes for the purpose of balancing and sustaining key ecosystem services, rather than maximizing one service (e.g., food production) to the detriment of others. Ecomimicry arises through novel, place-based innovations or is adopted from elsewhere and adapted to local conditions. Similarly, precontact Hawaiian socialecological systems integrated a variety of ecomimicry schema to engender a complex system of adaptive resource management that enhanced biocultural diversity and supported resilient food systems, ultimately sustaining a thriving human population. In addition to presenting a synopsis of how ecomimicry was employed in the design and management of Hawaiian social-ecological systems, we identify and characterize specific ecomimicry applications. Within this context, we explore a revival of ecomimicry for biological conservation, biocultural restoration, resilience, and food security. We conclude with a discussion of how revitalizing such an approach in the restoration of social-ecological systems may address issues of conservation and sustainability in the Anthropocene.

A major challenge for coral reef conservation and management is understanding how a wide range of interacting human and natural drivers cumulatively impact and shape these ecosystems. Despite the importance of understanding these interactions, a methodological framework to synthesize spatially explicit data of such drivers is lacking. To fill this gap, we established a transferable data synthesis methodology to integrate spatial data on environmental and anthropogenic drivers of coral reefs, and applied this methodology to a case study location–the Main Hawaiian Islands (MHI). Environmental drivers were derived from time series (2002–2013) of climatological ranges and anomalies of remotely sensed sea surface temperature, chlorophyll-a, irradiance, and wave power. Anthropogenic drivers were characterized using empirically derived and modeled datasets of spatial fisheries catch, sedimentation, nutrient input, new development, habitat modification, and invasive species. Within our case study system, resulting driver maps showed high spatial heterogeneity across the MHI, with anthropogenic drivers generally greatest and most widespread on O‘ahu, where 70% of the state’s population resides, while sedimentation and nutrients were dominant in less populated islands. Together, the spatial integration of environmental and anthropogenic driver data described here provides a first-ever synthetic approach to visualize how the drivers of coral reef state vary in space and demonstrates a methodological framework for implementation of this approach in other regions of the world. By quantifying and synthesizing spatial drivers of change on coral reefs, we provide an avenue for further research to understand how drivers determine reef diversity and resilience, which can ultimately inform policies to protect coral reefs.

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Increasing development in tropical regions provides new economic opportunities that can improve livelihoods, but it threatens the functional integrity and ecosystem services provided by terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems when conducted unsustainably. Given the small size of many islands, communities may have limited opportunities to replace loss and damage to the natural resources upon which they depend for ecosystem service provisioning, thus heightening the need for proactive, integrated management. This study quantifies the effectiveness of management strategies, stipulated in logging codes-of-practice, at minimizing soil erosion and sediment runoff as clearing extent increases, using Kolombangara Island, Solomon Islands as a case study. Further, we examine the ability of erosion reduction strategies to maintain sustainable soil erosion rates and reduce potential downstream impacts to drinking water and environmental water quality. We found that increasing land clearing-even with best management strategies in place-led to unsustainable levels of soil erosion and significant impacts to downstream water quality, compromising the integrity of the land for future agricultural uses, consistent access to clean drinking water, and important downstream ecosystems. Our results demonstrate that in order to facilitate sustainable development, logging codes of practice must explicitly link their soil erosion reduction strategies to soil erosion and downstream water quality thresholds, otherwise they will be ineffective at minimizing the impacts of logging activities. The approach taken here to explicitly examine soil erosion rates and downstream water quality in relation to best management practices and increasing land clearing should be applied more broadly across a range of ecosystems to inform decision-making about the socioeconomic and environmental trade-offs associated with logging, and other types of land use change.

There are growing efforts around the world to restore biocultural systems that produce food while also providing additional cultural and ecological benefits. Yet, there are few examples of integrated assessments of these efforts, impeding understanding of how they can contribute to multi-level sustainability goals. In this study, we collaborated with a community-based non-profit in He‘eia, O‘ahu to evaluate future scenarios of traditional wetland and flooded field system agriculture (lo‘i kalo; taro fields) restoration in terms of locally-relevant cultural, ecological, and economic outcomes as well as broader State of Hawai‘i sustainability goals around food, energy, and water. Families participating in the biocultural restoration program described a suite of community and cultural benefits stemming from the process of restoration, including enhanced social connections, cultural (re)connections to place, and physical and mental well-being, which inspired their sustained participation. We also found benefits in terms of local food production that have the potential to provide economic returns and energy savings over time, particularly when carried out through a hybrid non-profit and family management model. These benefits were coupled with potential changes in sediment and nutrient retention with implications for water quality and the health of an important downstream fish pond (loko i‘a) and coral reef social-ecological system. Compared with the current land cover (primarily invasive grasses), results suggest that full restoration of lo‘i kalo would decrease sediment export by ~38%, but triple nitrogen export due to organic fertilizer additions. However, compared with an urban scenario, there were clear benefits of agricultural restoration in terms of reduced nitrogen and sediment runoff. In combination, our results demonstrate that a biocultural approach can support the social and financial sustainability of agricultural systems that provide multiple benefits valued by the local community and non-profit while also contributing to statewide sustainability goals.

With growing calls to scale up reforestation efforts worldwide, conservation managers increasingly must decide whether and how to restore highly altered ecosystems. However, empirical research on potential trade‐offs remains scarce. We use a Hawai'i watershed to demonstrate a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach to identifying synergies and trade‐offs associated with maintaining an unrestored forest, versus restoration to a historical or hybrid (native and non‐native plant species) state. We focused on restoration scenarios designed by conservation managers and measured ecological, hydrologic, and cultural outcomes they identified as important metrics of success. The hybrid restoration scenario maximized potential outcomes at moderate cost, and increased two rarely measured but often critical metrics to managers and communities: cultural value and resilience to disturbance. Hybrid restoration approaches developed collaboratively can provide a viable option for scaling up restoration in island ecosystems and other contexts where invasive species pose significant challenges and/or where community support is important.

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Coral reefs provide numerous ecosystem goods and services, but are threatened by multiple environmental and anthropogenic stressors. To identify management scenarios that will reverse or mitigate ecosystem degradation, managers can benefit from tools that can quantify projected changes in ecosystem services due to alternative management options. We used a spatially-explicit biophysical ecosystem model to evaluate socio-ecological trade-offs of land-based vs. marine-based management scenarios, and local-scale vs. global-scale stressors and their cumulative impacts. To increase the relevance of understanding ecological change for the public and decision-makers, we used four ecological production functions to translate the model outputs into the ecosystem services: "State of the Reef," "Trophic Integrity," "Fisheries Production," and "Fisheries Landings." For a case study of Maui Nui, Hawai'i, land-based management attenuated coral cover decline whereas fisheries management promoted higher total fish biomass. Placement of no-take marine protected areas (MPAs) across 30% of coral reef areas led to a reversal of the historical decline in predatory fish biomass, although this outcome depended on the spatial arrangement of MPAs. Coral cover declined less severely under strict sediment mitigation scenarios. However, the benefits of these local management scenarios were largely lost when accounting for climate-related impacts. Climate-related stressors indirectly increased herbivore biomass due to the shift from corals to algae and, hence, greater food availability. The two ecosystem services related to fish biomass increased under climate-related stressors but "Trophic Integrity" of the reef declined, indicating a less resilient reef. "State of the Reef" improved most and "Trophic Integrity" declined least under an optimistic global warming scenario and strict local management. This work provides insight into the relative influence of land-based vs. marine-based management and local vs. global stressors as drivers of changes in ecosystem dynamics while quantifying the tradeoffs between conservation-and extraction-oriented ecosystem services.