Laukahi Commonsa Hoʻōla ʻĀina FY27 proposal

Five questions. One commons.

Every restoration project in Hawaiʻi asks the same questions about native plant material — where to collect, when, what, how long it keeps, and who grows it. The Laukahi Commons answers them once, for everyone: built by the network, owned by the State, open-licensed so it can never be lost.

Photographs: the iNaturalist community — hover any image for credit
reading the shared laukahi database3,334 plant names on record13,821 occurrence points61 documents in the library866 searchable passages4,717 phenology observations91 protected areas mapped
Preparing the flyover…

Live from the database

Four ways into the same map

Every map on this page is interactive — zoom, drag, hover for names, toggle layers — and every layer is read live from the shared Laukahi database. Each one opens a workflow.

Protected & managed lands

Where collection and restoration are already stewarded

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Where do I collect? →

Occurrence records

Thousands of georeferenced plant records, drawn as points

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What do I collect? →

The plants themselves

What all of this is for

A live, searchable window into iNaturalist's research-grade record of Hawaiʻi's native plants — every photograph credited, every card linking to its observation. This is the community record the commons is built to serve.

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The idea

Infrastructure for everyone else's acres

The Green Fee will fund restoration across every island. Each of those projects needs the same knowledge — landowner access, seed zones, fruiting windows, collection gaps, storage behavior, nursery capacity — and today that knowledge lives in scattered agencies, PDFs, and the memories of veteran collectors.

A commons is the one project type whose impact multiplies across the rest of the portfolio. It doesn't compete with on-the-ground work; it makes every on-the-ground dollar go further, this year and for decades.

One shared databaseopen data · open codeWhere?When?What?How long?Who?

The workflows

So you want to collect native plants…

Each workflow is a question a practitioner actually asks, with the datasets and tools to answer it on one screen. Nothing on this page is a mockup: Live now means running today on the new laukahi.org infrastructure; Built by this proposal means exactly what it says.

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Live nowBuilt by this proposalWith named partner
I

Every collection begins with land: who owns it, what protections cover it, which seed zone it sits in.

Partly live
  • Protected Planet / WDPA boundariesLive now
  • WorldClim bioclimatic layersLive now
  • ʻŌhiʻa seed zones (with GeoJSON service)Live now
  • HRPRG population reference zonesLive now
  • Major landowner & access layerBuilt by this proposal
  • Statewide seed zones, all speciesBuilt by this proposal
II

Fruit doesn't wait. Phenology — assembled from herbarium sheets, field observations, and community records — tells you the window.

Partly live
  • Phenology tables & collection-window engineLive now
  • Herbarium phenology (UH partnership)With named partner
  • Field observations (PEPP, VINE)With named partner
  • Research publications (HRPRG)Live now
  • Community science (iNaturalist)Built by this proposal
III

Species selection is a gap question: what does this place need, what is already banked, what does restoration actually use.

Partly live
  • GBIF occurrence recordsLive now
  • Species & taxon recordsLive now
  • Ex situ collection gap analysisBuilt by this proposal
  • Workhorse restoration species listBuilt by this proposal
IV

Storage behavior and re-collection intervals decide whether a seed collection is an asset or a countdown.

Built by this proposal
  • Storage behavior & re-collection intervalsWith named partner
  • Viability modeling toolsetBuilt by this proposal
V

Material has to move: from collector to nursery to outplanting crew. The network is the map.

Built by this proposal
  • Organizations & staffing recordsLive now
  • Nursery & grower directoryBuilt by this proposal
  • Material request & offer boardBuilt by this proposal

The precedent

Governments already fund commons like this

Australia's Biosecurity Commons is a cloud platform of peer-reviewed workflows — risk mapping, spread modelling, surveillance design — that lets researchers and agencies answer biosecurity questions without code or specialist hardware.

It is jointly funded by the Australian and Queensland governments with the Australian Research Data Commons, and government treats it as national infrastructure, not a website: shared data, repeatable methods, one workspace for every agency and partner. The Laukahi Commons applies the same architecture to Hawaiʻi's native plant material — with an advantage Australia had to construct: here, the governing network already exists.

Trusted, shared dataPeer-reviewed workflowsOne workspace for every agency→ decisions anyone can repeat and verify
  • Workflows, not portalsOrganized around practitioner questions, with data and methods behind each one.
  • Government co-investmentFunded as shared infrastructure by national and state agencies together.
  • Trusted, open methodsPeer-reviewed, repeatable analyses every partner can rely on and verify.

Governance

Owned by the State. Open for good. Run by the network.

Each step below is stated plainly in the proposal — and the sequence is the point: ownership, openness, operation, and an asset no staffing change can lose.

State owns itworks made for hire — no exceptionsOpen-licensedMIT code · CC-BY data, permanentlyNetwork operatesLaukahi runs and fills it under contractAnyone can carry itno single operator can lose it

Owned by the State of Hawaiʻi

All work product is delivered as works made for hire under the contract's standard General Conditions — no exceptions requested. The Commons is the State's asset from day one.

Open-licensed, permanently

Code released under MIT, data under CC-BY. Open licensing is the State's insurance policy: no staffing change, vendor change, or server migration can ever lose what the Green Fee paid for.

Operated by Laukahi

The Hawaiʻi Plant Conservation Network runs the Commons under contract, keeps the data living, and trains members to contribute — and because everything is open, the State or any member could pick it up tomorrow.

The roadmap

Two years, staged

Eight quarters, each workflow landing where its data is ready — map layers first, the assembled phenology record carrying the second year.

Year 1 · 2027Year 2 · 2028Where — full map layersWhat — gap analysisPhenology assemblyWhen — collection calendarHow long — per-species guidanceWho — directory & boardHandover-ready, in the open
  • Year 1 · 2027

    Where & What go live; the pipes start filling

    Landowner and statewide seed-zone layers join the running map stack; collection gap analysis reads the network's inventories; phenology assembly begins from herbarium sheets and field crews. First member cohort onboarded and trained.

  • Year 2 · 2028

    When, How long, Who — and handover-ready

    The collection calendar ships from the assembled phenology record; storage behavior and re-collection guidance go per-species; the grower directory and material board open with the members. Documentation, training corpus, and open licensing leave the Commons able to survive any single operator.

The network

Partners, island by island

The organizations already doing this work across the archipelago — read live from the shared database. The Commons doesn't invent a network; it gives this one shared infrastructure.

The partner network

And after plants

The workflow engine underneath is not specific to plants. When the State is ready, wetlands, wildfire, and watershed programs can federate onto the same commons — same data discipline, same open license, same map.

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The same canvas, waiting for more programs — drawn live from the shared database