You get up to 5 Geocache points for answering the following questions:

1. After reading this lecture, What is the most interesting thing you discovered about Hawaii and why?

2. Briefly describe the land/sea breeze cycle in Hawaii. This explains this natural air conditioning process helps make Hawaii the tropical paradise “in the land where palm trees sway?

3. Describe the wet/windward and dry/leeward trade wind related orographic uplifting process on the islands. Why is Honolulu almost always sunny, while Kailua or Manoa is wet and Humid? Send these to my Email.

Notes on Location and mental maps

What follows are three non-traditional maps of the Hawaiian Islands.

All of them place the islands in a global relational of functional context or “circumstance”. In this case the Physical region is the North Central Pacific Ocean. Because of the cultural connections to some of the Islands in the South Pacific, it is also in the Cultural region known as Polynesia.

Image from padi.com

So where is Hawaii? One place is very definitely an exact distance from some place else, and this LOCATION is real and fixed on a place on the globe. However it is not that simple. Location is also relative to other locations. Hawaii is FAR away from the mainland continents, and the islands are also disconnected from each other! They are separated into their own little worlds! The only way to travel here is via airplane, or perhaps boat.

Measuring the world in kilometers or miles is a totally useless form of conceiving of distances or space, when it comes to anything much further than we can see. Our ability to comprehend distances of any scale is limited. We simply cannot conceive of these huge global distances. Thus in order to conceptualize, we must think in terms of relative size or distance. “Japan is about the size of California” “If you are in Hawaii then you are much closer to Tokyo than to Washington DC.”

In the real world, any intervening physical barrier will limit connectivity and travel. For example if there is a mountain or river between you and your goal, it is actually much harder to get there, and may take much longer to get to than some place much farther away. A place that is farther away across a wide open plain may be reached sooner than a place over the mountain only a few miles away. Then there is connection, for example does a road or a plane route take you there directly? Sometimes yes, sometimes not at all. Distance is just one factor. However, the further something is away from somewhere else in general the longer it potentially takes to get there, and the less we are connected.

We thus prefer to think in terms of the time it takes to get from one place to another. This is entirely dependent on the means and mode of transportation, (for example walking, verses using a car to travel to the same place). Thus connectivity is very important.

Distance is better measured in time difference between the point of origin and the destination. Of course that depends on the form of transportation; walking, bus, airplane, and whether you are 7 years old. Remember the last time you travelled and you wondered “are we there yet?” “As the crow flies”… is an old fashioned statement about the relative distances between two points that emphasizes the disconnect on the ground. “you can’t get there from here” is even more revealing, in the sense that there may be no feasible/practical connection from one place to the other place at all.

Geography and travel is also very subjective, in the sense that we do not control the connection or external time variations. There may be seasonal variations, or the bridge may not exist across a waterway. Then there is the complicated psychological navigation process… Imagine navigating/travelling the distance from home to a familiar shopping area, no problem. Now think of it on a rainy day or in a traffic jam. It seems much more difficult. However, with a cute friend along side you the distance may seem very short. Also if we are knowledgeable or have heard of the place we may be willing to go there even if it is further away. Somewhere far away may be foreign, or it may be attractively exotic. This depends on your worldview and also your sense of adventure, or desire to see new places.

Hawaii is a geographically challenged state. Hawaii is FAR away from the mainland continents, and the islands are also disconnected from each other! They are separated into their own little worlds! The only way to travel here is via airplane, or perhaps boat.

The islands themselves are mountains, making them hard to navigate regions. The mountainsides, valleys or highland are hard to navigate. There is a clear windward (wet) and leeward, (dry) side to the islands so nearby areas can be very physically different from each other in climate, and vegetation. As you go up in elevation the temperatures are always cooler than the lower altitudes, and micro climates help promote species diversity and endemic adaptation. ***

Orographic uplifting.

Relief and elevation

Another concept tied to distance is elevation, this is vertical distance, not linear distance. This is the physical relief of the landscape in the area where we are located. Not all islands are high islands with rain, many are dry flat atolls.

When Hawaii is viewed from space like in the next graphic, we can see that the islands are truly just the tops of mountains that extend up from a deep sea bed. I wish that this image was in 3D to show how tall these mountains actually are. If measured from its base on the sea floor, then Mauna Loa is actually the tallest mountain on the planet, Note that Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea are actually just two peaks of one huge volcano, the largest single mountain on the planet! The islands are kind of like giant glops of tooth paste, with only the hardened crust sticking above the surface of the sea.

Image from soest.hawaii.edu

photo: NOAA.gov

The N.W. Hawaiian Islands are the traces of an underwater chain of volcanoes, with the oldest ones eroded away by the sea to undersea mounts or sea level remnants called atolls. This is a truly accurate map of the state of Hawaii. Note it stretches about 2,600 km. This is about 6-7 times bigger than you thought it was, if you were only conceiving of the main Islands. The legal boundaries of the state extend the sovereignty of the USA over the ocean territory and any resources found in that maritime area. The world’s largest nature preserve was created in the NW Hawaiian Islands.

Note this map has a title and a direction arrow. To be able to find something we need to know where we are. As science progressed we were able to standardize the cardinal directions and use a compass to navigate. More recently we have GPS coordinates. Here on the island of Oahu we have mauka and makai, and Diamond Head and Ewa. Do you know your way around yet cuz?

Our mental map is also influenced by cultural barriers or subjective psychological factors. It may seem extremely far to go three blocks out of your comfort zone to an unfamiliar bank branch for example. The “other side of the tracks” is an economic and perhaps cultural change, and the Rio Grande River which separates the USA from Mexico is a political and legal boundary, not a significant physical one,

A sad but true fact is that, people in the USA are the only group on Earth still estimating distance in miles. This archaic system, is one of the reasons Americans are ridiculed for their ignorance regarding relationships on the planet. No one can understand our relative comparisons. ( We do the same thing with temperature.)

*** Temperature variation with elevation.

If there is no rain and you’re NOT in a cloud, then the temperature decreases by about 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit for every 1,000 feet up you go in elevation.

That is 9.8 degrees Celsius per 1,000 meters.

However, if you’re in a cloud, or it is snowing/raining, the temperature decreases by about 3.3 degrees Fahrenheit for every 1,000 feet up you go in elevation. Thus meaning it’s a change of 6 degrees Celsius per 1,0000 meters. )

Here’s a handy chart to visualize the temperature decrease with elevation:

Sources for graphics: various internet.

The Queen’s summer palace up Nuuanu Valley is therefore significantly cooler than the main one in Downtown Honolulu. 

There is another cooling factor here in Hawaii which makes it such a pleasant place, even though its climate is tropical . This is the sea breeze- land breeze cycle which occurs every day.

A is what happens during the day. B is what happens in the evening and at night.

Week One concepts quiz ( 5 points)

1. What are two ways to express the concept of distance?

2. How does the physical geography approach to understanding and explaining the world differ from the human or cultural approach?

3. What are the three main conceptual approaches to geography? ( F, F, and C.) Explain one of them.