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Abstract Agriculture is one of the most fundamental ways in which human societies interact with the environment. The form and function of agriculture have important socio-political implications in terms of yields, labor requirements, variability and resilience, and elite control. Hawai‘i has been used as a model system for the discussion of coupled human and natural systems, and how the uneven distribution of agricultural opportunities has manifested in the political ecology. However, consideration of agriculture has emphasized forms with physical infrastructure documented through archaeology and have not included arboricultural forms that were extensive among Pacific Islands. We leverage existing, independent data sets to build and validate spatial models of two intensities of arboriculture across the Hawaiian archipelago: Agroforestry and Novel Forest. Model validation demonstrates good accuracy that includes both expected and unexpected sources of errors. Results of the models demonstrate that arboricultural techniques accounted for ~70% of the agricultural potential by area and ~40% of the agricultural potential by yield. Unlike existing agricultural forms modeled, such as flooded wetland terrace cultivation and rainfed field production, which have strong distributional patterns based on the age of the islands, arboricultural potential is well distributed across all the islands. The extent, distribution, and characteristics of arboricultural methods provide important augmentation of the current narrative of production dynamics and distribution, and the political ecology, of pre-contact Hawai‘i. 

The Hawaiian Islands have been employed as a model system to reconstruct agroecological extents of traditional Polynesian agricultural production systems. However, the reliability of previously modeled agricultural extents is unknown due to limitations in empirical evidence to assess accuracy. Utilizing a geospatial database of 8,561 archaeological sites compiled by the Hawaiʻi State Historic Preservation Department (SHPD), this research assessed the accuracy and reliability of three spatial models that estimate the extents of traditional Hawaiian agricultural systems. The results of the model sensitivity assessment indicate the three geospatial models capture the spatial patterns and relative extents of intensive agricultural systems with substantial infrastructure, while additional work is needed to assess reliability of modeled agricultural systems with more indefinite infrastructure. 

Most neglected and underutilized crops were developed and utilized within indigenous agroecological cropping systems. While crop suitability must consider the constraints of the environment, the conditions of agroecological systems and the role of crops within those systems should be considered. Such consideration may guide the implementation of appropriate farming systems specific to different ecosystems and microhabitats. Using the Hawaiian archipelago as a model system of socioecological dynamics, we consider the distribution of agroecological systems and their associated crops to explore how agroecological suitability changes across climate, topography, and soils. We conduct spatial modeling of the potential nature and extent of seven agroecological archetypes based on historical records. The seven spatial models of pre-colonial agroecological systems produced extents distributed across much of the Hawaiian archipelago, with clear adaptive patterns within and across the islands. The distribution of cropping system further affects the appropriateness of crop species application. We argue that the consideration of agroecological niches and associated cropping systems is critical for realizing the potential of underutilized crops and improving the efficiency of contemporary agricultural systems.