About the Atlas
A scientific guide to Kauaʻi’s living systems.
The Kauaʻi Conservation Atlas is a free resource connecting the island’s species, habitats, watersheds, ecological processes, and conservation work.
Created by Erik Burton
The Kauaʻi Conservation Atlas was created by Erik Burton through Domain Science Consulting. It is an independent project, offered freely to the people of Kauaʻi and everyone who wants to learn about the island’s living world.
Erik built the Atlas to make ecological knowledge easier to find and use, and to demonstrate Domain Science, the approach behind its scientific query feature, Ask. Ask is designed to explore questions across connected Atlas records, showing the available evidence and where knowledge is still incomplete.
Everyone can browse, search, and ask questions without signing in. A free Passport lets you keep a personal Life List and join discussions.
More than a species list
Each record is part of a larger ecological story. The Atlas connects organisms to where they live, what they need, what affects them, and the conservation actions and evidence associated with them.
Those connections make the Atlas useful for public learning, professional reference, and scientific inquiry across the island’s linked mauka, freshwater, coastal, and marine systems.
Built around Kauaʻi
The geographic focus is Kauaʻi and its immediately connected waters. Native, endemic, introduced, managed, historic, and unresolved records are distinguished rather than collapsed into a single undifferentiated list.
The Atlas is a living system. Coverage grows as records, images, sources, and relationships are reviewed and integrated.
For a general introduction to the island’s wildlife, read the Kauaʻi Island Guide.
How to use it
- Browse the Atlas wheel or family navigation to enter a species or ecological module.
- Search common, Hawaiian, and scientific names to find specific records.
- Ask questions that cross-reference organisms, places, habitats, pressures, ecological processes, and conservation work.
- Follow relationships from an individual record into the larger living system around it.
Evidence and responsibility
The Atlas preserves source identity, distinguishes confirmed information from uncertainty, and keeps unresolved questions visible. Corrections and stronger evidence are part of the work, not an embarrassment to be hidden.
Atlas records support understanding and discovery. They do not replace required field surveys, agency determinations, cultural consultation, or professional advice for site-specific decisions.
Help steward the Atlas
We’re looking for community stewards to help audit, enhance, and add to the Atlas.
Stewards can review records and sources, suggest corrections, contribute local knowledge and photographs, and help expand the Atlas with responsibly shared information.
When contacting us, include the record name or page, the proposed correction or contribution, and the strongest source information available.
