Revegetation patterns on abandoned sugarcane fields in Hawai’i

Our understanding of how plants regrow on land that was previously used for agriculture is limited. This study investigates how vegetation grows back on abandoned sugarcane fields in Hawaiʻi. While this study did not take place in Moorea, it relates to agriculture and restoration which are topics of interest in Moorea. The results of this study show that while non-native plants dominate, native plants increase over time. However, it takes more than a century for the fields to fully recover their original native composition. This suggests that natural regrowth alone may not restore the fields, and additional efforts may be needed for restoration or alternative land management.

The full article is available here: Farrant et al. 2023