A Founder Effect

My first lesson in Hawaii was about dirt. Soil development to be more precise. Like many who experience Hawaii for the first time, from an airplane approach onto the Huehue lava flow at Keahole Airport, I saw barren, black rock. No swaying coconut trees, no Polynesian hula girls, just a two hundred year old lava flow with a few tufts of grass here and there. Unlike many tourists who at this point ask, “What have we gotten ourselves into?”, I asked the naturalist’s question, “What’s going on here?”

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