University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa — College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience

Hawaiʻi Crop Suitability Mapping Tool

Explore where crops are most likely to thrive across Hawaiʻi based on climate and soil conditions.

This interactive mapping tool helps users evaluate crop suitability across the state by combining information on temperature, rainfall, and key soil properties. Select a crop to see areas where growing conditions are more or less favorable, and use the map to support planning, site selection, and land management decisions.

Open Map Tool About the Tool

About the Tool

Farmers in Hawaiʻi face uncertainty about where and when specific crops can thrive due to highly variable soil, climate, and slope conditions across the islands, and a lack of clear, localized, visual data to support planting decisions.

This tool fills that gap. Pick a crop and a location, and see a suitability map scored against six environmental factors — rainfall, temperature, soil pH, drainage, depth, and slope — drawn from high-resolution geospatial data.

Temperature
Average air temperature and how the temperatures change from one place to another.
Rainfall
Average amounts of rain and how that changes from one place to another.
Soil pH
How acidic or alkaline the soil is decides whether plants can absorb nutrients from the soil.
Drainage
How slowly or quickly water moves through a soil.
Soil Depth
The amount of usable soil space a plant has for its roots.
Slope
The slope of the hill decides if the soil will erode and if farming machines can safely work on it.

Project Team

University of Hawaiʻi - College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience
Second Wave Technologies

Funding & Acknowledgments

This is a program of the UH Mānoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience, with support from the Hawaii Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity, and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.