Invasive plants are defined as any plants brought to Hawaii by humans, either on purpose or by accident, that out-compete native plants for resources and habitat. Invasive plants do this in a number of ways including: aggressive growth that shades out native plants, dispersal of many more seeds than native plants (thus dominating the seed bank), and some invasive plants, actually inject toxins into the ground that kill the surrounding plants.

There are many ways that invasive plants have a negative impact on the environment but also on our everyday lives. For instance when invasive plants such as Miconia becomes monotypic (the only plant present) in a particular area there is a chance that whole hillsides will erode away in heavy rains because the Miconia roots are shallow and do not hold the earth. This actually has occurred in Tahiti. This is a devastating problem because of the large scale erosion caused and the damaging impact on our watershed. Hawaii’s aquifers absorb drinking water when the forests are healthy. When we lose these forests due to erosion or to canopies that destroys the understory vegetation the amount of water getting to our underground aquifers decreases. In time this is disastrous, we could be using more water than is being replaced, leading to a lack of drinking water in the future.