Kīpuka

They are often covered with soil and late ecological successional vegetation that provide visual contrast as well as habitat for animals in an otherwise inhospitable environment.

In volcanic landscapes, kīpukas play an important role as biological reservoirs or refugia for plants and animals, from which the covered land can be recolonized.

Descriptive proverbs and poetical sayings in Hawaiian oral tradition also use the word, in an allusive sense, to mean a place where life or culture endures, regardless of any encroachment or interference.

[2][3] By extension, from the appearance of island "patches" within a highly contrasted background, any similarly noticeable variation or change of form, such as an opening in a forest, or a clear place in a congested setting, may be colloquially called kīpuka.

Kīpuka along Saddle Road on Hawaiʻi have served as the natural laboratory for a variety of studies, examining ecological principles like island biogeography,[5] food web control,[6] and biotic resistance to invasiveness.