Book excerpt: Roots of Conflict presents the efforts of a team of social and natural scientists to understand the complex, systemic linkages between land, climate, crops, human populations, and their cultural structures. The research group has focused on what might seem to some an unlikely locale to investigate a set of problems with worldwide significance: the Hawaiian Islands. Though it is perhaps the most isolated archipelago on Earth, Hawai'i is a "model system" for teasing out key connections between land, agriculture, and society.