Here’s an English definition from the introductory paragraphs of
“Soil-Vegetation Relationships in Hawaiian Kipukas” by D.
Mueller-Dombois and Charles H. Lamoureux in Pacific Science
21(1967):286-299. KIPUKA, the Hawaiian word for "opening," has
come into scientific usage as a term used to designate an older
area on the slopes of volcanic mountains that has been
surrounded by more recent lava flows. Kipukas are common
landscape features on the slopes of Mauna Loa and Kilauea
volcanoes on the [Big Island] of Hawaii, where they can be
readily recognized as islands of denser vegetation in the vast,
sparsely vegetated areas. They range in size from a few square
meters to hundreds of acres.The usual Hawaiian (and Hawaiian
Pidgin) term for ‘hole’ in the sense of ‘perforation, gap, blank
(in a form), zero’ (vs. lua ‘pit, hole in the ground, latrine’)
is puka, as in one-puka-puka, the U.S. Army's 100th Infantry
Battalion. Hawaiian kīpuka may be a puka with an intensifying
prefix, and it has an interesting range of me