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2022 News

  1. Northland ngāhere mapped to help kaitiakitanga efforts

    Russell Forest on the east coast of Te Tai Tokerau/Northland is a diverse native ngāhere (forest). Researchers say it is an important example of a warm temperate rainforest in the region as it contains kauri, taraire, tawa, and totara along with threatened bird species, including the North Island br...

  2. Meet the ancestors: tracing the lineage of extinct plants using ancient DNA techniques

    A passing comment over morning tea one day solved a decades-long problem for Manaaki Whenua researcher Dr Peter Heenan.

  3. House sparrow still our most-counted garden bird

    Preliminary results of this year’s New Zealand Garden Bird Survey are in, and the house sparrow remains the most often seen bird species in our gardens.

  4. Celebrating our achievements

    Dr Gradon Diprose. Image: Royal Society Te Apārangi

    Dr Gradon Diprose has been invited to join the reference group for the Office of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor’s project on food rescue and waste. To support other work addressing waste and emissions reductions, the OPMCSA is undertak...

  5. Barriers and enablers to rural landowners engaging in native afforestation

    Native forest establishment is an important mechanism to sequester carbon in the long term, increase biodiversity, prevent erosion, and improve water quality. For Aotearoa New Zealand, large-scale afforestation is a crucial part of our strategy for climate change mitigation. Establishing new forests...

  6. Ngāi Tahu Farming working with research organisations to validate the science of regenerative farming

    On 26 October 2022, Ngāi Tahu Farming signed an agreement with Manaaki Whenua and other research organisations to provide data and insights for Te Whenua Hou Te Whenua Whitiora (The New Land, The New Horizon) regenerative farming trial.

  7. Ten million hectares of Aotearoa now S-mapped

    S-map has reached a major milestone: 10 million hectares of Aotearoa have now been mapped under S-map’s soil survey programme, which is around 37% of the whole land area of the country

  8. Adélie penguins, climate change and fisheries management

    As a harbinger of change, Antarctica’s Adélie penguins make the perfect subjects. They are an ice obligate species and are highly sensitive to the abundance and distribution of their primary prey – krill and fish.

  9. An update on national soil carbon benchmarking and monitoring

    Every year, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, Aotearoa New Zealand is obliged to report its national human-produced (anthropogenic) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals, including changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks. With average ...

  10. Is my paddock carbon-neutral? How our scientists contribute to understanding global climate change

    Measuring fluxes, the uptake or release of gases from a surface, is a crucial part of climate science. A method known as eddy covariance, first developed in the early 1950s, is today used by scientists worldwide to measure the carbon, water and energy flows between ecosystems and the atmosphere.