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2025 News

  1. Solving the Case of the Missing Carbon: what really drives carbon loss in native forests?

    Robust, time-sequenced calculations of carbon in different landscapes across Aotearoa are essential to support sensible conclusions about future national carbon inventory goals and commitments.

  2. A new national nectar map for optimum beehive management

    Among at least 40 native and exotic bee species known in New Zealand, the introduced honeybee is an essential pollinator of a long list of economically important crops, from pipfruit and stonefruit to seed crops such as onions, carrots and brassicas, and other food crops such as tomatoes and citrus....

  3. Pollen counts…

    A study co-authored by the Bioeconomy Science Institute's Dr Marion Donald and Johnathon Ridden from the Canterbury Museum has shown that analysed metadata from insect specimens in Canterbury Museum’s collection, spanning from the 1900s to the present, can identify a wide array of previously undocum...

  4. Watching the detectives: the potential of sentinel species for disease monitoring in Aotearoa

    Our longstanding expertise in modelling and measuring wildlife movements across landscapes has huge potential for application to the problems posed by disease spread in wildlife, livestock, companion animals, and also people

  5. Wild in the country: how pines sow the seeds of their own success

    Planted in the right place, introduced conifer trees can provide timber, store carbon, decrease erosion, filter soil nutrients, improve water quality, and provide shelter for stock. However, wilding pine trees are a major weed problem across Aotearoa.

  6. Urban ecological restoration: an Indigenous viewpoint

    The environmental challenges faced by urban spaces are ever-increasing, as urban populations grow, green spaces are put under pressure from development, and the effects of climate change and biodiversity loss take hold.

  7. Biocontrol takes time – but good things are worth the wait

    More than 10 years after first proposing to target the pest aquatic plant lagarosiphon for biocontrol, the Bioeconomy Science Institute is now preparing a release application for the Environmental Protection Authority on behalf of the National Biocontrol Collective, which is funding the project. The...

  8. Ka mua, ka muri: reverse engineering the tikanga, mātauranga, and historical context of Māori rock art

    A major interdisciplinary project, co-led by Amanda Symon from the Ngāi Tahu Māori Rock Art Trust and Dr Phil Novis from the Bioeconomy Science Institute, in partnership with Paemanu Ngāi Tahu Contemporary Visual Arts Trust and researchers from Otago University and Earth Sciences NZ, has won a Marsd...

  9. Applied machine learning for indigenous tree mapping at landscape scales

    Remote sensing tools show promise for measuring forest carbon stocks and forest health at large scales. Working with the Department of Conservation (DoC), our geospatial and remote sensing team, including Dr Ben Jolly, has developed cutting-edge technology for mapping indigenous tree species, applyi...

  10. News in brief

    Tool for cats: a non-lethal deterrent for nature reserves

    Playing sounds of the presence of people when a cat trips a motion detector camera in an urban nature reserve works to scare the cat away from the area and thus protects native birds. In trials, 66% of cats exposed to the human sound fled i...