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2025 News

  1. Benchmark results from the national soil carbon monitoring system for agricultural land in New Zealand

    Soil organic carbon (SOC) is critical to soil health. It’s the basis of the soil food web and it plays an important role in maintaining soil structure, retaining water and nutrient cycling. Soils are also large reservoirs of carbon, and globally contain more carbon than the atmosphere and vegetation...

  2. The effect of rising CO2 levels on carbon stocks in pasture and forest ecosystems

    Primarily as a result of fossil fuel burning, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere continues to rise far above pre-industrial concentrations of 280 parts per million (ppm)– it is currently around 422 ppm and increasing by about 2.5 ppm per year. Increasing CO2 concentrations influences plant growth a...

  3. He Ngahere, He Korowai: Resilient land use strategies for whenua Māori

    Focssing on resilient landscapes on highly erosion-prone whenua Māori (Māori land) for future generations

  4. Recognising kaitiakitanga responsibilities in climate change resilience

    There is a Te Tiriti o Waitangi obligation on the part of agencies and institutions, including local and central government, to include mana whenua as genuine partners in any climate change adaptation approach, plan or policy

  5. He Whenua Kanorau, He Whenua Manawaroa: Diverse and resilient landscapes

    Examining the social, cultural and historical factors that impede transitioning towards more diverse whenua Māori.

  6. Moving the Middle – a progress report

    Aiming to give rural land managers greater confidence to improve their environmental performance voluntarily

  7. Agents of change

    This research area looks at a wide range of different agents of positive environmental change on land. It is particularly interested in potentially powerful, but indirect change agents, such as artists, who influence what happens on the land. Our research investigates what such agents do and how it ...

  8. How schools help influence positive environmental activity on land

    Schools and their teachers play an important role in building foundational skills that will support pro-environmental activity throughout life.

  9. Strategic, tactical, complex, and simple: a four-way schema for measuring on-farm change

    In the face of climate and other environmental change, regulatory and economic changes, farmers are always under pressure to redesign and improve their systems and to adopt new practices. Some change in practice (e.g. doing something completely different to existing ways) are more complex than other...

  10. Tell us what you want, what you really, really want

    Surveys that include measures of people’s well-being are widely used at the national scale to measure social progress and to inform environmental, social and economic decision-making. Well-being frameworks generally encompass aspects of housing, income, personal health, access to green space and rec...