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2021 News

  1. When hunters become the hunted

    Manaaki Whenua’s research capabilities are in demand worldwide, even in the Southern Atlantic Ocean where mice are decimating seabirds on remote Gough Island.

  2. Te Mana o te Taiao is about making a collective difference

    Manaaki Whenua researchers are working across agencies, and with kaitiaki iwi, community groups and landowners to gather as much species knowledge as possible to create the tools and models that will then feed into regional biodiversity strategies

  3. A range of work in wetland biodiversity

    Wetlands are important ecosystems for their biodiversity, cultural, and recreational values as well as their key role in carbon storage. However, wetlands are also ecosystems under threat. In New Zealand, wetlands have declined by ~90%, mostly over the past 200 years, from around 10% to just ~1% of ...

  4. Snow business: black carbon, red algae, and future glacier survival

    In early 2020, large parts of eastern Australia burned. Bushfires turned the land black, the skies orange, and the sun red. In New Zealand, 2,000 km away, ash from the fires also coated our glaciers and snow-capped mountains, turning them a shade of caramel.

  5. Fukushima: the whole picture from atmosphere to ocean

    A Manaaki Whenua expert in landwater interactions has been involved in the most comprehensive review to date of the impact from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster on the terrestrial environment.

  6. Changes in the rural hazardscape

    New Zealand is a highly dynamic, multihazard environment, including coastal, riverine, and seismic landscape hazards. Manaaki Whenua’s social scientists are currently building a wide body of knowledge about the importance of co-creating knowledge about disaster response, allowing effective knowledge...

  7. He matawara o mua – Taking account of shifting ecological baselines

    Global biodiversity losses due to human activities have accelerated more in the past 50 years than at any time in human history. Intertwined with this rapid decline is the loss of knowledge about past environmental conditions and species abundances. This loss threatens how the next generation percei...

  8. Reducing the mismatches between conservation research and practice

    Conservation research and practice have traditionally been viewed as taking a linear pathway, where scientific evidence informs people’s action on the ground. However, in practice, knowledge generation may not lead directly to knowledge use. Mismatches exist between research and practice that may li...

  9. Celebrating our achievements

    Sandra Lavorel is among a trio of international researchers awarded the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation. Sandra, and fellow ecologists Mark Westoby (Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia) and Sandra Díaz (National University of Córdoba, Argentina), were recognised f...

  10. What is the future of biodiversity monitoring?

    Biodiversity monitoring is required to set conservation priorities and assess effectiveness of conservation management.