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2023 News

  1. Refining ecological soil guideline values

    Soil is home to zillions of terrestrial biota, including microbes, plants and invertebrates, all of which support the functioning of soil and land ecosystems. These ecological receptors play a critical role keeping our soils healthy, and with that, the ability to grow healthy food and protect the en...

  2. New evidence shows the effects of irrigation on soil

    Once the butt of jokes because of its 70 million sheep, New Zealand now has less than half the number of sheep it had in the 1980s. That’s because, echoing a global trend, agricultural land in New Zealand has undergone rapid changes in usage to keep pace with growing demands for food. Dry grassland ...

  3. Giving whakamana back to Māori landowners through land science tools

    A potential new kānuka industry is emerging thanks to Māori landowners partnering boldly with Manaaki Whenua to better understand their land through a te ao Māori-led approach to using land science tools.

  4. New trends in environmental perceptions

    In December 2022 the 10th New Zealand Environmental Perceptions Survey (EPS) found that New Zealanders as a group rated the current state of the environment overall as “adequate to good”.

  5. Proceed with care: Decolonising cultural environmental monitoring

    For Māori, the presence of ripe miro berries in the ngahere (forest) would traditionally indicate the health of a forest and the imminent arrival of the kererū, a significant food source for hapū.

  6. Celebrating our achievements

    The Manaaki Whenua Weeds Biocontrol team

    Manaaki Whenua’s Weeds Biocontrol team had a successful evening at the NZ Biosecurity Awards in late October 2022. Members of the team contribute to B3: Better Border Biosecurity, which won the Science Award. Ronny Groenteman and Quentin Paynter joined the g...

  7. Science to underpin stewardship of New Zealand’s highly productive land

    Aotearoa New Zealand is internationally renowned for its high soil diversity. Although our national soil survey, S-map, is only halfway through mapping the farmed soils of New Zealand, already over 5,500 unique soil types have been identified, from the sub-tropical clay soils of Northland to the vol...

  8. Do native birds have enough to eat in mountain forests?

    In Aotearoa New Zealand, native forest bird species are under threat from introduced mammal predators such as possums, rats and stoats. Currently, these predators are common particularly at low elevation, but rare at higher elevations. As a result, the ranges of many native forest bird species have ...