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Innovation articles

  1. Scouting out soil data

    Although the stony soils of the upper Wairau Valley, Marlborough, have underpinned the success of winemakers, they have made soil mapping there a slow and arduous task.

  2. S-map expands further

    Manaaki Whenua has completed an extra 500,000 hectares of new soil mapping coverage across some of AoNZ’s best food-producing land.

  3. How data science can shape tree modelling for sustainable land management

    A four-year data science programme involving a joint Aotearoa New Zealand-Singapore research team working to accelerate the development of data science capability in both countries has wrapped up demonstrating valuable connections between remote sensing, ecology and social sciences.

  4. Closing the window of vulnerability

    Most commercial forests in Aotearoa New Zealand are clear-fell harvested. Trees of harvest age are cut down in areas called coupes or compartments. In many forests, these compartments often include steep hillsides, which go from being forested for decades to being bare and visible almost overnight. ...

  5. The gospel of St John’s wort: a phenomenal weed biocontrol success story

    Like so many plants brought by Europeans to augment botanical and kitchen gardens in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand in the 19th century, St John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) duly escaped and by the 1930s was one of the worst invasive weeds in both countries.

  6. Hop to it: managing New Zealand’s marsupial menace

    Wallabies arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand in the late 19th century, courtesy of Sir George Grey (Governor of New Zealand from 1845 to 1853). In later life Grey lived on Kawau Island, north of Auckland, and introduced five species of wallabies among a variety of interesting animals he acquired for hi...

  7. New guidelines suggested for ecosourcing seed

    When it comes to ecological restoration in Aotearoa New Zealand, obtaining plant seeds with a known local wild origin has been widely advocated and practised for the past 50 years.
    This approach, known as ecosourcing, ensures the seeds used for restoration come from nearby areas and maintain the ge...

  8. Tracking vertebrate pests using landscape genomics

    The challenge in keeping an environment free of predators is to make sure any remaining populations of animals in other areas don’t reinvade. For Manaaki Whenua’s genomics researcher Dr Andrew Veale, this means making use of technology to ensure researchers understand how predators move around their...

  9. Changing our SOCs – a progress report

    Soil organic carbon 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 combi...

  10. How trees could turn down the heat

    Like people keeping cool under beach umbrellas, cattle seek shade as the temperature rises. And for cows, even air temperatures in the low twenties can be too hot, because the animals naturally create a lot of internal heat whilst digesting food or producing milk.

  11. New partnership targets deadly livestock disease

    The fungus associated with facial eczema is common worldwide, but the toxicity of the Aotearoa New Zealand strain causes much more severe problems. It’s a challenging and painful disease that attacks the liver and bile ducts of ruminants and currently has no cure.

  12. Carbon stocks – can ryegrass be beaten?

    Around the world, soils under managed grasslands hold a lot of carbon: up to 22% of all land-based carbon stocks. How the land is managed affects whether these soils gain, lose, or keep their carbon – and historically, much carbon has been lost as natural ecosystems have been converted into grassla...

  13. Good farmers go SLO

    In New Zealand, farmers and the largely urban general public are held to have differing views on what is meant by being a “good farmer”. Anecdotally, farmers see themselves as stewards of the land for future generations, using management practices that would be considered environmentally sustainable...

  14. Creating “cultural licence to operate” in pest control

    Key to making research programmes successful is ensuring we have the social and cultural licence to operate says Kairangahau Māori Mahuru Wilcox.

  15. Data supermarket on land use open for hungry minds

    An online data ‘supermarket’ is open to anyone hungry for information about the food and fibre we can grow in Aotearoa New Zealand – now and in the future.

  16. River catchment planning for future climate change

    To develop effective management plans for river catchments, policymakers and catchment managers need to account for how climate change might affect soil erosion and river sediment loads. However, there has been no published, quantitative assessment of national-scale changes in erosion or suspended s...

  17. LiDAR reveals real risk to wetlands

    For the first time in New Zealand, research has shown how remote sensing, using LiDAR, could aid improved conservation management of wetlands through better drain detection.

  18. Core blimey: how an old Hoover revealed the secrets of a wetland

    East Coast farmer Tim Brownlie and QEII National Trust regional representative for Gisborne Malcolm Rutherford have become fascinated
    by the world of palaeoecology – the ecology of the past.

  19. Natural enemies, natural solutions

    Eight countries in the Pacific will introduce natural enemies in order to reduce the impacts of key weeds in the island nations under the umbrella of Manaaki Whenua’s ‘Natural Enemies – Natural Solutions’ (NENS) programme..

  20. Using artificial intelligence to monitor wildlife

    Camera traps are used for monitoring a range of wildlife species in Aotearoa New Zealand, including native and invasive animals. These cameras provide essential information on animal abundance, distribution, and behaviour, but they have one major drawback: they can produce thousands of images, many ...