Knowledge sharing
The Rt. Hon. John Key, Prime Minister, opening the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre. Image – AgResearch.
Our intent is to continually strengthen collaboration with other research organisations in New Zealand and overseas so that our teams are at the forefront of new knowledge and are well–positioned to broker that knowledge for New Zealand.
Collaborative research centres
We are formal partners in several collaborative research centres:
- The newly formed New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre (NZAGRC). We will lead the Centre’s soil carbon research as one of six Principal Investigators, and are contributing to research strategies for methane and nitrous oxide
- The New Zealand Climate Change Centre
- The Centre for Biodiversity and Biosecurity
- The Centre for Urban Ecosystem Sustainability
- The New Zealand Centre for Sustainable Cities
We are also members of several other national networks and consortia, which are described more fully in Part 2 of our Annual Report and on our website.
International partnerships
Most of our research programmes have some degree of international collaboration. Our staff regularly discuss their research with colleagues through informal and formal networks, meetings and conferences, and exchange visits. This year, our staff collaborated with more than 250 authors from 34 countries to co–author peer–reviewed scientifi c publications.
We signed four new high–level international MoUs: one with the University of the South Pacific to support science collaboration and a science–based strategic partnership; one between Grupo de Ecologia y Conservación de Islas (GECI) of Mexico and our invasive species group; and one with the Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Department of Sustainability and Environment (Victoria, Australia) and one with Murdoch University (Perth, Australia) to collaborate on research projects and training.
Global climate change processes
Our Global Processes Team is recognised internationally for its innovative approaches to quantifying carbon budgets of whole ecosystems. The Research Leader for this team was recently appointed as one of the two New Zealand representatives on the Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Cycling Cross Cutting Theme for the Global Research Alliance.
A Marsden–funded project involves collaboration with the University of Canterbury and the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute (Aberdeen, UK), with a staff member seconded to work with us for two years. The project is centred on a unique field experiment to determine the impact of soil warming on the turnover and loss of soil carbon. This work relies on the use of our tunable diode laser absorption spectrometer, allowing us to make accurate real–time measurements of naturally occurring stable isotopes of carbon in air respired from soil. The results will help improve models that predict the rate of global climate change.
Global soil map
A global consortium has been formed to create a digital soil map of the world using state–of–the–art technologies. The new high–resolution map will be supplemented by interpretation and functionality options to assist in a range of global issues like food production and hunger eradication, water security, climate change and environmental degradation. The project has support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. One of our senior soil scientists (the architect of S–map, the digital soil map for New Zealand) was elected to lead the Oceania node (Australia, New Zealand, Pacific and associated territories).
‘Let there be no mistake about the significance of this wonderful project’
Kofi Annan, Secretary–General of the United Nations1997–2006, and co–recipient of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize.
Global biodiversity informatics
Landcare Research is recognised internationally as ‘one of the world centres of biodiversity informatics’ and we were represented at the first–ever global meeting of this young and growing fi eld by one of our senior scientists who is a member of the Species2000 global committee, and the New Zealand node manager for GBIF. The e–Biosphere 09 International Conference on Biodiversity Informatics brought together 503 participants from 69 countries and we were invited to take part in a workshop of 40 invited participants to develop a 10–year roadmap for biodiversity informatics research.
The New Zealand Organisms Register (NZOR) is key to New Zealand being a regional hub in Species2000, a project currently funded through new €5.9m EU projects 4D4Life & i4Life that are attempting to complete the global Catalogue of Life; we are a partner in these projects. We are also a partner in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the Encyclopaedia of Life (EOL) project that is helping develop the Global Names Architecture (GNA) to provide the informatics ‘glue’ between globally distributed biodiversity databases.
New Zealand – China strategic research alliance
The first initiative in the New Zealand – China Strategic Research Alliance was a workshop in Xinjiang involving staff from Landcare Research’s Invasive Mammals Impacts (IMI) programme, the Institute of Ecology and Geography in Xinjiang, and the Partner Institute for Computational Biology in Shanghai. The workshop was supported by New Zealand’s Ministry of Research, Science and Technology and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology. The aim is to develop a collaborative project in Xinjiang that can be matched with research across a similar cross–section of natural and modifi ed landscapes in the IMI programme.
An exceptionally strong altitudinal gradient at Fukang Station of Desert Ecology in Xinjiang has potential to provide a unifying theme linking research projects between the two countries on pest management, climate and land–use change. The gradient ranges from permafrost at 5000 m to alpine meadows and through forested valleys to agricultural land bordering arid dune systems at 800 m, to desert at 100 m below sea level (the second–lowest place on earth). This is an ideal ´natural laboratory´ for understanding how climatic factors, interacting with ecological processes and extensive land use (nomadic pastoralism) and intensive land use (irrigated crops), limit the distribution and persistence of species, communities and ecosystems.