Highlights
Image - A Farr
Science Advisory Panel
We have appointed a 3-year Science Advisory Panel to support the Board and Senior Leadership Team through strategic science planning processes and allocating Core funds, evaluating and developing science excellence, and ensuring our research contributes to achieving our National Outcomes. The panel consists of six leading researchers (two from the UK, two from Australia, two from New Zealand) whose expertise covers the range of our research activities. The panel met for the first time in February 2012 and will meet subsequently at 6-monthly intervals.
Stakeholder Strategic Advisory Group
The Board commissioned a panel of seven stakeholders from business and industry, government and local government, asking them to focus on the major trends or issues that will drive change in New Zealand, and what they would expect the science sector, and Landcare Research in particular, to deliver in the next five years. Key messages from this panel were that we need to be bold in our mandate to lead; to focus on a smaller number of important relationships; invest in supporting quality conversations and understanding values; improve communication; and reframe the way science is shared including the form, timing and language of delivery. We have heeded these recommendations both in reorganising our numerous science programmes into 10 research Portfolios that are tightly focused on our National Outcomes and the needs of our key partners, and in developing the National Land Resource Centre.
National Land Resource Centre
New Zealand’s economy is founded on its land resources. Agriculture, forestry, mining and tourism together provide more than 25% of New Zealand’s GDP; hence our national prosperity is highly dependent on the ‘land economy’. Stakeholders need fit-for-purpose, best-available information to guide the way we use the land to protect, enhance and leverage this ‘land economy’. However, the science of land resources is scattered across many providers so lacks coordination and strategy. The National Land Resource Centre (NLRC) is intended to remedy this.
The NLRC is an online and physical gateway to the land resource science projects, data, information and resources held by Landcare Research, other CRIs and agencies. The pan-organisational approach will help bring together information assets and focus on making science easier to understand and therefore of use for stakeholders in many different sectors, including those that have typically not engaged with the science community before.
The centre will also aid professional development in public and private sector organisations through initiatives such as practitioner training workshops, secondments, internships, and hosting visiting scientists. Similarly, with an ageing workforce in the soil and land sciences, the centre will look at ways of capturing the wisdom of retiring experts, stewarding data and information assets, and ensuring we have the ability to respond to future information needs.
www.nlrc.org.nz
NLRC was developed with Strategic Investment, and provides access to Core-funded databases.
Wetland restoration – Waikato Raupatu River Trust
In working with the Waikato Raupatu River Trust (WRRT, Waikato-Tainui) on a number of wetland restoration projects, a 1-year Certificate of Technology course was developed in partnership with the Waikato Institute of Technology. Two inaugural ‘Waikato-Tainui wetland scholarship’ students completed the course in June 2012. Through fortnightly work placements and a 5-week summer internship with our researchers, the students learned practical field techniques and developed an understanding of wetland science. The highly-motivated students will use their new skills and knowledge to assist with future restoration projects in the Waikato-Tainui rohe. WRRT wishes to continue the very successful course until 2016.
This work is supported by MBIE contestable funding and WRRT.