Landcare Research - Manaaki Whenua

Landcare-Research -Manaaki Whenua

Key initiatives

Maureen Fletcher handling cultures of micro-organisms from plants. Image - Simon Baker

Maureen Fletcher handling cultures of micro-organisms from plants. Image - Simon Baker

National e-Science Initiative (NeSI)

We are partners in the $48 million National e-Science Infrastructure (NeSI) investment by Government, three universities and one other CRI to build and operate three High Performance Computing facilities. NeSI enables us to carry out advanced modelling for applications across all Landcare Research’s Outcome areas. Examples of projects made possible through the NeSI investment include:

  • Processing single species and population genomics for stick insects and giant weta in a fraction of the time previously needed – knowledge of conservation genetics is of significant benefit to understanding and managing our biodiversity
  • Simultaneously analysing clusters of 7000-19 000 vegetation plots recorded in NVS for a quantitative classification of New Zealand’s plant communities
  • Processing of remote sensing data (e.g. cloud masking, satellite image mosaicking, image feature segmentation) for the Land Cover Database (LCDB) project
  • Pest population modelling at the national scale (ultimately multi-species population modelling will be required for Predator-Free NZ)
  • Storing and manipulating large-scale LiDAR datasets and spatial imagery to support regional council decision-making on flood management and potentially a range of other environmental and land use decisions

NeSI supports work in multiple portfolios, and is supported by Landcare Research strategic Investment.

Data management and data warehousing

Data management is a common challenge for scientific organisations the world over. Our effectiveness in delivering environmental solutions depends upon our ability to access, process and store data and make information available in user-friendly fit-for-purpose ways to meet emerging policy and practices, and realise new opportunities across all our National Outcomes.

As part of a pan-CRI group, we reviewed and analysed best-practice research data management plans and the sharing of public research data across 13 organisations in New Zealand and overseas. From this we identified the core elements for effective policies, processes and systems to meet both internal and external requirements, including meeting evolving global standards in data management and contractual data obligations.

We have established a new half-time role of Research Data Manager. One of their first tasks has been to choose a research data repository system (data archive) primarily to manage the myriad of smaller datasets that support our day-to-day research.

This project is supported by Landcare Research strategic investment.