As a project to celebrate the creativity of the Principal Scientists at NIWA in Hamilton, David Roper and Stephanie Parkyn have created a series of photographs that depict the inspirations behind the scientists’ work. ‘Waterworks’, on the front cover, refers to Dr Chris Tanner’s pioneering use of constructed wetlands to treat wastewaters. See the images created for the other scientists at Inspired minds: curiosity and imagination in science.
Max Gibbs explains that, in the case of Lake Taupo, “what we don’t know we don’t know” may be more important than “what we know we don’t know”. A new monitoring buoy is set to expand our field of enquiry for this iconic New Zealand lake.
Hazel Needham, Conrad Pilditch, Drew Lohrer, and Simon Thrush are scrutinising how the mud crab’s burrow fits into estuarine ecology.
Jane Symonds and the aquaculture team at NIWA’s Bream Bay Aquaculture Park are working with industry partners to develop selected pedigree broodstock.
Anne-Nina Lörz and Oliver Coleman have spent many hours investigating the beautiful amphipods collected during recent NIWA voyages to southern seas.
To celebrate the creativity of the scientists working at NIWA in Hamilton, David Roper and Stephanie Parkyn have created a series of unconventional portraits: large-format photographs based on the imaginative spark behind each scientist’s work.
Jeanie Stenton-Dozey and Phil Heath report on an exciting advance in the effort to bring the sea cucumber to market.
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Water & Atmosphere is getting a make-over
This is the last issue of Water & Atmosphere in its current form.
We’re planning a magazine with broader scope, with features by leading scientists and science journalists. We’ll cover policy-relevant science on the pressing environmental issues facing New Zealand and the world. We’ll take you on voyages of discovery from the bottom of the sea to the top of the atmosphere.
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Rob Merrilees measuring visual water clarity in the Motueka River at the Gorge – about 13 m visibility on this occasion. (Photo: Rob Davies-Colley)
Because the Waihou River at Te Aroha was in flood, Marg Bellingham took the safer option of measuring clarity using a sample contained in a trough. (Photo: Rob Davies-Colley)
Graham Bryers analyses samples at NIWA’s Water Quality Laboratory in Hamilton.
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Dr Wayne Mapp, Minister of Research, Science and Technology, at the opening of the symposium. (Photo: Peter Marriott)
Corals rise from the deep: Fourth International Deepsea Coral Symposium
The world’s premier conference on the science and management of deepsea corals and coral ecosystems drew about 200 scientists, resource managers, students, and policy-makers from 29 countries to Wellington in December. For four days they discussed the critical factors for researching and conserving deepsea corals.
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Visiting scientists
Improving global climate models
In December, Dr Markus Rex from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Potsdam, Germany, visited NIWA in Lauder for two weeks. He was there to work with Greg Bodeker, Petra Huck, and Stefanie Kremser on a new method for incorporating polar stratospheric chemistry into global climate models. While the importance of including stratospheric chemistry in these models has long been recognised, the computational cost of doing so has been prohibitively high.
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Kina at a translocation site at the conclusion of the trial. (Photo: Phil James)
Even kina enjoy a change of scenery: translocating kina to enhance roe
Kina (sea urchin) translocation is a new means of enhancing the roe and increasing the yield from wild kina, particularly from animals found in barrens where the density of kina is very high and the available feed is very low.
Fishers and researchers figure the quality of a kina based on its GI, or gonad index.
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Manaia Harbour on the west coast of the Coromandel Peninsula.
The New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy promotes the protection of ‘representative’ freshwater habitats. John Leathwick and Kathryn Julian discuss some tools for selecting those representatives, and where priorities for protection appear to lie.
Too much sun causes sunburn; too little results in a vitamin deficiency. Richard McKenzie, Ben Liley, and Paul Johnston have run the numbers to find a happy balance.
Kit Rutherford and Tim Cox are modelling a market where the currency is nitrogen exports and the commodity is clean water.
