Scion, Landcare Research and the University of Canterbury reviewed national and international best practice in steepland plantation forests to understand and minimise the damage from post-harvest landslide and debris flows.

This report details two separate field studies which have quantified greenhouse gas emissions from managed peat soils including nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide.

National statistics on Harvested Wood Products and trade are used for two purposes related to climate change mitigation: greenhouse gas inventory reporting and Kyoto Protocol accounting. The objective of this report is to provide information that will allow New Zealand to meet the new requirements for Kyoto Protocol accounting and reporting relating to harvested wood products.

This report quantifies the annual carbon emissions associated with current rates of annual disturbance in New Zealand’s pre-1990 and post-1989 forests, within the context of the Durban Agreement. The Durban Agreement includes definitions and a suggested approach to deriving the baseline level of natural disturbance, but the relevant best practice guidance is yet to be finalised. This adds a significant element of methodological uncertainty.

The research programme explored the opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the use of fossil fuels by farm equipment and rural trucking by substitution with biofuel. Biofuel production on that scale requires purpose-grown energy crops. Our research has designed a novel energy crop production system that also reduces GHG emissions (from the manufacture of N fertiliser) by virtue of its ‘closed loop N supply’ feature.

Indentification of methanogen-specific inhibitors and cross-reactive vaccine antigens

We evaluated the potential of forage rape (Brassica napus L.) to mitigate animal-level methane and nitrous oxide emissions when fed to growing sheep. In a previous study, funded by the PGgRc, feeding forage rape to sheep reduced methane emissions per unit of feed eaten by 25% compared with those from sheep fed ryegrass.

The nitrification inhibitor dicyandiamide (DCD) is used in New Zealand dairy farming to reduce nitrogen (N) losses from leaching and nitrous oxide emissions. Overseas studies have shown that, in certain conditions, DCD can potentially have an effect on a range of crops. This study assesses the impact of DCD on white clover growth and nitrogen fixation.

The purpose of the project was to, in collaboration with Aohanga Incorporation, develop a science-based climate change resilience strategy for Aohanga‘s multiple owned Owahanga Farm Station and to develop a social process framework for engaging rural communities and land-owning Iwi Incorporations in climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Insect pollinated seed crops contribute at least NZ$60Million annually in export earnings. These crops are pollinated by a range of insects including honey bees, bumble bees, native bees and flies, and maintaining pollinator diversity can be important for maximising crop yields. However, different pollinators are active at different times of the day and under varying climatic conditions (activity windows).

Plant diseases, a major constraint on New Zealand's horticultural production, are likely to be affected by temperature and rainfall changes resulting from global climate warming. This study undertook a quantitative analysis for key diseases affecting major horticultural crop sectors using disease risk models in use within those sectors, to ascertain likely changes in regional disease and allow the horticultural industry to plan for the future.

This report reviews what is currently known about the impacts of climate change on erosion processes and control methods in New Zealand. It reviews: climate change projections relevant to erosion; information on potential impacts; identifies areas most susceptible to climate change impacts on erosion; and summarises climate change effects on erosion; while identifying future research priorities.

Climate change will alter land suitability for different uses globally and in New Zealand. Shifting patterns, intensities, and frequencies of rainfall, temperature, winds, storms, and distributions of pests and weeds will trigger shifts in land use in complex ways. This report assesses the implications of 11 key trends operating at broad levels and interprets them at progressively finer scales from global to local.

Dairy farms in New Zealand use lagoons and ponds to store effluent washdown from milking sheds. These ponds are therefore a significant source of methane. This study aims to test the effectiveness of an improved design of biofilter as an integral part of a pond cover to oxidise CH4 emissions from dairy effluent ponds, thus providing a practical and potentially cost-effective technology to reduce dairy effluent emissions.

Note, while this document is marked 'confidential', it has since been approved for public release.

In New Zealand, forest harvesting contributes about 50 percent of the cost of wood production, one of the highest harvesting costs in the world. The purpose of this project was to address these high costs by producing a dynamic-systems model of the harvesting process which could be used to define factors influencing harvesting productivity, identify opportunities for short-term improvements, and long-term changes to steep slope harvesting.

Use of shallow samples to estimate the total carbon storage in pastoral soils.