title: Dealing with uncertainty in flood risk management and land use planning decisions: Insights from Aotearoa New Zealand

authors: Afsari Bajestani, Sepideh

abstract: Flooding with increasing intensity and frequency is presenting significant challenges for risk management and land use planning in urban areas. This is further exacerbated by uncertainties regarding how flood patterns are changing because of climate change. However, how such uncertainties are considered to inform flood risk management and land use planning decisions can vary largely from place to place and remain unclear in the literature. This paper contributes to this by examining how uncertainty is dealt with in flood risk management and land use planning in Aotearoa New Zealand. Drawing on empirical data at the local level, findings indicate that Aotearoa New Zealand’s decision-makers face challenges in considering and communicating uncertainty due to the prevalence of outdated approaches and regulatory constraints, fragmented risk governance, and lack of appropriate understanding of different perceptions and assumptions regarding flood risk between different stakeholders. Based on findings, the paper discusses the critical role of a national-level adaptive flood risk governance in helping to ensure consistency and coherency across different jurisdictions and levels of government, regarding the incorporation of uncertainty into flood risk management and land use planning. This includes the provision of national directives for incorporating uncertainty in decision-making whilst leaving room for innovation and targeted variability at the local level.

text: Dealing with uncertainty in flood risk management and land use planning decisions: Insights from Aotearoa New Zealand Flooding with increasing intensity and frequency is presenting significant challenges for risk management and land use planning in urban areas. This is further exacerbated by uncertainties regarding how flood patterns are changing because of climate change. However, how such uncertainties are considered to inform flood risk management and land use planning decisions can vary largely from place to place and remain unclear in the literature. This paper contributes to this by examining how uncertainty is dealt with in flood risk management and land use planning in Aotearoa New Zealand. Drawing on empirical data at the local level, findings indicate that Aotearoa New Zealand’s decision-makers face challenges in considering and communicating uncertainty due to the prevalence of outdated approaches and regulatory constraints, fragmented risk governance, and lack of appropriate understanding of different perceptions and assumptions regarding flood risk between different stakeholders. Based on findings, the paper discusses the critical role of a national-level adaptive flood risk governance in helping to ensure consistency and coherency across different jurisdictions and levels of government, regarding the incorporation of uncertainty into flood risk management and land use planning. This includes the provision of national directives for incorporating uncertainty in decision-making whilst leaving room for innovation and targeted variability at the local level.

year: 2024

title: Airborne microbial transport limitation to isolated Antarctic soil habitats

authors: Archer, Stephen David James

subjects: Science & Technology

abstract: Dispersal is a critical yet poorly understood factor underlying macroecological patterns in microbial communities1. Airborne microbial transport is assumed to occupy a central role in determining dispersal outcomes2,3, and extra-range dispersal has important implications for predicting ecosystem resilience and response to environmental change4. One of the most pertinent biomes in this regard is Antarctica, given its geographic isolation and vulnerability to climate change and human disturbance5. Here, we report microbial diversity in near-ground and high-altitude air above the largest ice-free Antarctic habitat, as well as that of underlying soil microbial communities. We found that persistent local airborne inputs were unable to fully explain Antarctic soil community assembly. Comparison with airborne microbial diversity from high-altitude and non-polar sources suggests that strong selection occurs during long-range atmospheric transport. The influence of selection during airborne transit and at sink locations varied between microbial phyla. Overall, the communities from this isolated Antarctic ecosystem displayed limited connectivity to the non-polar microbial pool, and alternative sources of recruitment are necessary to fully explain extant soil diversity. Our findings provide critical insights into the role of airborne transport limitation in determining microbial biogeographic patterns.

text: Airborne microbial transport limitation to isolated Antarctic soil habitats Dispersal is a critical yet poorly understood factor underlying macroecological patterns in microbial communities1. Airborne microbial transport is assumed to occupy a central role in determining dispersal outcomes2,3, and extra-range dispersal has important implications for predicting ecosystem resilience and response to environmental change4. One of the most pertinent biomes in this regard is Antarctica, given its geographic isolation and vulnerability to climate change and human disturbance5. Here, we report microbial diversity in near-ground and high-altitude air above the largest ice-free Antarctic habitat, as well as that of underlying soil microbial communities. We found that persistent local airborne inputs were unable to fully explain Antarctic soil community assembly. Comparison with airborne microbial diversity from high-altitude and non-polar sources suggests that strong selection occurs during long-range atmospheric transport. The influence of selection during airborne transit and at sink locations varied between microbial phyla. Overall, the communities from this isolated Antarctic ecosystem displayed limited connectivity to the non-polar microbial pool, and alternative sources of recruitment are necessary to fully explain extant soil diversity. Our findings provide critical insights into the role of airborne transport limitation in determining microbial biogeographic patterns.

year: 2019

title: An ashy septingentenarian: the Kaharoa tephra turns 700 (with notes on its volcanological, archaeological, and historical importance)

authors: Lowe, David J.

abstract: Most of us are aware of the basaltic Tarawera eruption on 10th June 1886: the high toll on life (~120 people), landscape devastation, and loss of the Pink and White Terraces. But this was not the first time that Mt Tarawera produced an eruption of importance both to volcanology and human history. This edition of the GSNZ Newsletter marks the 700th anniversary of the Kaharoa eruption – its septingentenary to be precise – which occurred at Mt Tarawera in the winter of 1314 AD (± 12 years) (Hogg et al. 2003) (Fig. 1). The importance of the Kaharoa eruption is at least threefold. (1) It is the most recent rhyolite eruption in New Zealand, and the largest New Zealand eruption volumetrically of the last millennium. (2) The Kaharoa tephra is an important marker horizon in late Holocene stratigraphy and geoarchaeology (Lowe et al. 1998, 2000), and in particular helps to constrain the timing of settlement of early Polynesians in North Island (Newnham et al. 1998; Hogg et al. 2003; Lowe 2011). (3) There is a link between the soils that developed on the Kaharoa tephra, the animal ‘wasting’ disease known as ‘bush sickness’, and the birth of a government soil survey group as an independent organisation (Tonkin 2012).

text: An ashy septingentenarian: the Kaharoa tephra turns 700 (with notes on its volcanological, archaeological, and historical importance) Most of us are aware of the basaltic Tarawera eruption on 10th June 1886: the high toll on life (~120 people), landscape devastation, and loss of the Pink and White Terraces. But this was not the first time that Mt Tarawera produced an eruption of importance both to volcanology and human history. This edition of the GSNZ Newsletter marks the 700th anniversary of the Kaharoa eruption – its septingentenary to be precise – which occurred at Mt Tarawera in the winter of 1314 AD (± 12 years) (Hogg et al. 2003) (Fig. 1). The importance of the Kaharoa eruption is at least threefold. (1) It is the most recent rhyolite eruption in New Zealand, and the largest New Zealand eruption volumetrically of the last millennium. (2) The Kaharoa tephra is an important marker horizon in late Holocene stratigraphy and geoarchaeology (Lowe et al. 1998, 2000), and in particular helps to constrain the timing of settlement of early Polynesians in North Island (Newnham et al. 1998; Hogg et al. 2003; Lowe 2011). (3) There is a link between the soils that developed on the Kaharoa tephra, the animal ‘wasting’ disease known as ‘bush sickness’, and the birth of a government soil survey group as an independent organisation (Tonkin 2012).

year: 2014