title: New Zealand national security: Challenges, trends and issues [Book Review]

authors: Steff, Reuben

abstract: I was invited to review the following book for the New Zealand International Review: New Zealand National Security: Challenges, Trends and Issues. Editors: William Hoverd, Nick Nelson and Carl Bradley Published by: Massey University Press and Massey Defence and Security Studies, Palmerston North, 2017, 304pp.

text: New Zealand national security: Challenges, trends and issues [Book Review] I was invited to review the following book for the New Zealand International Review: New Zealand National Security: Challenges, Trends and Issues. Editors: William Hoverd, Nick Nelson and Carl Bradley Published by: Massey University Press and Massey Defence and Security Studies, Palmerston North, 2017, 304pp.

year: 2017

title: Effects of growth form and functional traits on response of woody plants to clearing and fragmentation of subtropical rainforest

authors: Kooyman, R. M.

subjects: dispersal and seed size

abstract: The conservation implications of large-scale rainforest clearing and fragmentation on the persistence of functional and taxonomic diversity remain poorly understood. If traits represent adaptive strategies of plant species to particular circumstances, the expectation is that the effect of forest clearing and fragmentation will be affected by species functional traits, particularly those related to dispersal. We used species occurrence data for woody plants in 46 rainforest patches across 75,000 ha largely cleared of forest by the early 1900s to determine the combined effects of area reduction, fragmentation, and patch size on the taxonomic structure and functional diversity of subtropical rainforest. We compiled species trait values for leaf area, seed dry mass, wood density, and maximum height and calculated species niche breadths. Taxonomic structure, trait values (means, ranges), and the functional diversity of assemblages of climbing and free-standing plants in remnant patches were quantified. Larger rainforest patches had higher species richness. Species in smaller patches were taxonomically less related than species in larger patches. Free-standing plants had a high percentage of frugivore dispersed seeds; climbers had a high proportion of small wind-dispersed seeds. Connections between the patchy spatial distribution of free-standing species, larger seed sizes, and dispersal syndrome were weak. Assemblages of free-standing plants in patches showed more taxonomic and spatial structuring than climbing plants. Smaller isolated patches retained relatively high functional diversity and similar taxonomic structure to larger tracts of forest despite lower species richness. The response of woody plants to clearing and fragmentation of subtropical rainforest differed between climbers and slow-growing mature-phase forest trees but not between climbers and pioneer trees. Quantifying taxonomic structure and functional diversity provides an improved basis for conservation planning and management by elucidating the effects of forest-area reduction and fragmentation.

text: Effects of growth form and functional traits on response of woody plants to clearing and fragmentation of subtropical rainforest The conservation implications of large-scale rainforest clearing and fragmentation on the persistence of functional and taxonomic diversity remain poorly understood. If traits represent adaptive strategies of plant species to particular circumstances, the expectation is that the effect of forest clearing and fragmentation will be affected by species functional traits, particularly those related to dispersal. We used species occurrence data for woody plants in 46 rainforest patches across 75,000 ha largely cleared of forest by the early 1900s to determine the combined effects of area reduction, fragmentation, and patch size on the taxonomic structure and functional diversity of subtropical rainforest. We compiled species trait values for leaf area, seed dry mass, wood density, and maximum height and calculated species niche breadths. Taxonomic structure, trait values (means, ranges), and the functional diversity of assemblages of climbing and free-standing plants in remnant patches were quantified. Larger rainforest patches had higher species richness. Species in smaller patches were taxonomically less related than species in larger patches. Free-standing plants had a high percentage of frugivore dispersed seeds; climbers had a high proportion of small wind-dispersed seeds. Connections between the patchy spatial distribution of free-standing species, larger seed sizes, and dispersal syndrome were weak. Assemblages of free-standing plants in patches showed more taxonomic and spatial structuring than climbing plants. Smaller isolated patches retained relatively high functional diversity and similar taxonomic structure to larger tracts of forest despite lower species richness. The response of woody plants to clearing and fragmentation of subtropical rainforest differed between climbers and slow-growing mature-phase forest trees but not between climbers and pioneer trees. Quantifying taxonomic structure and functional diversity provides an improved basis for conservation planning and management by elucidating the effects of forest-area reduction and fragmentation.

year: 2013

title: Putting Sylvia in her place: history, geographical theory and the “New” Education

authors: Middleton, Sue

subjects: Sylvia Ashton-Warner

abstract: New Zealander Sylvia Ashton-Warner, a teacher in remote rural Mori schools in the 1940s-1950s, became internationally renowned as a novelist and educational theorist. Earlier commentators portrayed her educational theory as in conflict with those of her time and place, but recent studies conceptualise them as enabled by it. While space/place has often been considered the preserve of the geographer and time that of the historian, Henri Lefebvre and others suggest that: “these issues need to be thought together rather than separately” and that macro-, meso- and micro-levels of analysis be engaged simultaneously. The author traces how conceptual, linguistic, sensory and intellectual resources of the global “New Education” movement extended into the tiny bush-encircled Mori communities in which Sylvia taught and wrote in the 1940s-1950s and surfaced in her writing. The article zooms in and out between the “the immensity of the global” (the New Education, the Second World War) and “the intimately tiny” (her classroom and home). The “data” include Sylvia's non-fiction education texts and official documents of her time: school curricula, education policy documents, Ministerial and Inspectors' reports. What Lefebvre terms a “Rhythm analysis” of Ashton-Warner's educational writing shows intermingled pulses of domestic life, routines of educational bureaucracy, cycles of nature, and cataclysms of world events. It is important for historians to study “the where rather than just the when with location and landscape central parts of the analysis”.

text: Putting Sylvia in her place: history, geographical theory and the “New” Education New Zealander Sylvia Ashton-Warner, a teacher in remote rural Mori schools in the 1940s-1950s, became internationally renowned as a novelist and educational theorist. Earlier commentators portrayed her educational theory as in conflict with those of her time and place, but recent studies conceptualise them as enabled by it. While space/place has often been considered the preserve of the geographer and time that of the historian, Henri Lefebvre and others suggest that: “these issues need to be thought together rather than separately” and that macro-, meso- and micro-levels of analysis be engaged simultaneously. The author traces how conceptual, linguistic, sensory and intellectual resources of the global “New Education” movement extended into the tiny bush-encircled Mori communities in which Sylvia taught and wrote in the 1940s-1950s and surfaced in her writing. The article zooms in and out between the “the immensity of the global” (the New Education, the Second World War) and “the intimately tiny” (her classroom and home). The “data” include Sylvia's non-fiction education texts and official documents of her time: school curricula, education policy documents, Ministerial and Inspectors' reports. What Lefebvre terms a “Rhythm analysis” of Ashton-Warner's educational writing shows intermingled pulses of domestic life, routines of educational bureaucracy, cycles of nature, and cataclysms of world events. It is important for historians to study “the where rather than just the when with location and landscape central parts of the analysis”.

year: 2011