National Centre timely, says Minister
The National Centre for Coasts & Oceans was opened by Pete Hodgson, then Minister of Research, Science and Technology, in November.
The Minister said the new national centre was timely for a number of reasons.
No.02 2005
23 March 2007
National Centre timely, says Minister
New tool for marine conservation and management
Marine habitat mapping workshop
Mapping life on the Napier seafloor
Future waves
Marine habitat mapping workshop
When debate between competing users of the coast gets heated, it pays to have the best possible information on hand. Technology is now available to map the seafloor at any water depth, and new research at NIWA makes it possible to generate biologically meaningful maps of the undersea habitat.
Mapping life on the Napier seafloor
It sounds easy, but equipment and vessel time as well as unpredictable weather make it time consuming and expensive to map the seafloor using cameras alone.
At NIWA, we have developed a quicker, more cost effective method. First we acoustically map the seafloor using technology such as sidescan or multibeam sonar. We use the acoustic images, and our ecological experience, to guide where we deploy video cameras. Once we have the video footage, we use statistical techniques and ecological information on the importance of various species to classify the observations into habitat types.
New tool for marine conservation and management
New tool for marine conservation and management
New Zealand’s first-ever Marine Environment Classification (MEC) is complete.
The MEC divides New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) into areas with similar environmental and biological character. We used eight environmental variables to define the classification. They all relate to the physical characteristics of the ocean, including depth, tidal currents, and aspects of sea surface temperature. Biological features of an area (e.g., what creatures live there) tend to be closely aligned with the environment.
Future waves
For the past year, NIWA has been conducting in-house trials of a system which produces rolling 5-day forecasts of wave conditions.
Waves are generated by wind. The NIWA model currently uses 5-day forecasts of winds over the world’s oceans from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The model converts those wind forecasts into the likely wave patterns, taking into account the physics of how waves build up, travel, and dissipate.
