NIWA news forum

NIWA makes atmospheric measurements in Arctic Norway

During February and March, a three-week campaign measuring the chemicals involved in stratospheric ozone depletion was held at the Rocket Range in Andoya, Norway. This site is inside the Arctic Circle on one of the many islands west of the Norwegian mainland. The aim was to compare UV/visible spectrometers for the Network for Detection of Stratospheric Change (NDSC), a global organisation in which NIWA has a high profile, both with its NDSC primary Southern Hemisphere mid-latitude site at Lauder and major science programmes in Antarctica and at other sites.

A total of 11 spectrometers from 8 research institutes in 7 countries – Norway, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, England and New Zealand –were operated in a formal intercomparison overseen by a referee.

The NDSC sets high measurement standards and such campaigns are a pre-requisite for establishing and maintaining these standards.

The Andoya site was ideal for this campaign because of its high-latitude location and excellent research facilities. The location and time (early spring) were chosen so that we could measure Arctic vortex air. These air masses usually show elevated levels of activated chlorine species and are depleted in ozone, similar to but not quite as pronounced as the ozone hole observed every year above the Antarctic.

Having many instruments participating in this intercomparison also allowed us to test new viewing techniques designed to better probe trace gases in the troposphere, the atmospheric layer closest to the ground. This work contributes to attributing natural and human influences on atmospheric composition and is related to the large international effort to understand climate change and climate–ozone interactions.

We also took some time out to be tourists on the last Sunday of the campaign. With many of the participating scientists we explored Andoya and some of the neighbouring islands to sample the spectacular beauty of Norway, and to discover what a real fishing village looks and smells like!

Although the formal results will not be released until September, the preliminary results were displayed during the campaign so that groups could see if their measurements were reasonable. Based on this comparison, NIWA’s measurements appear to be of high quality and therefore it is likely that they will be accepted by the NDSC, as in previous intercomparisons.

Karin Kreher
Paul Johnston

For further information, contact
Karin Kreher
NIWA, Lauder
Private Bag 50061
Omakau
Central Otago
Phone +64 3 440 0447
Fax +64 7 856 0151
[email protected]).

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Global lessons from Māori success in fisheries?

Māori are among the most entrepreneurial people in the world, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report in 2002. Māori success in New Zealand’s fishing industry is a fine example to support this. Now, research is underway to look at the factors that have driven growth and innovation in the fishing industry and to investigate whether the same factors could be applied in other parts of the New Zealand economy.

In a new four-year FRST-funded research programme, Andrew Jeffs and Apanui Skipper (NIWA) will work with a research team led by Manuka Henare (Mira Szaszy Research Centre for Māori and Pacific Economic Development, University of Auckland). There will also be collaboration with researchers from Harvard University and the University of Arizona who have extensive experience of Native American business and innovation. The project partners will survey seafood companies and also undertake detailed case studies on successful companies like the Wakatu Incorporation in Nelson. In 25 years Wakatu has grown from a minor business to a large enterprise including mussel farming, crayfish and fishing activities, with assets of more than $100 million.

Overall, Māori businesses account for almost 60% of New Zealand’s fishing assets and have contributed to a tripling of exports over the past 20 years, even though the wild fish resources have not increased significantly. Most of the growth has been in innovative aquaculture and new product developments. The seafood sector has a large and varied Māori involvement and therefore provides an ideal opportunity to explore just how an innovative approach has paid dividends. Comparisons can then be made with research undertaken by the two American universities, which have previously investigated business and innovation success among Native American enterprises.

For further information, contact
Andrew Jeffs
NIWA
Private Bag 109695
Auckland
Phone +64 9 375 2048
Fax +64 9 375 2051
[email protected].

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Deep-sea experiments suggest spring food shortages

It was a nervous wait on board NIWA’s research vessel Tangaroa for a signal from the seabed to indicate that our instruments had successfully released their anchors and were rising slowly to the sea surface. No response would mean a few tough questions: Were they still there? Had their battery packs failed? Had they been programmed correctly? Had we lost valuable equipment and a unique 6-month dataset? Would we have to head home empty handed?

But suddenly, on the starboard side only 300 m away, the bright orange flag attached to the lander frame appeared and we could all breath a collective sigh of relief.

The equipment was benthic landers brought over from the Netherlands in a collaborative venture with researchers from the Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) and scientists from NIWA and the universities of Otago and Waikato (see Water & Atmosphere 9(3): 4). The results from over 18 months of data collection and analysis have revealed new information about seabed processes in one of New Zealand’s most important deep-ocean fishing areas.

The two benthic landers carried instruments to collect chemical, physical and biological data in the deep-ocean benthic environment. They were deployed at two sites near the Chatham Rise, east of New Zealand, at depths of about 3 km, for two periods of 6 months each from October 2001 until October 2002.

In an initial research voyage to the Chatham Rise in October 2001, the research team recorded for the first time in New Zealand waters a massive sinking event when surface organic matter (termed “phytodetritus”) dropped to the deep-ocean sea floor on the southern flank of Chatham Rise.

At the deep-ocean sites, the data collected included measurements of benthic community respiration, fluxes of organic material, sea-floor currents, sediment resuspension, and video imagery of sea-floor and near-bottom communities. NIWA also maintains moorings at these sites which measure phytoplankton production, ocean chemistry and currents in surface waters, and organic matter fluxes to the deep ocean. The project has generated data that for the first time give us an idea of how benthic processes in the deep ocean around New Zealand vary over an annual cycle.

These experiments will help us to determine how much of the food from surface waters is being used by deep-ocean benthic communities. A preliminary carbon budget for late spring–summer suggests that deep-ocean benthic communities did not receive enough food from surface waters to maintain growth and reproduction. In short, it appears that the animals were starving – or at least on a diet – at this time. Shortfalls in carbon input (measured by sediment traps on the NIWA moorings) and carbon demand (measured by oxygen consumption in chambers on the benthic landers) were greatest in the cool subantarctic waters. These results are significant because the Chatham Rise region is highly productive and contains many of our important deep-ocean fisheries, yet we know little about how deep-ocean pelagic and benthic communities function in this region.

For further information contact
Scott Nodder
NIWA
PO Box 14901
Wellington
Phone +64 4 386 0357
Fax +64 4 386 2153
[email protected]
or
Gerard Duineveld (NIOZ)
[email protected].

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IPCC Chair visits NIWA

During a recent visit to New Zealand, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), took time out of his busy schedule to speak on “The science and impacts of climate change – perspectives from the IPCC” at NIWA in Wellington on 9 May.

A large number of scientists and others from a range of government departments, research organisations and universities, and other interested parties attended the talk, which was hosted by NIWA and the Royal Society’s New Zealand Climate Committee.

Dr Pachauri was elected Chair of the IPCC in April 2002, having previously served as Vice Chair since 1997. He is also Director-General of the Tata Energy Research Institute in New Delhi.

The World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme established the IPCC in 1988 after recognising the problem of potential global climate change. The role of the IPCC is to assess the scientific, technical, and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts, and options for adaptation and mitigation.

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Supply and demand at the papakāinga: A flax-roots approach to distributed renewable electricity generation

The NEETs project – short for “Improving Rural Māori Communities through the Utilisation of New and Emerging Energy Technologies” – has now reached the halfway mark. This two-year FRST-funded programme is examining the potential for renewable energy resources for remote Māori communities and is managed by members of Te Kūwaha (NIWA’s Māori Research Unit). The work involves a range of NIWA staff and the active involvement of two Māori Communities – one at Waipoua (Northland), the other at Waihī (Lake Taupo). Each community includes 15–20 homes, marae, wharepuni, wharekai, and a kohanga reo, which provide a base for many hundred hapū members.

This research and development initiative was motivated by a number of significant energy supply, efficiency, and conservation problems in remote Māori communities across the country, as highlighted by the Regional Task Force and the National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy. In particular, the lack of local energy infrastructure was identified as a constraint on Māori business development in many rural areas, and as contributing to the inefficient use of energy resources and poor health status of these communities. All of these issues are being addressed in this research and an expected outcome is the creation of templates that can be applied to other rural communities.

The geographic and cultural specificities of each site mean each community has unique energy requirements and energy use patterns, and different energy resources available to them. For example, the Waihī village is connected to the national electricity grid and frequently hosts large hui or tangi, which can create large and random power demand. Conversely, Waipoua is not connected to the national grid and, while it is the site of many hui and host to many visitors, the hui tend to be less frequent and smaller than at Waihī. In relation to renewable energy resources, the potential for wind and solar energy is being assessed at both sites; hydro and geothermal are also being investigated at Waihī and wave energy is being assessed off the Northland coast near Waipoua.

Energy options for any community will depend on natural resources, environmental and social impact, optimal mix of technologies, energy needs and costs. Future options could include building a micro-hydro and/or a wind-power station and on-selling the electricity to the national grid, or switching between the grid and its own supplies as need dictated.

In the first year of the project we have assessed the current and future energy use and needs of both kāinga, energy efficiency in homes and other buildings, and the renewable energy potential at each site from existing regional data. We have also installed wind, solar, wave and hydrological monitoring equipment.

In the second year of the project, following analysis of the first year’s data from the monitoring equipment, we will assess a range of renewable technology options (including hydrogen fuel cells and bioenergy systems). We also plan to install energy-efficiency measures in homes and buildings with funding from EECA’s Energywise Residential Grant Fund and NIWA.

To date the NEETs project has involved the participation of members of both Waihī and Waipoua communities, whether it is walking the site to find the best place to situate a wind-monitoring mast, discussing cultural and economic activities, or commenting on the draft report on Stage One. Feedback from the communities suggests those involved in the study are enjoying the opportunity to interact with scientists and to think in depth about their energy needs and usage and how that relates to their health, cultural sustainability and economic futures.

For further information, contact: Guy Penny NIWA Private Bag 109695 Auckland Phone +64 9 375 2082 Fax +64 9 375 2051 [email protected].

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The hunt for small snapper

A broad-scale survey for baby snapper in west coast North Island harbours is in progress. The survey is part of a project aimed at finding links between the estuarine nursery grounds of these fish and the coastal habitats of adult snapper in New Zealand. Estuaries are very susceptible to impacts from human activities – such as sedimentation and chemical runoff. Therefore, identifying where fish stocks originate and whether adults tend to return to the same estuary has implications for the management of the fishery.

Harbours surveyed include Whangape, Hokianga, Kaipara, Manukau, Port Waikato, Aotea, Kawhia and Raglan. Sampling has been from a small-beam trawl towed behind a custom-built sampling barge.

So far we have found relatively abundant juvenile snapper (3–9 cm long) in a number (but not all) of the harbours sampled, confirming the important role that these harbours play as nurseries supporting adult coastal snapper populations. There appear to be strong latitude-related changes in abundance and juvenile size coming down the coastline. We are using samples of these small snapper to assess the power of otolith (fish ear-bone) microchemistry to chemically fingerprint the estuary from which individual adult fish came.

Mark Morrison, Derrick Parkinson,
Malcolm Francis, Mike Timperley

For more information see Fisheries & Aquaculture Update No. 7, or contact:
Mark Morrison
NIWA
Private Bag 109695
Auckland
Phone +64 9 375 2063
Fax +64 9 375 2051
[email protected].

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Kyoto conference discusses effects of climate change on the world’s lakes

Water shortages have been topical in New Zealand in recent times, but the problem is by no means limited to these shores. At the recent 3rd World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan, scientists, politicians and other interested groups discussed many aspects of the growing crisis in water supply and water quality throughout the world.

NIWA scientists were invited along with experts from around the world to participate in a session focused on the effects of climate change on lakes. The session highlighted the similiarity of changes occurring in lakes in Africa, North America, Europe and New Zealand as a consequence of increasing temperature. The effects appear to be largely driven through a general increase in the stability of lakes through warmer air temperatures and, in some cases, calmer winds.

How does this work? Warm air temperatures translate to warmer lake-surface temperatures, which increase the density difference between the upper and lower parts of the water column. Increased stability and, hence, stronger stratification results. Stratification is a fundamental factor in lake ecology that affects many aspects of water quality. For lakes that are permanently (or near-permanently) stratified, this gradual change has shown up as a reduction of mixing depth and a change in production and oxygenation patterns. In lakes that stratify and de-stratify many times each year (polymictic, such as Lake Rotorua), stratification has increased in duration and/or frequency. For lakes that usually only stratify once a year (for the whole summer, such as Lake Taupo), the mixed period has tended to be shorter. For example, in 1998, the warmest year in recent times, Lake Taupo failed to mix completely during winter, for the first time on record. This failure to mix affected the lake ecology for several years.

A second consequence of warmer temperatures and greater stability seems to be an increase in the growth of cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae). We have long known that warm, stable, nutrient-rich water tends to favour cyanobacteria. Expatriate New Zealander Prof. Warwick Vincent described how cyanobacterial blooms have increased in frequency in some smaller Canadian lakes until they are now annual events, apparently in response to climatic warming.

So what can be done about it? Well, one output of the Forum was the establishment of a new non-governmental organisation called the World Water and Climate Network (WWCN), likely to be based at the Lake Biwa Research Institute in Japan. The WWCN will collate global data related to climatic effects on inland waters, and will develop collaborative programmes to address the effects of climate change on waters, and their mitigation. For now the lessons from our lakes are that climate change has pervasive and complex effects, that it often exacerbates the effects of other anthropogenic impacts, and that we should be more cautious in how we manage the quality as well as the quantity of freshwater resources in a changing world.

For further information contact
Ian Hawes
NIWA
PO Box 11115
Hamilton
Phone +64 7 856 7026
Fax +64 7 856 0151
[email protected].