Restoring native ecosystems in urban Auckland: urban soils, isolation, and weeds as impediments to forest establishment

New Zealand urban environments are currently dominated by exotic plant species. Restoring native vegetation and its associated native biodiversity in these landscapes is desirable for both cultural and ecological reasons. We report on the first four years of an ongoing vegetation restoration experiment in Waitakere City, Auckland, that addresses four challenges to urban restoration: weeds, Anthropic Soils, attraction of frugivorous birds, and patch isolation. Nine commonly planted native species, grouped separately into wind- and bird-dispersed species, were planted across four sites increasingly isolated from native bush patches, using two site preparation methods. By year three, woody weeds >50 cm tall had established with an average density of 1.7 plant m across all sites. This was more than 17 times denser than all established wild native woody seedlings of any height. One of our establishment methods, sparse planting with mulch, resulted in higher native plant survival and faster plant growth. However, after 4 years, the more intensive method, dense planting and ripping of the soil, resulted in a denser canopy and a 2.8-fold reduction in woody weed establishment. The typically urban soils of all sites were highly modified, with substantial variation in compaction, ponding risk, and fertility over distances of 5-15 m. Several, but not all, species were detrimentally affected by soil compaction and ponding. Many bird-dispersed species, both native and non-native, colonised the experiment, although this did not differ between plots with planted wind-dispersed and bird-dispersed species, perhaps due to the small size of these plots. Site colonisation by native species was particularly high at sites ≤ 100 m from existing native vegetation, suggesting that even small patches of native vegetation in urban landscapes will be valuable as seed sources for accelerating native plant establishment at nearby receptive sites © New Zealand Ecological Society

Restoration opportunities assessment for the Avon Ōtākaro Red Zone using a local knowledge approach

Following the Canterbury earthquake sequence of 2010-11, a large and contiguous tract of vacated ‘red zoned’ land lies alongside the lower Ōtākaro / Avon River and is known as the Avon-Ōtākaro Red Zone (AORZ). This is the second report in the Ecological Regeneration Options (ERO) project that addresses future land uses in the AORZ. The purpose of this report is to present results from an assessment of restoration opportunities conducted in April 2017. The objectives of the assessment were to identify potential benefits of ecological restoration activities across both land and water systems in the AORZ and characterise the key options for their implementation. The focus of this report is not to provide specific advice on the methods for achieving specific restoration endpoints per se. This will vary at different sites and scales with a large number of combinations possible. Rather, the emphasis is on providing an overview of the many restoration and regeneration options in their totality across the AORZ. An additional objective is to support their adequate assessment in the identification of optimum land uses and adaptive management practices for the AORZ. Participatory processes may play a useful role in assessment and stakeholder engagement by providing opportunities for social learning and the co-creation of new knowledge. We used a facilitated local knowledge based approach that generated a large quantity of reliable and site specific data in a short period of time. By inviting participation from a wide knowledge-holder network inclusivity is improved in comparison to small-group expert panel approaches. Similar approaches could be applied to other information gathering and assessment needs in the regeneration planning process. Findings from this study represent the most comprehensive set of concepts available to date to address the potential benefits of ecological regeneration in the AORZ. This is a core topic for planning to avoid missed opportunities and opportunity costs. The results identify a wide range of activities that may be applied to generate benefits for Christchurch and beyond, all involving aspects of a potential new ecology in the AORZ. These may be combined at a range of scales to create scenarios, quantify benefits, and explore the potential for synergies between different land use options. A particular challenge is acquiring the information needed within relatively short time frames. Early attention to gathering baseline data, addressing technical knowledge gaps, and developing conceptual frameworks to account for the many spatio-temporal aspects are all key activities that will assist in delivering the best outcomes. Methodologies by which these many facets can be pulled together in quantitative and comparative assessments are the focus of the final report in the ERO series

Urban ecology and ecological design: New Zealand perspectives and future pathways

The main goals of the workshop were to identify ways in which ecology and design can be successfully integrated and to determine future research and teaching directions in urban ecology and ecological design. Now more than ever we need to understand the role of urban ecology and design in dealing with social, climatic, economic and biodiversity crises in a rapidly changing world. This presentation identifies New Zealand perspectives and future pathways

Public understandings of addiction: where do neurobiological explanations fit?

Developments in the field of neuroscience, according to its proponents, offer the prospect of an enhanced understanding and treatment of addicted persons. Consequently, its advocates consider that improving public understanding of addiction neuroscience is a desirable aim. Those critical of neuroscientific approaches, however, charge that it is a totalising, reductive perspective–one that ignores other known causes in favour of neurobiological explanations. Sociologist Nikolas Rose has argued that neuroscience, and its associated technologies, are coming to dominate cultural models to the extent that 'we' increasingly understand ourselves as 'neurochemical selves'. Drawing on 55 qualitative interviews conducted with members of the Australian public residing in the Greater Brisbane area, we challenge both the 'expectational discourses' of neuroscientists and the criticisms of its detractors. Members of the public accepted multiple perspectives on the causes of addiction, including some elements of neurobiological explanations. Their discussions of addiction drew upon a broad range of philosophical, sociological, anthropological, psychological and neurobiological vocabularies, suggesting that they synthesised newer technical understandings, such as that offered by neuroscience, with older ones. Holding conceptual models that acknowledge the complexity of addiction aetiology into which new information is incorporated suggests that the impact of neuroscientific discourse in directing the public's beliefs about addiction is likely to be more limited than proponents or opponents of neuroscience expect

What does 'acceptance' mean? Public reflections on the idea that addiction is a brain disease

Public responses to the dissemination of neuroscientific explanations of addiction and other mental disorders are an interesting sociocultural phenomenon. We investigated how 55 members of the Australian public deliberated on the idea that 'addiction is a brain disease'. Our findings point to the diverse ways in which the public understands and utilises this proposition. Interviewees readily accepted that drugs affect brain functioning but were ambivalent about whether to label addiction as a 'disease'. Contrary to the prediction of neuroscientific advocates and social science critics, acceptance of a neurobiological conception of addiction did not necessarily affect beliefs about addicted persons' responsibility for their addiction. We discuss the theoretical and applied implications of these findings. Theoretically, we examine the complexity surrounding how people adopt new knowledge and its role in reshaping ethical beliefs. We also discuss the implications of these findings for the ethics of communication of neuroscientific information to reduce stigma and enhance social support for the treatment of addicted individuals

Global Peak in Atmospheric Radiocarbon Provides a Potential Definition for the Onset of the Anthropocene Epoch in 1965

Anthropogenic activity is now recognised as having profoundly and permanently altered the Earth system, suggesting we have entered a human-dominated geological epoch, the ‘Anthropocene’. To formally define the onset of the Anthropocene, a synchronous global signature within geological-forming materials is required. Here we report a series of precisely-dated tree-ring records from Campbell Island (Southern Ocean) that capture peak atmospheric radiocarbon (14C) resulting from Northern Hemisphere-dominated thermonuclear bomb tests during the 1950s and 1960s. The only alien tree on the island, a Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), allows us to seasonally-resolve Southern Hemisphere atmospheric 14C, demonstrating the ‘bomb peak’ in this remote and pristine location occurred in the last-quarter of 1965 (October-December), coincident with the broader changes associated with the post-World War II ‘Great Acceleration’ in industrial capacity and consumption. Our findings provide a precisely-resolved potential Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) or ‘golden spike’, marking the onset of the Anthropocene Epoch

Low impact urban design and development (LIUDD) : matching urban design and urban ecology

This paper outlines the roles that ecological concepts and the practice of landscape design have in achieving sustainable and healthy cities of the future. This approach is embodied in the Low Impact Urban Design and Development (LIUDD) movement. We describe studio exercises conducted for the students at Lincoln University in the Landscape Architecture Group to illustrate the evolution of thinking and implementation of LIUDD principles in some complementary case studies from Christchurch City and Lincoln Village. We review the theory, experience and justification for integrating biodiversity into urban environments