Te Pūnaha Matatini

?? PhD scholarship ?? Join us on a PhD scholarship to build modelling and monitoring tools to measure the impact of small and large scale lake health interventions, working with Matiu Prebble and Graham Donovan. Te Roto o Wairewa, a shallow polymictic shoreline lake on the southern side of Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū, Banks Peninsula, has had a troubled history. The catchment was deforested and the lake closed off to the sea in the 1860s and since that time the water has remained turbid and prone to toxic algal blooms. The customary and highly productive tuna (eel) fishery was on the verge of collapse due to the highly degraded state of the lake. Efforts by mana whenua (Wairewa Rūnanga – local Ngāi Tahu Māori community) have been instrumental in improving lake water quality, but further improvements are desired to ensure the well-being of both tuna and whānau (families). You will work alongside another PhD student exploring mathematical models of spatio-temporal early warning signals. This component of the project aims to establish a rapid on-site lake water surveillance system to detect the fluctuations in key algal indicators (diatoms and cyanobacteria). This will involve a combination of conventional microscopy, molecular approaches and machine learning. The generated data will be used to inform the spatio-temporal warning system. The main aim is to assess the efficacy of small (e.g. sediment traps or floating vegetation mats) and large scale (e.g. Te Kōawa Ika o Wairewa, a large-scale fish pass system being constructed within the period of study) lake water interventions.

?? JOB ALERT ?? Join our team as a part-time research operations coordinator → https://lnkd.in/ggPbyntj

Today we welcome Nicholson Consulting as one of our official partner organisations ?? Nicholson Consulting is a boutique multi-disciplinary consultancy based in Wellington that brings a progressive perspective to data. As a values-driven organisation with expertise in data science, research and insights, and Māori data, Nicholson Consulting is closely aligned with Te Pūnaha Matatini. Their team have analysed nuanced datasets, informed the direction of many data-driven projects and built some of the largest algorithms in government. But most importantly, their work is never just about the numbers. It’s about the people the numbers represent. Professor Priscilla Wehi, Co-Director of Te Pūnaha Matatini, says that “I am delighted to be in partnership with Nicholson Consulting, given our common interests. Both Te Pūnaha Matatini and Nicholson Consulting seek to use research tools such as modelling for good in this complex world that we live in. As just one example, we are both passionate about the health of te reo Māori." Bernadette Scanlon, CEO of @Nicholson Consulting is excited about the opportunities this partnership will bring. “We hope that by working together we will be able to draw on each other’s strengths, expertise and prior experience to tackle the biggest issues facing communities in Aotearoa.”

The impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle and repeated weather events have changed how rangatahi in Tairāwhiti engage with the places they love through sport ?? A powerful new series of images and interviews by photographer Josie McClutchie and Te Pūnaha Matatini Principal Investigator Holly Thorpe provides an opportunity to learn from, and be moved by, rangatahi knowledge and experience of climate change ??

Five years since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, it can feel as if trust in the knowledge of experts and scientific evidence is in crisis. But according to new findings in a global survey of more than 70,000 people across 68 countries, people hold science in high regard and want scientists to be more involved in policy decisions. New Zealanders are particularly trusting of scientists, ranking ninth internationally, not far behind Australians who ranked fifth. In a new piece for The Conversation Australia + NZ, Te Pūnaha Matatini PhD student and co-author Laura Kranz discusses this research, and how this trust should not be taken for granted by the scientific community.

The New Zealand Government's decision to restructure the Marsden Fund and Catalyst Fund is more than a simple budgetary adjustment – it is a pivotal moment. This decision comes in the context of international pressure on research funding, and lack of understanding of the value that researchers bring to our society. This rift partly explains why we have reached this moment. We have an opportunity to engage in a productive national dialogue to highlight the fundamental role of research and researchers in our society. By narrowing research funding to a prescriptive economic lens, we risk undermining the complex ecosystem of knowledge production. Researchers are critical independent advisors who generate insights that transcend immediate fiscal calculations. Their work generates systemic value through innovative problem-solving, policy development, and societal understanding that often yields unpredictable yet profound economic and social benefits over the long term. The most pressing challenges of our time – climate change, technological disruption, social inequalities – defy simplistic disciplinary boundaries. They require nuanced, interdisciplinary approaches that integrate quantitative and qualitative perspectives. An example close to home is that both modelling flood risk and understanding social resilience is crucial to the recovery and flourishing of communities affected by recent natural disasters. Leading research institutions globally, including the International Science Council, emphasise the necessity of diverse scholarly engagement that centres human complexity across multiple scales. To create true innovation, our research infrastructure and funding needs to support intellectual diversity, collaborative thinking and a commitment to understanding our world’s complex challenges.

At Te Pūnaha Matatini we value the opportunity to work with artists to explore how art and research come together to tell stories about our world. Eager to bring new perspectives to our research, and to create opportunities to engage new audiences with complex systems, we were equally delighted and daunted to receive over 40 applications from some immensely talented artists across Aotearoa New Zealand to be a guest artist with us. It brings us great pleasure to introduce Te Pūnaha Matatini’s first guest artist: Dr. Sione Faletau. Sione is a multidisciplinary artist of Tongan descent, who often translates soundscapes into visual kupesi (patterns) by extracting and manipulating the audio wave spectrum into intricate designs. During his six-months with Te Pūnaha Matatini, Sione will use a talanoa approach to develop site-specific installations in close collaboration with researchers that align with his artistic practice.

Wairewa, a shallow polymictic shoreline lake on the southern side of Te Pātaka o Rakaihautū Banks Peninsula, has had a troubled history. The water is turbid and prone to toxic algal blooms. The customary, highly productive tuna (eel) fishery has been the verge of collapse due to the highly degraded state of the lake. We've got a PhD scholarship available to use spatio-temporal early warning signals analysis to develop methods to predict and monitor the health of Wairewa. Shallow lakes are an example of bistable systems with tipping points. This project will develop both temporal and spatio-temporal models of Wairewa, to apply the theory of critical transitions to develop an optimal monitoring regime for lake health. ??? by Gasina Pornpitpatkul

On a Thursday afternoon in June, a power pylon toppled over in a small rural area in Aotearoa New Zealand, cutting power to most of the Northland region. This happened after contractors removed too many nuts from the bolts securing the pylon during cleaning. The seemingly mundane act of removing these nuts led to catastrophic effects: the three unsecured legs of the pylon lifted, the tower toppled off its base, and the resulting electricity outage affected 100,000 properties. Electricity is distributed through a network, and this particular pylon was crucial to the network. The removal of the pylon had a massive impact on the transmission of power between communities. Networks are made up of nodes and links. Electricity networks are easy to imagine, with power stations and substations the nodes, and power lines the links that connect them. Not all networks are as visible as power grids. For example, we can think of people as nodes in social networks, and their interactions as links between them. Information, ideas and disease travel through these networks as power may flow through an electrical grid. In our latest post on the foundations of complex systems, Te Pūnaha Matatini Principal Investigators Kyle Higham and Emma Sharp and illustrator Hanna Breurkes explore how understanding how things spread on networks is vital for the world to thrive → https://bit.ly/3BBdduu

Need a summer job? We're looking for a research assistant to gather data for our annual report → https://bit.ly/3TALikS