Join the Manaaki Whenua team for a mini-series of live-streamed talks and Q&A.
“Achieving results for the environment through technology” is part of TechWeek NZ. In three short sessions this week we will showcase the latest technologies used in our work to better understand New Zealand’s environment. The three talks are listed below – all are free to join. Click the link to set a reminder and join the speakers and audience live on line.
Achieving results for the environment through technology: lasers, scanners & drones
12:00 pm - 01:00 pm, 22ND MAY 2019
Join us online as our researchers showcase their work and the impacts of technology on our environment. We will host a live Q+A with Ben Jolly and Andrew McMillan who will showcase technology ranging from terrestrial laser scanners and drones to virtual reality headsets and how they can benefit research of our environment.
Viewers will be able to look at the equipment throughout the session and ask Ben and Andrew questions.
Achieving results for the environment through technology: Predators
11:30 am - 12:30 pm, 23RD MAY 2019
Join us online as our researchers showcase their work and the impacts of technology on our environment.
Bruce Warburton will host a live session and detail the advances that have been made in predator control. Bruce will discuss the issues around expanding wallaby populations in New Zealand and the technology we have created to monitor their movements.
As well as our live session, you can use the interactive map on our website to explore stories about science that is "good for the world". Want to understand more about mānuka honey and New Zealand's honey bee population? Maybe you want to take a tour of a research lab and understand the biotech methods we use. Or you could check out the innovative ways of finding alternative sources of Omega 3 fatty acids to lead the way in sustainability.
Digitisation Expedition (Citizen Science)
10:00 am - 11:00 am, 24TH MAY 2019
Want to be part of a real life science experiment? We need digital volunteers to digitise our valuable collections.
Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research is custodian of the Allan Herbarium – a collection of dried plant specimens from around the world and is the largest in Aotearoa. The Herbarium is a collection of flowering plants, mosses, liverworts, lichens and algae. The specimens in the collection provide a permanent, irreplaceable resource to researchers and managers that seek to understand and document New Zealand’s flora.
This Expedition needs volunteers like you to help us increase our digital specimen records. We have a massive 660,000 specimens and objects at the Herbarium but only 45% have been ‘digitised’ for researchers and biosecurity and biodiversity managers to access from anywhere in the world.
A digital record makes it easy for people to search the collection, work out what they need to physically study, retrieve the data for their work or even just to find out what has been collected in their local area.
Natural history collections provide a fundamental resource and knowledge to help us understand our natural world as we move towards environmental and economic sustainability.
More people want access to more information which is motivating collections around the world to try different approaches to increase the amount of digital information.
At Manaaki Whenua we have embraced the citizen science approach and welcome “digital volunteers” from anywhere in the world to help us transcribe information from specimen labels.
Join Aaron Wilton and Kate Boardman, who will talk you through the inside of the Allan Herbarium and discuss the importance of digital volunteers and how you can contribute to science and the history of our natural environment through digitisation sciences.