Waikato Branch

Welcome to the Website for the Waikato Branch of the Royal Society of New Zealand!

The Royal Society welcomes members who wish to join the Waikato Branch. 

For enquiries about the branch or the lecture programme please contact

Paul Taylor, NIWA Hamilton, (07) 8591 854 p.taylor@niwa.co.nz

Lecture Programme Site Location Map, entry through Gate 8, room AG30 is in the School of Maori and Pacific Development. Parking available nearby through Gate 7 behind the Management School.

Upcoming Seminars ...

Valuing the ecological functions of marine soft-sediments

Dr Drew Lohrer, NIWA Hamilton

Wednesday November 9^th, 7.30 pm

Room AG30, Waikato University

 It is a major challenge to convince the public that benthic invertebrates in brown muddy habitats have value, contribute to marine ecosystem functioning and provide goods and services from which humans benefit.  But these “brown muddy” habitats are the world’s most widespread benthic habitat type and host representatives of nearly every animal phylum.  Human disturbance to sedimentary seafloor habitats reduces this biodiversity, and research indicates that the sequence of species loss and recovery is non-random.  Some of the large long-lived species that dominate benthic biomass and alter the structure and topography of soft-sediment habitats are particularly vulnerable to physical disturbance, such as commercial trawling, and can be very slow to recover.  This talk will focus on our group’s approach to quantifying ecosystem performance and how the loss of certain large, long-lived benthic invertebrates may impact the functioning of the system.  Research on the roles of sessile suspension-feeding pinnid bivalves, which protrude 1-15 cm above the sediment-water interface, and mobile deposit-feeding spatangoid urchins, which burrow 1-5 cm beneath the surface of the sediment, will be featured.

 After obtaining undergraduate and graduate degrees in ecology (University of California San Diego, University of Connecticut), Dr Lohrer served as Research Coordinator of an 11,000-acre estuarine research reserve in coastal South Carolina, USA.  He came to New Zealand three and a half years ago to work for NIWA’s Marine Benthic Ecology team in Hamilton, and specializes on animal-sediment interactions and the effects of burrowing invertebrates on sediment biogeochemistry. 

Past Seminars

Water Quality in Lakes of the Central North Island
Professor David Hamilton,
Environment Bay of Plenty Chair in Lake Management and Restoration,
Waikato University

Wednesday October 12th, 7.30 pm
Room AG30, Waikato University

Whilst lake water quality remains high in several larger lakes in the central North Island, there has been quite severe degradation in others. The time course of degradation can be examined through a variety of means; declining levels of dissolved oxygen in bottom waters, loss of a distinctive layer of algae positioned as deep as 50 meters in some lakes, loss of weed beds, and proliferation of blue-green algae. Deterioration of water quality commenced as early as the 1960s in some Rotorua lakes, and a series of warnings by local scientists went mostly unheeded until recently, when there have been concerted efforts by Environment Bay of Plenty to develop techniques for rapid restoration. Recent intensification of agriculture throughout many New Zealand water catchments represents a major challenge for lake restoration efforts, particularly where there are large groundwater aquifers that are becoming progressively enriched with nitrate. Observations of lake responses suggest that not all restoration efforts will yield expected results as the pathway of restoration may be different from that of the initial degradation, requiring more stringent control and management than initially envisaged.

David Hamilton is the Environment Bay of Plenty Chair in Lake Management and Restoration at Waikato University. In this role he promotes fundamental and applied lake science research to Environment Bay of Plenty, to support this regional council’s lake restoration efforts and land and water plans. David has a B.Sc. and Ph.D. from Otago University, with his Ph.D. research examining 10 shallow lakes on the east coast of the South Island. He spent 12 years in Perth at the University of Western Australia where he worked on several lake projects including Sydney’s main water supply reservoir, Lake Kinneret in Israel, Lake Rinihue in Chile and the proposed Bakun Dam in Malaysia. David maintains international lake interests as a founding committee member of the Global Lakes’ Environmental Observatory Network (GLEON), and has recently been involved in projects on Lake Mead (Las Vegas’ water supply), and lakes in China and Wisconsin.

Global Change: What is it and how does it impact the Earth System?

Dr Julie Hall, NIWA Hamilton

Wednesday 10 August 2005 - 7.30pm, Room AG30, Waikato University

Global Change is a term that is often misunderstood. In most cases people have a clear picture of climate change, but this is only one example of global change. What about increased nutrient run off from the land to the ocean, changes in biodiversity, and changing land use? A range of impacts of global change will be presented and put in the broader context of the Earth System. A brief overview of the International Geosphere–Biosphere Programme (IGBP), which addresses the impacts of global change on the Earth System, will be presented.

Lecture Programme Site Location Map, entry through Gate 8, room AG30 is in the School of Maori and Pacific Development. Parking available nearby through Gate 7 behind the Management School.

Comments on these pages can be directed to Steph Parkyn s.parkyn@niwa.co.nz

Images courtesy of Geoff Latimer and Ron Ovenden