J.B. Hagger

Defining your management brand.

C.L. Brack

NSW National Resources Commission: Review of Cypress Pine.

Peer review of Forests NSW models for Cypress Pine in the Western and Riverina bioregions to determine how it can be used to estimate sustainable timber yields from State Forests.

March to May, 2010.

J. Christmas

"Education First" newspaper article on the influence of international students to Waiariki and Rotorua.

April, 2010.

N. Searles, P Stephens, C.L. Brack

Planted Forest Carbon Inventory using LiDAR and ground control plot measurements to meet Kyoto protocol reporting requirements

Presentation to "LiDAR in Forests" conference, April 2010.  Hobart, Australia..

C.L. Brack

Expert advice assistance for National Forest Inventory of Indonesia

Janutary to October, 2010

J. Christmas

Student pathways through New Zealand's integrated education system.

Presentation at the Joint International Conference on Teacher Education in a global perspective at Babe Ke College of Education.  Daubhar, Moga, India.  March, 2010.

C.L. Brack

Waiariki Research Advance Retreat

Resource person and presenter, February 2010. 

C.L. Brack

Robust Decisions in a Climate of Change: what should you do tomorrow if you do not know what will be happening in 30 years?

New Zealand Journal of Forestry, December 2009 54(3):38 - 44.

C.L. Brack

A second opinion on the conference

New Zealand Journal of Forestry, August 2009. 54(2): 38 - 40.

M. Battaglis, J. Bruce, C. Brack and T. Baker.

Climate Change and Australia's plantation estate: Analysis of vulnerability and preliminary investigation of adaptation options.

http://www.fwpa.com.au/Resources/RD/Reports/PNC068-0708_Research_Report_Climate_Change.pdf?pn=PNC068-0708

C.L Brack 1&2, C. McElhinny 2, R. Waterworth 2, S. Roberts 2 

(1 School of Forestry, Wood Processing and Biotechnology, Waiariki Institute of Technology, Rotorua, NZ.  2 The Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Australia.)

Multi-scale forest inventory and modelling for multi-purpose management

Proceedings of the IUFRO 4.01 conference "Multipurpose Forest Management: Strategies for sustainability in a climate change era". 20th to 25th September, 2009. (http://www.iufro.org/publications/proceedings/) Niigata, Japan.

Abstract

Forests provide many goods and services and the demands for quality information about forests are continuing to increase. These demands include detailed information about an increasing range of forest characteristics and resources - both wood and non-wood based - on small, nominated units of land. For example, Kyoto-type carbon credit schemes operating at a high tier, and therefore in the most valuable markets, require precise and unbiased estimation of carbon pools in forests at specific sub-hectare locations. Simultaneously, landscape-level management decisions, especially those related to biodiversity, may require information about stand characteristics and their spatial distribution over thousands of ha or km2. Historical approaches for forest inventory were often classified into strategic/national, operational/regional or tactical/local scales to support management decisions at corresponding scales. However, recent trends of increased attention to the role of even individual forests in local and global economies and environments - evidenced by international conventions and agreements like the Montreal Agreement or Kyoto Protocol, and international monitoring of specific areas of deforestation and degradation - has reduced the usefulness of the strategic/operational/tactical separation. Strategic decisions made during international policy negotiations may significantly affect tactical or on ground decisions on specific forested lands, while conversely good but independent tactical decisions may put strategic management goals at risk. Disagreement amongst inventories at the various levels (e.g. where the sum of tactical inventories does not equal the strategic inventory) increases the probability for conflict between strategic and tactical management decisions.

This presentation outlines the framework used in the National Carbon Accounting System (NCAS) developed by the Commonwealth Government of Australia to support policy-development especially in relation to global climate change and forests. The framework allows for the integration of information captured through long-term satellite sensing, physiological and empirical modelling, field-based measurements and regional "text" information. Although policy-development is obviously at a “strategic” level, the framework is flexible enough to also provide information at sub-hectare levels and supports seamless tactical decision-making as well. The information provided supports Commonwealth policy development and this presentation shows how it also provides valuable information for other management purposes ranging from tactical management of fuelwood and farm timbers at the scale of individual farm forests, through to landscape-level structural diversity and biodiversity management.

 Kemp, O. (2009)

Lignum Magazine, September 2009 issue.

In addition to indigenous forest ownership in NZ, Maori have participation in exotic plantation forests as landowners outright, with the land leased to forest owners, and/or as joint venture land and forest owners. This article discusses a recent development involving the return of plantation forested land from the Crown to Maori under the terms of a Treaty of Waitangi settlement and also outlines the history of a long running, successful forestry joint venture between Maori and the Crown.

The "Treelords" settlement between Maori and the Crown in the Central North Island, involving the transfer of 176,000 ha of primarily exotic forest, is the single most important development to date in the history of Maori forest ownership. The key elements and benefits to Maori of this transaction, along with the intentions of the new company, CNI Iwi Holdings, are outlined. Still to be resolved under this settlement are issues around compensation to Maori landowners who are not members of the CNI Collective of eight participating Iwi and “cultural redress” from the Crown to individual Iwi.

Lake Taupo Forest in the Central North Island represents a successful Maori enterprise based on exotic forestry. Formed in 1969 as a joint venture agreement between Ngati Tuwharetoa as the landowners and the crown as lessees and controlled by a Trust, this forest is now producing an annual harvest of 480,000 cubic meters of logs. The profits are distributed to the Crown and Maori landowners based on a formula in the agreement. Additional benefits to Maori from this arrangement are discussed, notably protection of traditional and cultural values important to Maori.

C.L. Brack, R. Waterworth, C. McElhinny, M. Brookhouse, S. Roberts (2009)

One Measure of Quality and Disturbance can be used to Improve Estimates of Almost Anything.

IUFRO 4.01 (International Union of Forest Research Organisations) Conference.

“Meeting multiple demands for forest information: new technologies in forest data gathering”. 17 – 20 August, 2009. Mt Gambier, Sth Australia.

(http://www.iufro.org/publications/proceedings/)

Abstract.

Satellite-based remote sensing platforms have been collecting repeat measurements of the earth’s surface at various scales for many decades. More than a dozen composite Landsat-based images (TM and MSS), for example, cover the continent of Australia since the early 1970’s. Numerous researchers have used one or more of these data to estimate various forest population parameters, often with significant and useful results when the signal is not saturated. Similarly, Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) and networks of rainfall and temperature recording stations can be used to model climate history on relatively fine scales across continents. Although there is a huge wealth of information included in the temporal sequence of these remotely-sensed images and models, it remains very difficult to exploit this continental-scale data.

The National Carbon Accounting System (NCAS) developed by the Commonwealth Government of Australia to support policy development, especially in relation to global climate change and forests, allows for the integration of information captured through long-term satellite sensing, physiological and empirical modelling, field-based measurements and regional “text” information. Although the amount of spatially referenced data used as input into NCAS is substantial, much of the data is subsequently summarised as an index of Net Primary Productivity (NPP) and years since substantial disturbance. These two parameters are provided over the Australian continent at a sub-hectare resolution and are reasonably robust even though some of the input data is at coarser levels of resolution. After extensive assessment by the IPCC the NCAS is accepted as a reliable tool for estimation of carbon emission and sequestration as well as policy development. In addition, the NCAS framework has also provided free access to a spatial database of integrated site quality and disturbance information at a sub-hectare scale. Individual landowners and researchers can download information on forest type, site productivity, disturbance and long-term climate from publicly-available NCAS databases simply by entering the appropriate latitude and longitude coordinates.

This presentation demonstrates how the use of the site quality and disturbance history is used to improve estimates of forest products (at farm-scale and larger areas) as well as providing estimates of forest structural diversity at stand level, and potentially generating diversity indices at landscape levels. Use of the NCAS data in a multi-phase allows for inventory efficiency improvement of 33% compared to simple random sampling. The approach also allows historical data (e.g. from previous field measurements) to be included in an inventory which would otherwise violate the assumptions of simple or restricted random sampling approaches.

Forest Ginseng In New Zealand - Background, Progress And Future From A Growers Perspective

Proceedings of the Mountain Ginseng Symposium for the Restoration of Original Site of Korea Ginseng. 24-25 February, 2009.

Abstract: A brief overview is provided of New Zealand and ginseng growing with a focus on the potential for forest grown ginseng as a valuable non timber forest product for New Zealand independent forest owners. This is based research and on Wild Ginseng Limited experiences growing Korean ginseng from 2005 and American ginseng from 2008 under plantation forest canopy. Finally some insights are provided on the potential future of a forest based ginseng industry in New Zealand and initiatives required to establish the emerging industry.

Brack, C.L. (2009)

Recently, a popular Gardening TV show in Australia made a short about “The Canberra Arboretum (25/7/2009)” – have a look at video at http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/video/. Cris Brack had a major role in the development of a research role of the arboretum, and is a member of the research panel for"The Canberra International Arboretum"

Brack, C.L. (2009)

Robust Decisions in a Climate of Change: what should you do tomorrow if you do not know what will be happening in 30 years?

New Zealand Institute of Forestry Annual Conference 2009: Forestry in a Climate of Change. Nelson, NZ. 7 – 9 June, 2009. http://www.nzif.org.nz/conferences/2009/index.html

Climate variability and the political uncertainty around possible carbon trading systems have focused attention on the impact of risk on long term planning. Researchers have published comparisons of short/long plantation regimes and integrated or simple grazing/cropping regimes under different “future scenarios” and made qualified conclusions about the expected discounted value or land rent under different scenarios. However, a plantation or a farming enterprise is not the result of a single, irrevocable decision or action. Each year or season, the manager can decide to continue the current land use and scheduled activities, change the land use or proposed sequence of activities, or invest more time/effort into making a decision. Good management should minimise the loss of options for that land and should not result in the scheduling of activities that “lock” land into poor uses. Essentially, managers should be choosing robust decisions or activities that are likely to lead to good outcomes under a wide range of potential futures.

This presentation examines a system for determining robust decisions and quantifying the different aspects of risk that have the greatest impact on the outcome of the decisions that need to be made in the immediate future.