1.3 Health Frameworks

This research theme aims to develop a novel framework for assessing risks to ecosystem health. It will account for feedback from processes that arise due to the unique geography, ecology and culture of Aotearoa New Zealand.  The health of Aotearoa New Zealand’s productive ecosystems – including their ability to withstand pathogens, pests and weeds in a changing climate – depends on drivers that operate across a range of scales from individual pest and weed incursions to national policies.

These drivers interact across landscape mosaics, often in complex and unanticipated ways, to affect a range of local health outcomes on productive land.  Farm managers are typically charged with optimising economic yield within legislated requirements. The practices they adopt as a result (e.g., the development of herbicide-resistant weeds) can affect the surrounding landscape.

Decision-support tools used in Aotearoa New Zealand are typically focused on local outcomes, and do not explicitly account for how decisions feedback to impact ecosystem outcomes across the landscape and time. We urgently need tools that allow explicit consideration of these interactions and risks, which is what we are focusing on.