Join us for the next event in: Te Whare Wānaka o Aoraki Lincoln University Excellence Series. This series has been designed to showcase leadership in various disciplines including the opportunity to promote the University’s distinctive and impactful applied research. This series celebrates research excellence and promotes a public forum to a broader community, highlighting Lincoln University’s specialist land-based contribution to driving New Zealand’s prosperity and intergenerational wellbeing.
Globally, large-scale forest disease and dieback are increasing at alarming rates because of biological invasions, fragmentation through clearance, and changing climate regimes. The implications of this are dire, as these forests are essential for human survival as well as having a critical role in maintaining biodiversity, carbon storage and climate regulation.
In Aotearoa New Zealand, over 80% of our 2,500 species of native plants are found nowhere else. This endemism is threatened by invasive pathogens combined with a loss in connectivity from fragmentation of forest ecosystems and disrupted ecological networks. These disturbances are known to effect soil ecological communities and their role in maintaining forest health including the forests soils to store carbon. This is effect is critical and detrimental as forests and their soil ecosystems are recognised as major contributors to balancing the global carbon budget.
Join us as Professor Amanda Black talks about how fragmented landscapes and multiple disturbances have impacted on our Indigenous kauri forests ability to thrive in the 21st Century.
Please note: this event is being held in a new venue on campus - Waimarie Building
Timings
4.00 pm - Networking and drinks
4.15 pm - Welcome & introduction from LU Vice-Chancellor
4.20 pm - Presentation from Speaker
4.50 pm - Summary
5.00 pm - Networking and questions over drinks and nibbles
5.30pm - Event Ends
About Our Speaker
Professor Amanda Black
My research area is in environmental soil chemistry and biochemistry, focusing on the health of soil ecosystems. My current areas of focus are understanding the relationship between gene expression and soil productivity such as carbon storage; halting kauri dieback through discovery of disease suppressive traits in soils; and focusing on biosecurity and climate change issues that are of concern to Maori and indigenous communities. I am a co-director of Bioprotection Aotearoa which is a national centre of research excellence (CoRE) that collaborates across 11 partner organisations across New Zealand. It conducts innovative research framed by Māori values, to develop approaches that make our productive and valued ecosystems resistant and resilient in the face of increasing threats from pathogens, pests, and weeds, which are exacerbated by climate change. I have a strong background in incorporating mātauranga Māori and facilitating inter-team interactions and collaborations. In 2019 I received the Te Tupu-ā-Rangi Award for Health and Science at the Matariki Awards, Māori Television. In 2018 I was awarded the MPI NZ Biosecurity Award (AsureQuality - Emerging Leader). I have recently held Ministerial appointments with the Department of Conservation, Ministry for the Environment, Ministry of Education, and Ministry of Primary Industries.
Research profile Amanda Black
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