Modelling New Zealand’s pre-human forested landscapes

Understanding how New Zealand's forests have changed in extent since human arrival requires a baseline for what came before. This seminar presents a past ecosystem map (PEM) of New Zealand's pre-human, terrestrial forested ecosystems, developed to complement the recently released current ecosystem map and aligned with the same IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology framework. Using a hierarchical Bayesian model fitted to nearly 13,000 vegetation plots and evaluated against pre-deforestation pollen records, the project reconstructs where New Zealand's two forest ecosystem types, oceanic cool temperate rainforest and warm temperate laurophyll forest, occurred before human arrival. This talk includes discussion about what this historical baseline reveals about the scale of forest loss since human settlement, and potential future steps for further developing these mapped products in New Zealand at finer compositional scales. Presenter: James McCarthy, Bioeconomy Science Institute More information about LinkOnline: https://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/ev...