Category: MIL OSI

Source: Flinders University

New Zealand and Flinders University experts have deployed artificial intelligence and 3D laser scanning to accurately map planted pine (radiata) forests for most of NZ’s North Island.  

The results, which distinguish planted large estates, small woodlots and newly established stands as young as three years old, showcase a new way of using remote sensing with other technology to reveal forest growth and update growth information.

This approach is just as relevant for Australia, where radiata pine is also widely grown, says Dr Grant Pearse, Senior Lecturer in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) at Flinders University.

“In New Zealand, where radiata pine plantations dominate the forestry sector, the current national forest description lacks spatially explicit information and struggles to capture data on small-scale forests,” says Dr Pearse, from the College of Science and Engineering at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia.

“We combined deep learning-based forest mapping using high-resolution aerial imagery with regional airborne laser scanning data to map all planted forest and estimate key attributes.”

The spatially explicit forest description provides wall-to-wall information on forest extent, age, and volume for all sizes of forest. This facilitates stratification by key variables for wood supply forecasting, harvest planning, and infrastructure investment decisions – applications equally valuable for other forestry industries.

The research, with New Zealand timber industry researchers from Rotorua, Christchurch and Auckland, was carried out on planted forests in the Gisborne region, which has publicly available aerial imagery and airborne laser scanning data.

This region is particularly significant as it was severely impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle in early 2023, which caused widespread landslides and forest debris flows.

For such vulnerable terrain, knowing exactly where forests are located in the landscape, their age and condition is key to managing the risks of harvesting operations on the region’s steep slopes.

“We propose satellite-based harvest detection and digital photogrammetry to continuously update the initial forest description. This methodology enables near real-time monitoring of planted forests at all scales and is adaptable to other regions with similar data availability,” researchers say in a new article.

Along with the economic importance of NZ’s 1.8 million hectares of radiata pine forestry for export timber and fibre, these planted forests are a key part of the country’s emission trading scheme and are expected to play a significant role in achieving the government’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050.

The forest map derived from artificial intelligence can be viewed at: www.forestinsights.nz

In South Australia, plantation estates covering about 40,000 hectares support a $3 billion industry and employ 18,000 people as well as construction, manufacturing, tourism and regional communities.

The article. ‘Developing a forest description from remote sensing: Insights from New Zealand’ (2024) byGrant D Pearse (Flinders University), Sadeepa Jayathunga, Nicolò Camarretta, Melanie E Palmer, Benjamin SC Steer, Michael S Watt (all Scion), Pete Watt and Andrew Holdaway (both Indufor Asia Pacific)  has been published in the journal Science of Remote Sensing. DOI: 10.1016/j.srs.2024.100183. (ref. https://www.forestinsights.nz/ )

Acknowledgements: This project was funded through the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) Strategic Science Investment Fund (administered by Scion, the New Zealand Forest Research Institute Ltd) and through the MBIE Programme (grant number C04X2101).

Source: MetService

Covering period of Friday 7 – Monday 10 February – Severe thunderstorms are possible for the central North Island this afternoon and evening (Friday), but  MetService is forecasting more warm and dry weather for most during the weekend.

A Severe Thunderstorm Watch is in place for the central North Island this afternoon and evening, covering Taupō, Waikato south of Tokoroa, Taumarunui, inland Bay of Plenty, Taranaki and Taihape. Scattered heavy showers, thunderstorms and localised downpours (25 – 40 mm/h) are expected within this area.

MetService meteorologist Ngaire Wotherspoon comments, “Not everywhere within the Watch area will see a thunderstorm or downpour today, but the potential is there. Localised downpours can cause surface flooding, especially in low-lying areas, so it’s worth keeping an eye on metservice.com as our expert meteorologists will be issuing localised Warnings for severe thunderstorms as they occur.”

It’s shaping up to be a sunny day for the rest of the North Island today, with toasty forecast high temperatures in the mid-high twenties. The South Island is cloudier, especially over Canterbury and Marlborough where temperatures remain in the teens, but this cloud is forecast to break up this afternoon. The remains of a front over western South Island areas means cloud and a sprinkling of rain will stick around into the weekend.

Over the weekend, a ridge of high pressure over the North Island means more sunny and warm weather.  There will still be a few showers in central areas. Down south, showers continue in the west while eastern areas get sunny, warm weather to start the weekend. Alexandra has a forecast high of 31°C on Saturday, before temperatures drop as a band of rain reaches Southland at night.

Wotherspoon details, “Brief rain spreads over Southland and Otago tomorrow night as a front moves north, but it slows and begins to break up heading into Sunday morning. There will be a dip in temperatures for the South Island with this front; Christchurch has a forecast high of 29 °C on Sunday, but is only expected to reach 19 °C on Monday.”  

The remnants of this front will linger into next week, keeping conditions in the South Island cool and cloudy, while the North Island is in store for more warm and dry conditions.

Source: University of Auckland (UoA)

This month, Sir Collin Tukuitonga became one of two professors of Niuean descent in the world.

Professor Sir Collin says it’s an honour to join the ranks of his University of Auckland colleague, Professor of Pacific Health Vili Nosa, also from Niue – one of the smallest countries on the globe, with a population of less than 1,700 people.

“I’m not a true-blue academic. I didn’t do a PhD and stay in the university forever. I gained a lot of practical experience elsewhere, so it’s nice to be accepted by my peers in academic medicine,” says Sir Collin.

He is a director of Poutoko Ora a Kiwa – Centre for Pacific and Global Health at the University, was knighted in 2022 and is a man with his own Wikipedia page. His ‘practical experience’ spans everything from being chief executive of the New Zealand Ministry of Pacific Affairs from 2007 to 2012 to developing a global strategy to improve diet and physical activity that was adopted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2004.

Addressing health inequities faced by Pacific and Māori people has been the motivating force behind Sir Collin’s career over the past 45 years.

“People with the means often get too much medicine and those who need it the most get the least.

“Those inequities stick out to me – Māori and Pacific people have poorer health and it’s entrenched.

“We have the resources, skills, equipment and facilities to make a change and yet we haven’t.

“It seems unfair, unacceptable to me – and that’s the key driver, why I’m involved in public health,” he says.

Growing up in Niue, seeds of caring for family and community were planted that have borne fruit during his career in public health.

“We didn’t have much, not many books. We first had the radio when I was 10, electricity wasn’t a regular thing, so it was a pretty basic existence.

“You didn’t expect much for yourself – you didn’t think about whether you had the latest flashy clothes or shoes.

“You helped in the plantation, going fishing, it was all centred around contributing to the family and helping in the village.

“I guess that’s where I got my sense of social justice – your talents are not just for yourself.”

At the age of 15, Sir Collin’s fate was shaped by gaining a scholarship to study medicine.

“I was lucky I had a decent brain and I got one of two New Zealand government scholarships to go to university in Fiji.

“I had always been interested in helping people, so medicine was a natural selection, but the availability of the scholarship was a big factor.

“My family would not have been able to send me to university – I would have been a fisherman,” he says.

Leaving behind his “charmed life” in Niue, where he had been pampered by three sisters and surrounded by cousins, was a huge step, but Fiji still offered the simple pleasures of island life.

Sir Collin graduated as a junior doctor in 1979 and worked as a “real doctor” in family medicine for about 15 years.

He returned to Niue to offer his skills to his island community, before being appointed to teach public health at the Fiji School of Medicine in 1987. A military coup later that year raised fears for the safety of his first wife and their young children, so they fled to New Zealand – a place Sir Collin has called home ever since.

In the late 1980s, he was a key figure involved in setting up a Pacific healthcare clinic in West Auckland, which is now called The Fono.

Having mainly Pasifika staff and low fees has helped make healthcare more accessible for many Pacific people.

While working as a GP in West Auckland, he saw patterns of hardship and poor health that made him determined to help change the health system.

“It was predominantly families with young children and you saw the same things over and over again – chesty coughs, skin infections, those kinds of things, which if you’re a thinking person, you have to say, ‘there has to be a better way than waiting for them to come back to the clinic with the same thing’.

“Those things were to do with cold, damp, overcrowded housing, poor nutrition and delayed access to health care.

“I thought if I was involved in public health, you could theoretically prevent those problems.”

He became Director of Public Health at the New Zealand Ministry of Health in 2001.

In this role, he contributed to programmes designed to reduce smoking harm in Pacific communities. Over the past 30 years, smoking rates have halved, though about twice as many Māori and Pacific people still smoke, compared to Pakeha New Zealanders.

“Smoking in young people in New Zealand is now 4.2 percent, compared to 27 percent of adults smoking in 1993. So that’s a significant achievement for New Zealand and I helped contribute to that.”

Sir Collin helped introduce a vaccine for meningitis B, during an epidemic of the disease in the early 2000s.

“We had high mortality rates among young Māori and Pacific people in New Zealand and the vaccine led to a significant drop in occurrence of the disease, so I was pleased to help that along.”

His overseas roles have included three years at the World Health Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland, and seven years in New Caledonia, where he was director-general of the Pacific Community.

More recently, he played an important role in advising the New Zealand government and communicating with Pacific communities during the Covid pandemic.

However, in December 2023, he resigned from his role as chairperson of Te Whatu Ora Pacific Senate and spoke out regarding his concerns about the new government’s direction.

“I was really incensed when they repealed our smoke-free legislation. I know that by undoing that world-leading legislation, Māori and Pacific people are going to be the worst affected – and all for the purpose of them meeting their commitment to their friends to make tax cuts.

“I couldn’t continue on the advisory committees when clearly they were not interested in anything apart from what was on their agenda.”

The roots of Pacific people having higher rates of health problems, ranging from cancer to measles, lie in deeper disadvantages, says Sir Collin.

“Health is a symptom of underlying social conditions. It’s an extension of disparities in education, income, housing and diet.

“We can’t just deal with it in the health sector, we have to deal with those issues – and they’re difficult issues.”

Through the hard times, Sir Collin has been buoyed up by Pacific people thanking him for looking out for their wellbeing and speaking up for them.

These days, the 67-year-old father of five is enjoying mentoring and supporting young people at the University, while much of his spare time is spent developing and planting native trees on his family’s lifestyle block near Pakiri.

“There’s no set retirement age these days and I love working with my many clever colleagues at the university.

“My friends say that when you retire and you don’t use your brain, it rots. I’m terrified of that possibility,” he laughs.

Source: Kiwis Against Seabed Mining (KASM)

As the government opens the floodgates today for project applications under its new Fast-Track Approvals Act, opposition to seabed mining is as strong as ever, Kiwis Against Seabed Mining (KASM) said today.

The KASM team spent Waitangi Day in Patea, one of the closest settlements to the proposed mine site in the South Taranaki Bight, and found nothing but fierce opposition, from iwi to fishermen, from surfers to teachers and pensioners – and local councils.

“There’s a real anger in this community at the prospect that this project could still go ahead after being so roundly and repeatedly rejected by the highest court in the land,” said KASM chairperson Cindy Baxter.

“This seabed mining project is called a zombie project because it simply did not stand up to scrutiny: there’s so many uncertainties, and the company simply hasn’t done the work.”

This was evident in the hearing Trans Tasman Resources walked away from last year, when it gave up on trying to meet the Supreme Court’s test of causing “no material harm.”

KASM doesn’t expect the TTR application to be vastly different from what the company presented to those hearings. Trans Tasman Resources appears to only have focussed on lobbying politicians and spending as little money as possible on the mahi it needed to do, while grossly exaggerating the projected economic impact.

“Right around the country today communities like Patea are gearing up for a fight to keep their land, their water and their oceans free from pollution, pitted against a government determined to ride roughshod over their future. It shouldn’t have to be this way.”

The Fast-Track website is now online, advertising that it will post “news” today (ref. https://kasm.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=40fd433e2f2344060946f0bb8&id=378af0d022&e=26e06db549 )

Source: University of Auckland

Taylor Swift’s re-recordings rocked the music industry – can other artists reclaim their music too? A journal article explores the options.

Taylor Swift and her millions of fans may be disappointed by her 2025 Grammys ‘snub’, but the billionaire artist still has much to celebrate, most notably, her successful fight to take ownership of her music in an industry long dominated by influential record labels.

University of Auckland copyright expert Dr Joshua Yuvaraj says Swift significantly impacted the industry when she re-recorded several of her albums after the rights to her music were sold from under her.

In his paper, published in the Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice and presented at the University of Melbourne’s Taylor Swift-themed academic conference, Swiftposium, the senior law lecturer examines how re-recording can help artists gain control of their music. He compares this strategy with the primary mechanism available under US copyright law: statutory reversion. (ref. https://academic.oup.com/jiplp/article/19/12/884/7913103 )

His article looks at how reversion applies to sound recordings, focusing on the US copyright ‘termination’ provision, which lets creators reclaim copyright, typically after around 35 years. The size of the US recording market makes this scheme the most high-profile reversion system in the world. However, Yuvaraj argues that re-recording may offer a more accessible alternative to these legal processes.

“In theory, copyright reversion gives artists a second chance at controlling their recordings. But in practice, the US system has significant obstacles: a long waiting period, complex legal requirements, and uncertainty over whether sound recordings are even covered.”

Many artists simply don’t have the time or resources to navigate this legal quagmire, says Yuvaraj.

“There are considerable power imbalances between artists and record companies,” he says. “For example, copyright is often assigned before the true value of a song is even known.”

Re-recording, as Swift did, allows artists to sidestep these legal barriers. While the copyright in an original sound recording remains with the label, a newly recorded version, if produced independently, is treated as a separate work under copyright law – as long as the artist retained control, or had a license to reproduce the song itself, which has a separate musical copyright to the recording.

“Taylor Swift’s success put re-recording in the spotlight as a way for artists to regain control over their music without waiting decades for copyright reversion laws to take effect,” says Yuvaraj.

He says that unlike statutory reversion, re-recording requires much shorter waiting periods, allowing musicians to capitalise on market demand more quickly. There’s also less procedural complexity, and as long as artists comply with contractual waiting periods, they are unlikely to face legal action.

Despite Swift’s success – her re-recorded albums were critically praised and financially lucrative – Yuvaraj notes that re-recording isn’t a viable solution for everyone.

“It requires a strong fan base willing to embrace the new versions, and not all musicians have that level of market power,” he says.

And while Swift’s re-recording battle highlighted power imbalances in artist contracts, it also saw record labels tighten their grip. There are reports of extended re-recording restrictions in contracts from the standard three to seven years to 20 or 30 years, making re-recording a less accessible option for future artists.

Despite this roadblock, Yuvaraj says Swift’s case sparked important conversations about artist rights, and some musicians are now negotiating deals that allow them to retain ownership of their master recordings from the outset, eliminating the need for re-recording altogether.

“Swift’s case brought re-recording into the public eye, but it doesn’t replace the need for fairer contracts and stronger copyright protections.”