We know that biodiversity can help increase agro-ecosystem resilience and that the biodiversity on sheep and beef farms is often all that remains of the original habitats, but we don’t know what is required to create and support changes in how biodiversity is regarded, protected and managed on farms.

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Aims

• Gain an holistic view, including from a Māori perspective, of how biodiversity is perceived and managed on sheep and beef farms in New Zealand.
• Map the vegetation and associated ecosystem functions on three case-study farms and across the landscapes in which those farms are embedded, to develop tools for land and biodiversity management decision-making.
• Understand the critical roles of biodiversity for agro-ecosystem function and economic and human well-being.
• Quantify native habitat on sheep and beef farms and how it is spatially arranged.
• Determine how biodiversity can be managed in agro-ecosystems in the future, in a way that will benefit both farming and native biodiversity.

Highlights

• Investigation and collation of Māori perspectives of agro-ecosystems.
• Modelling frameworks of bird-plant frugivory, fire hazard, plant-soil water relations and carbon sequestration at farm and landscape spatial scales.
• Development of a “Biodiversity on farms” resource website for farmers.
• Establishment of “Living Laboratory” demonstration sites, investigating how we can most efficiently grow old-growth, canopy trees.
• Modelling the effect of decisions to actively manage on-farm biodiversity on farm profits.
• The mapping of native vegetation and carbon stocks on agro-ecosystems across the country.